On Friday afternoon, five minutes before afternoon pick-up time, the school was given orders to lock down. A crime was committed a few blocks away; the suspect crashed his car, and ran on foot. Considered armed and dangerous, a massive man hunt went down and the man was last seen near the library 1/2 block from the school.
I was in the middle of one of the most difficult days I’ve had in a while. Working solo for most of the day, I’d already had to negotiate my way through several fights–one of them resulting with a kid elbowing another kid in the back. During the ‘let’s talk it over’ part after the altercation, one of the kids tried to hit and kick the other one (again). I marched his ass to the head of the department and made him sit in her office. The interesting thing about this boy is he only beats up girls; I can’t tell you how many times he’s gotten in trouble for losing control of his body. Needless to say, this combined with his dwindling attention to academics makes it difficult for me to feel sympathy. With the entire lower elementary down one teacher (there was a huge meeting in progress); we let five kindergartens loose on the playground. The kids went crazy, running laps around the playground like caged animals. When we dragged them in, I began the arduous task of getting them to clean up the room. Did I mention there was indoor recess and the kids trashed the place?
I was barking out orders, sending kids to dump garbage, and grab the lunch bin from downstairs, when suddenly another teacher ran in and said, “Did you know there’s a lock down?” Well, my room was so loud I didn’t even hear the announcement. “I’ve never done this before,” I said, helplessly. “Do you have a key? We need to lock the door,” The teacher said. Of course, I didn’t have a key. While the other teacher found a way to lock my door, I yelled, “Everyone on the rug, NOW!” Kids were still wiping down tables and one of them said, “But I’m CLEANING the table!” Lights shut off, my kids and I huddled in a corner out of sight of the windows and doors. Everyone in the room but me had practiced a lock down before so the kids were amicable and willing to get down on the floor. I tried to remember everything I could about the procedure, but the underlying thought I had was, “Oh my God, someone armed with a gun has entered the building.” Leave it to me to think of the worst case scenario. Thank God, the other teacher sat with us while I quietly read five chapters of King Tut Tut. About half way through the lock down the kids started asking questions: “When is it going to be over?” We told them it was probably just a practice drill…thank God they couldn’t tell time. While I sat reading I watched the clock go from 2:40 to 3:05 and I knew it wasn’t a drill. What I didn’t know was that the parents were being evacuated from the parking lot. Parents who were already outside the building were rushed inside and shoved into classrooms while the whole place shut down. Police cars were swarming the area and the security team for our high-profile children was providing information from the parking lot that even the police couldn’t give. In the back of my mind I wondered if any of the security team was going to penetrate the school and find their way into my classroom. (In hindsight, I was probably the safest classroom in the lower elementary).
In the middle of reading out loud one of the kids raised his hand and reported that June, the girl next to him, was about to lose her tooth. June smiled and showed us how she could fold her bottom tooth down horizontally in her mouth. “Yay!” The kids exclaimed, “Can we pull it out? If you lose it you can go to the front desk and get a little plastic tooth necklace to keep it in!” I had to squelch the excitement, “Um, June do you think you could hold off on losing your tooth? I can’t let you go to the office during a lock down.” June smiled and flipped her tooth back into place and the reading of King Tutt Tutt continued. At 3:05, the Art teacher crept through the tiny door that separates my classroom from the class next door. “Five more minutes, “he whispered, giving us no additional information. With total and utter relief, I turned to my kids: Most of them had caught on, and some of them were looking nervous. Several of them had scooted closer and closer to me with every chapter. “Hey guys, did you hear that?” I said, “Only five more minutes…now I want to take a moment and thank you guys for being so brave and so great…a big silent cheer for all of you.” Together we all silently raised our fists and pumped them in the air and whispered, “Yaaaah.”
The announcement came across the intercom, “The lock down is over.” A real cheer erupted from the classroom next door. My kids looked at me, alarmed, as if they had already accessed the brevity of the situation and found it no vocal cheering matter. Immediately several of them ran to the bathroom to relieve nervous bladders. Parents streamed into the classroom with nervous smiles and wide eyes. Many of them herded their kids off quickly, a few of them asked questions…the situation was revealed to us, the man was never apprehended but the ‘area was secure’ according to the police. The kids were very excited; one of them ran up to me and said, “I can’t believe it was a REAL lock down!” “Wanna know a secret?” I knelt down so I was on the kid’s level, “That was my first lock down ever AND it was real.” The kid regarded me with huge eyes as if I was unbelievably brave. I realized that I had been scared, but that during the incident I had found a rock hard place of resilience. Phones were ringing, the place was buzzing, and for some reason I went into cleaning mode. While the Lead Teacher (who had been locked in the Teacher Education Center) fielded questions, I wiped down tables and cleaned up abandoned snacks. It wasn’t until all the kids had been cleared from out of the room that I started crying…it wasn’t because I was in any real danger. It was because of the enormity of what I was protecting: Sixteen children. The reason they were all so incredibly good throughout the ordeal, was because I silently communicated to them a steely promise: There is no way I would let anyone hurt you…we are totally and entirely safe. Once that promise was proven, I fell into an exhausted state. Several teachers, including my boss, surrounded me with words of, “you were great,” “it worked out, the kids had no idea, one of them even claimed this was the ‘best lock down ever,’ ” and “it’s scary but it’s over.” But, I was still shaken. Today my throat hurts, probably from reading King Tutt Tutt in a strained voice for a half hour.