Saturday, April 27, 2013

I'M KINDA FREAKED OUT A LITTLE....

So I'm not supposed to be talking about this on social media, but this is not really social media, is it? Ok, so maybe it kinda is,but I won't say anything if you won't. Anyway, I was at lunch the other day, together with a bunch of other ladies in the teachers' lounge (aka Dante's Inferno), when a 'code blu' alert came over the PA system. A code blue can be pretty much anything from an intruder on campus to an asteroid hitting us at any time, so we're all supposed to run to our rooms and grab as many kids as we can on the way. We all did just that, but my room is not in the main building, actually it is out in the back 40, so by the time I got there, there were only a few kids left in the yard and I scurried them into my room, locked the door and turned off the lights. There we waited, the kids were under the desks, in absolute quiet (I was totally shocked, apparently they DO know how to do this..). It went on for a while and I started texting some of my colleagues and my husband to see if anybody knew what the heck was going on. My friend in the main building told me that fully armed sheriff deputies had just stormed her room and searched it from top to bottom, not a good sign.

I looked outside the only windows I have, which looks to the quad and yard area and I did see a team of SWAT looking cops, complete with automatic rifles and other assorted, large weapons . They swept my room and all the other ones, along wit the rest of the school. The whole thing took the remainder of the day ( oh darn...), then we had to dismiss the kids by grade level and accompany them to the gate so the parents wouldn't trample each other and make things even worse. After everybody left, we got debriefed by the sheriff who told us that somebody had called the station and left an anonymous tip that there was a shooter in the school. Obviously, they treated it as a serious call, even thought it turned out to be a hoax.

Thankfully, nobody got hurt and nobody was in any harm, but it kinda did freak me out. Not in a omgIdontwantodietoday way, I din't get hysterical or uncontrollably scared while I was in the room with the kids, (I heard one sub first called her mom,then the police, then broke down crying...) but it did make me think. 
When I went to school, we had a few 'bomb scares', which meant somebody called the school and said there was a bomb. We always took it as a joke, we'd go out of the building, somebody would do a cursory search and then we'd go back to class. The whole thing was treated as an inconvenience rather than a serious threat. We would mill around the front gate until somebody came out to tell us to go back in. I know those were different times and a different country, but things sure have changed, and not for the better I'm afraid. The next day I was talking to my homeroom kids about it (we were told to do so), and the scary thing was that they too thought it was dangerous and they thought it was real, which is a miracle in itself, because eight graders don't take anything for serious except their own drama. I think it's sad that people are so crazy anymore that kids can't even feel safe at school anymore. Between shooters and bullying out of this world, high stakes testing and b.s. like there's no tomorrow, I'd hate to be a kid right now!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

8 comments:

  1. I'm glad it was a false alarm and that you are all safe!

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  2. As aggravating as it is, I'm glad it turned out to be a hoax. That's a scary situation to be in. I was fortunate that I went to school in a rural area, so we didn't have bomb scares or anything. I do remember we had a couple kids bring weapons (one a knife and another a gun), and security measures were tightened some, but nothing that ever shut the school down. It is a scary time to go to school, and that is just plain sad. Glad you're all okay.

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  3. It IS a scary time to be a kid!!

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  4. Holy crap. I'd be scared as a teacher or as a student. Seven years ago when we moved to this rural area, there were multiple bomb threats. It doesn't matter where you live, shit can happen.

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  5. The same thing happened here a year or so ago. My daughter's school was in lockdown for 2 or 3 hours because they thought someone was in the school. She didn't get lunch that day because they were allowing students to go one at a time to the lunch room to get their food and bring it back. She takes her lunch and couldn't go to her locker.
    After Newtown, they put in cameras and keep all the doors locked.

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  6. It is definitely a freaky feeling during one of these. We had a real episode a few years ago but even during the drills, I get a freaky feeling inside. I never let the kids see this, like you say- you have to keep it together for their sakes- but it's there. I don't like it either.

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  7. That is truly horrifying. As you said, I remember a time when a bomb threat was everybody filing out back, someone doing a quick sweep of the school, and then everybody heading back in, most likely a call by some prankster. I couldn't imagine being a little kid and seeing a SWAT team put my school on lockdown.

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  8. I can see why you were freaked. I would have been too. Times have changed.

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