Lockdown! This is Not a Drill!

Monday Musings is a weekly post where I write about whatever is 

currently on my mind.

On Friday morning the school where I teach went into lockdown.  It was easily the most terrifying day of my life.

At 9:40am, class had just begun.  My students were signing into their Chromebooks, and we were joking about what would happen next in our weekly video series, Mi vida loca.

And then it happened.

"This is not a drill.  Lockdown!  Lockdown!"

My mind immediately went blank.  The students were ready.  Our drills had worked.  They knew what to do.  But I had to stop and think.  "Lockdown.  That means the threat is inside the school.  We have to hide from the window in the door."

The lights were already off in the classroom since we were preparing to watch a video, and I always keep the door locked.  There were just a few more steps to complete.  I turned off the projector and my computer screen and directed the students to close their Chromebooks.  We all moved to one side of the classroom and squeezed in tight, hoping to keep ourselves hidden from the small rectangular window in the door.

As I huddled with my students against the wall, I glanced around the room and quickly realized two things: there is nothing even remotely weapon-like in my classroom, and all the water bottles and Chromebooks on the desks made it painfully obvious that people were hiding in that room.  

I was scared.  

My 21 students were scared; some of them were crying, all of them were on social media exchanging messages of love with each other and passing on the latest rumors about what was going on.

"Someone brought a gun to school"

They already knew more than me.  For the first and only time in my life I wished I was part of their group chat on Snapchat.  I felt so lost.  How was I supposed to protect them when I didn't even know what was happening outside our room?

The door shook.  We all stopped breathing for a minute.  Whoever it was moved on down the hallway.  "It was the police," one of my students reported.  He showed me a picture of all the police cars outside the high school.  Three different departments had come to help us.

We stood against that wall for almost two hours before the lockdown ended.  The police took three suspects into custody  No shots were fired.  No one was injured or killed.  In that sense, we were lucky.  

I held it together for the rest of my work day.  Then I went home, took a shower, and cried.  I am not generally an emotional person, but the stress of that day was too much.  I am still happy that there is nothing weapon-like in my classroom; I am happy that we all emerged from the experience unharmed; but I am sad that this now seems to be part of my job description.