Former teacher still has nightmares about the reality behind school shooter drills: 'We wouldn't be OK' - Iowa Capital Dispatch

I am a former 4th-grade teacher. I taught in a small town in Iowa. My school was built with an open-space concept, and housed grades pre-K through 4th, with three sections of each grade after pre-K. The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade classrooms were all built following the “open-space” concept.

According to Wikipedia, in “the open-space school concept … the physical walls separating classrooms were removed to promote movement across class areas by teachers.” This model was implemented in the U.S. in the 1960s.

In my school, the open-space concept meant eight classrooms, each with at least 23 students, were open on at least one side around the central media center. That’s at least 184 children with no doors to lock, no real walls to shelter behind, if someone with all-too-easy access to a gun chose our school.

We had the active shooter drills that every school has these days, though I don’t recall if that’s the terminology we used to describe them.

My 4th-grade students were fully aware of what these drills meant. There was no real place in our classroom to hide 23-25 students (plus staff). No closet. No solid wall with a locked door. And my students knew. They knew exactly what that meant for them — for us — if our school was attacked.

I will never forget the question one of my students asked me after one of our lockdown drills. The almost resigned way in which she asked, “Miss Lauer, we don’t have a door. If this was real, we wouldn’t be O.K., would we?”

How do you answer a question like that? How do you tell a room full of 9-year-olds that their classroom really isn’t safe? That, if this were real, they wouldn’t be O.K.?
I don’t recall my answer. I’m sure I attempted to reassure my kids. That I told them I would do everything in my power to keep them safe. That I loved them.
I do remember the heartbreak of knowing that this child was absolutely correct. I vividly remember my decision that, if our school was ever targeted, I would not expect my kids to try to hide under my table in the dark. I knew, deep in my core, that I couldn’t live with that risk.

I remember walking my classroom after school that day, looking at the window. Realizing that it was large enough and close enough to the ground that my students could get out through it. That maybe, if I was incredibly lucky, I would be able to buy them enough time to leave through that window. That it would be infinitely better to risk my job by breaking protocol — in order to save my kids — than it would be for me to follow procedures and pray to a god I don’t believe in that my children would be safe as we huddled in a corner, waiting.

I am no longer a practicing teacher. My health — physical, mental, emotional — ended that dream for me years ago. Though I am no longer in a position in which these choices could be necessary, I haven’t escaped the nightmares that come after every school shooting. I doubt I ever will.

Our children deserve to grow up in a world without the fear of gun violence. For many students, school may be the one place they feel safe – and it should be safe. Students shouldn’t have to fear for their lives. Ever. They shouldn’t have to ask their teachers if they would be O.K. “if this were real,” all the while knowing that the real answer is “no,” regardless of whatever reassurances their teacher tries to give.

The real answer will always be “no” until our country’s leaders decide they care more about children than they do about easy access to guns. The real answer will always be “no” until the people in our country realize that their right to recreational gun ownership is so incredibly less important than our children’s right to grow up and to go to school without fear.

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May 29, 2022 at 10:04PM
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Former teacher still has nightmares about the reality behind school shooter drills: 'We wouldn't be OK' - Iowa Capital Dispatch
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