I am a teacher, and we are learning, in the elementary school where I work, about lockdowns. Say, a gunman enters the school. What do we do? The teachers in the room around me are taking notes, nodding solemnly to this presentation. I am thinking about my own children at a school only a few miles away, my son in third grade, my little daughter, just starting kindergarten. Oh my God. What do we do?
Don’t panic, says the presenter.
When the alarm sounds, go to your classroom doorways, quickly. Step into the hallway and sweep inside everyone who is close by. The little boy on his way back from the drinking fountain. The little girl heading toward the restroom. Pull them into your room and lock the doors until the danger passes.
But I am still stuck in the doorway. What will happen to the kid inside the restroom? The housekeeper, pushing her mop at the other end of the hallway? The child late to school and just now bounding up the stairs? How wide can our arms sweep?
And the gunman. Who is he? A teenager crying out for help from his distracted parents, ignored? (They bought him the gun.) A man angry about something or other. What he believes he is owed or a personal grievance or revenge or some warped desire for chaos, a need to burn it all down.
I don’t have the mental energy for these people right now. First, my own doorway, my own classroom. And please, please, please, in the place where my children might be this moment, skipping down the hall, let a kind somebody sweep them inside
where the room is warm and filled with books. Colorful art on the walls, plants on the windowsills. Where we sit, cross-legged on the floor together and rest up, ready ourselves to fight if we have to,
singing softly in the dark, telling each other stories.
.JPG)
No comments:
Post a Comment