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The Militarized Classroom and Active Shooter Drills are Not the Answer
It is a persistent feature in news reporting in the United States. School shootings are a significant subset of the large number of mass shootings here each year.
Recently, research has pointed out that some of our responses to these shootings are causing harm on their own. Active shooter drills have been shown anecdotally to create trauma and to make children afraid to come to school. The Atlantic article “What are Active-Shooter Drills Doing to our Kids?” explores in-depth the reports of parents, students, and teachers about the immediate and long-term effects of these invasive drills.
In early October 2016 I received a postcard-sized advertisement in my mail at school. This is common. Each week when I was principal I would receive dozens of postcard advertisements, full size color brochures, and catalogs for anything you can imagine that can be marketed to schools. This one stood out. It was for a whiteboard on wheels, for classrooms.
It was bulletproof.
Standing alone in my office, I had to say it all out loud in order to get it to make some sort of sense to me. “A bulletproof whiteboard on wheels. For classrooms.”
The ad implied that with the right purchase, I could save lives. It implied that one of my responsibilities as a school leader was to prepare for the unthinkable…
