Preparing for the Punch

The zen genius that is Mike Tyson once said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” The active intruder response training I went through this morning felt like a whole lot of preparing for that proverbial punch.

An hour and forty-five minutes of lecture and slides from the first trainer happened in our school auditorium from 8-9:45. This was the first day back of the second semester; no chance to greet each other, no time to set goals and come together as a staff. One high school and three middle school’s worth of faculty and staff listened to a career law enforcement officer who also identifies as a “kiddo person” run through the tragedies at other schools.

This run through included audio of the Columbine 911 call, soundless video of the Columbine shooters in the school cafeteria that day, and an interview with a teacher who survived the Sandy Hook shooting. At that point the trainer said there is a special place in hell for people who hurt children. I couldn’t help but think that all of us are someone’s children.

There was a great deal of statement making that their response method—Lock out, Get out, Take out—is more effective than other methods, but no data or statistics were provided to support that. I would have appreciated a more detailed explanation about why this was so exceptional other than the repeated phrase that this method “allows you to participate in your own survival.” From a purely semantic point of view, if I’m doing everything I can to survive—regardless of method—I am participating in my own survival, thank you very much.

At one point, the trainer noted the first school shooting happened in the 1760s and was tied to a Native American attack on a school during a territory war. She used the moment to say “I’m tired of politicians who say ‘we have to do something so this never happens again’ because paying people for Indian scalps didn’t stop this shooting.” That’s a verbatim quote. Hard to name the most problematic piece—the veiled anti-gun reform slam or the decidedly inappropriate co-opting of an 18th century race-based territorial act of violence to advance the company’s training method in 20 effing 23.

The next two hours featured classroom specific training. We learned a variety of ways to barricade from inside and were instructed to reassess the threat in real time to determine the best course of action: Lock out the intruder, Get out of the building, or Take out the intruder.

That third part isn’t hard to understand, but consider the reality of where we are: teachers today were told they need to be ready to harm and if necessary kill a student if that student is a threat to them and to other students. At one point in your job training have you ever been asked to consider killing someone as a part of your potential job duties?

I am glad we had the training. There was some necessary information. But I didn’t appreciate the way the morning presenter repeatedly pointed out all the things the Columbine 911 caller did wrong—it smacked of victim blaming and didn’t strengthen her argument in any way. And I didn’t love the intruder drills that happened this morning that included a man walking into rooms where people were “hiding” and saying “you’re dead” to teachers fulfilling district required PD. It got worse when he was wearing a white Michael Myers style mask and carrying an air soft gun to mimic a fire arm. The mask was, apparently, to deflect the whiffle balls we were handed as our weapons of defense, but a stranger stalking the hallway with a weapon—faux though it was—isn’t more effective with that mask on, he’s only more threatening, and that shit is just not necessary.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that the male trainers — four of them and a leader —huddled together in the back of our high school auditorium and prayed together before their session began. I don’t know how many people saw it, but I was alerted to it by a colleague and was absolutely shocked that the team our district hired—and paid god only knows how much—thought it was appropriate to pray conspicuously within the walls of a public school.

Ultimately my district was right to give us a training on these things. No matter how much it disgusts me, this is the world in which we live. But I’m in no hurry to get to work tomorrow, and I have little optimism or joy about the next semester since my morning began with a four hour reminder that I am—as we were called over and over again—“the true first responders” in these situations.

Funny. I always thought I was just a teacher.

Here’s to all of us preparing for the punch. May we have the strength we need when it comes.