Take Me Home (SAVE OUR KIDS) - GAWNE x Atlus
I saw this video this morning, and it touched a nerve. And maybe gave me a very small spark of hope that maybe we will begin to change things. (Video below)
For eighteen years and just under two weeks, until Covid shut the schools down in 2020, I was a substitute teacher. The last eight to ten years were so different from the first years. Then, I would go into an unlocked classroom, familiarize myself with the lesson plans, set up whatever was needed to implement them, and await the students arrival to class.
As more and more school shootings took place, some schools started issuing substitute teachers classroom door keys and we kept those doors locked at all time. Several schools did not issue keys. In that case, I would request that admin have the door locked. If I needed to leave the classroom during the day, I would carefully tape down the door latch so I could get back in, and then remove it. Eventually, all of the schools I subbed in issued door keys to subs.
Upon arriving in the classroom, I would check to see if there were storage closets, how large they were, and whether or not the doors were lockable. I would note the location of the classroom, how close to or far from an exit. Then the windows... did they open toward a street, a parking lot, or a courtyard. If it was a courtyard, was it an open courtyard or a closed, locked courtyard. If the classroom was on the second floor, was there a roof that one could step out on, or was it a sheer drop. And I'd check the unique features of the classroom, both for vulnerabilities and strengths.
EVERY TIME I went into a classroom I hadn't been in the day before.
In the early days of active shooter drills, the kids didn't take them seriously. As time went on and more and more mass school shootings happened, the attitude changed. All the kids, even the class clowns, followed the rules and instructions, knowing their lives might one day be spared by staying quiet and hidden.
And they were scared. On two different occasions when I was in the classroom, we had hard lockdowns when a hostile intruder was on campus (once a violent vandal evading police -- don't remember what the second one was), students softly asked questions about their safety. Their fear was palpable. Of course, I told them that the school had plans in place to keep them safe. All they had to do was remain calm, quiet, and follow instructions and they would be fine. And I knew it was a lie. A door lock isn't much of a match for the fire power weilded by today's mass shooters.
But I knew that I and every other teacher, administrator, custodian, office or cafeteria worker would die to protect those children if that's what it took..
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