Parkland Shows How Much Schools Need To Prepare Teachers For The Worst
My department admin was walking me through the controls on the classroom podium, when she pointed. “That’s the panic button,” she said.
“Panic button?” I asked. “Why — “ “In case of an incident,” she replied. The button sent an alert to campus security. The alert could be canceled with a followup phone call, but if not, security was supposed to respond immediately.
In the days since the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, I’ve been thinking about that panic button — and my other experiences at the three universities where I’ve taught.
Despite the epidemic of gun-related incidents at schools and colleges across the country, there’s a wide variation in the way instructors are taught to deal with dangerous situations.
We will do anything we can to protect our students, but the places where we work can do a much better job of equipping us with knowledge and tools.
As it turns out, that school was the only one where I could summon assistance by tapping on a touch pad.
At another place where I taught, a colleague gave me instructions on how to divert a threat — run at the intruder in a zig-zag motion, in an attempt to confuse them, which could give students time to get out the door.
At another, I was told to simply, “call security,” from a telephone on the wall in that classroom, assuming I would have time to leave the front of the room, walk around a side panel, and dial police.
At least it had a phone. Other classrooms at the same university did not, meaning if I needed help, I’d have to use my mobile device.
Nor did all the classrooms where I’ve taught have two doors, which might give students a chance to scurry away while I presumably diverted an intruder. Some had only one way in and out.
Getting into a campus building was another variable out of my control.
Some of the buildings where I’ve taught locked their doors to the outside. Others allowed the public to come and go freely. Some had a front desk. Others had a Coke machine and newspaper racks in the lobby, with no human of authority in sight.
I mention all this because parents most likely look first to teachers to be the shield between their children and anyone who might threaten them.
In Parkland, and elsewhere, there have been heroic stories of teachers who did just that, giving up their lives in hopes of saving students.
Every teacher I know is feeling a lump in their throat in hearing those stories, and is also running down a mental checklist.
Schools with effective security plans are to be congratulated. But many of us aren’t taught, or equipped with the tools that might help.
And it actually doesn’t feel like it would be that hard to do. Normally, when you are hired at a major university, you attend some form of orientation, which outlines college procedures on human resources.
You might get a pitch from the campus credit union. I actually got fire safety training in one session, which certified me to put out a chemical fire, not that I expected one in a journalism class.
But, nowhere that I’ve taught has given me any kind of formal security instruction, beyond what my colleagues told me, on what to do if something like Parkland happens. Likewise, there was no uniformity in the way I would get in touch with police.
This has to change, and it’s going to be easier to do so than the gun control laws that Congress has failed for years to pass.
I hope that every university and school across the country uses Parkland as an opportunity to examine how it prepares its instructors to deal with incidents.
Every classroom should have the panic button that I had at my disposal, or some kind of simple way to reach authorities.
Everyone needs to know the basics of confronting an intruder.
There ought to be practice drills for students on how to react if someone comes into the room.
Maybe classrooms ought to have something like the fire safety cards that hang on the back of hotel room doors, or the emergency instructions in the seat back pocket of a plane.
I hate that this is what has happened to American education. I hate that our kids are wondering if something will happen to them in the course of a school day.
I hate that so many people died in Florida, and Connecticut, and Colorado, and elsewhere in the incidents that keep mounting up.
But, if this is the reality we face, give those of us at the front of the room some help to minimize the losses.
Follow Micheline Maynard on Twitter @mickimaynard
