Behind the Scenes of a Lockdown in a First Grade Classroom

What are our kids really learning at school?

It’s December 14, 2012.

A co-worker is waiting by the entrance.

“Did you hear about the shooting?” she asks me.

I nod.

I hear about the new policies from each fellow teacher I pass in the halls. There’s no time for a staff meeting. It’s all word of mouth for now.

• Everyone needs to be wearing their district-issued photo ID badges on their chest.
• None of the exterior doors are to be unlocked for any reason except for the main doors.
• No visitor is to be allowed to enter the school without prior approval and a pass from the office.
• The gates around the playground are to remain locked at all times. No students or parents may come or go through these gates.

The adults’ faces are pale. I can see the fear in their eyes. I think we never really believed we could be at risk. Middle schools? Maybe. High schools? Definitely. An elementary school? Would someone purposefully murder helpless children?

Yes, it turns out. Our innocent, obnoxious, curious, impudent first graders were not safe from this kind of violence.

One of my co-workers is crying in our literacy department’s workroom. She has a daughter in 6th grade and her son is a 4th grader at our school.

I give her a hug.

“We have to do something,” she says, pulling away and wiping at her nose. “We have to start training school employees to use guns so we can fight back. It’s the only way to fix this.”

I passionately disagree, but I say nothing. I know I am in the minority in this conservative town.

Also, I’m not interested in political debates today. News is going to spread. Kids are going to have questions. Everyone is afraid — or soon will be.

There’s other work to be done right now.

It’s December 17, 2012

Our boss emailed us over the weekend with instructions for the lockdown drill scheduled for today. I know it has to happen, but I’m stunned as I read through it. How are we supposed to pull this off without scaring these students?

I’ll be with my group of first graders when it’s time for the drill. How eerily appropriate. And how unbelievably unfair that I, or any of us, have to subject them to this madness.

Before the drill, I try to explain it in the vaguest of terms.

“You know how we do earthquake and fire drills? We’re gonna do something like that today.”

Of course, they aren’t stupid just because they’re 6 years old. They’ve just spent the whole weekend absorbing whatever news was on the TV at their house and listening to their parents talk about the incident.

“This is so we don’t get killed by a bad guy, right?” Oliver asks. On his face is that strange expression that some kids get when they don’t know whether something is funny or gravely serious.

I take my time in answering. Dammit, why isn’t there an age-appropriate script for this? No, that’s ridiculous. A script would imply that this is a normal situation, just another stage of development in the life of an American child. I suppose that’s true at this point, but I resist the idea of normalizing it with scripts and pamphlets.

Instead, I’m trying to find the right words from my heart — words that won’t tell them too much, won’t scare them unnecessarily, but that will also help them frame this experience as preventative, just until we figure out how to keep this kind of violence from ever coming so near to them again.

“You guys know about stranger danger, right?” I ask.

They nod. Someone is picking his nose. Two girls are giggling, one of them pushing playfully at the other.

“It’s kind of like that. Except that instead of not talking to the stranger…we have to hide. We have to trick the stranger into thinking we aren’t here.”

“Like hide and seek?” Brandi suggests.

I’m required to make sure they understand that this situation is serious, that the danger is real. God forbid a shooter enters the school a week from now and my little first grade literacy group hides, laughs, then jumps out and yells, “Here we are!”

“We do need to hide,” I continue, “but it’s not a game. It’s very serious and we have to stay hidden and quiet until the drill is over.”

Maria is staring up at me with big eyes. I can see she’s afraid. A few other kids look nervous, as well. Some are still making that expression as if they don’t know what they’re supposed to feel. And the one boy is still picking his nose and the two girls are still gently roughhousing and giggling.

“This is so we don’t get killed by a bad guy, right?” Oliver asks.

Principal Anderson’s voice suddenly projects into the room from the PA speaker above the door. “Teachers, please prepare for the lockdown drill. Follow the full procedure outlined in the staff memo. I’m going to visit every single room. Remember, I shouldn’t be able to see anyone when I look through the windows.”

I turn back to the students with a fake smile on my face, then signal to Josie, the classroom assistant, to turn off the lights. In the semi-darkness, I shuffle the kids to the corner of the room behind the desk, furthest from the door. Some of the kids giggle nervously now. Others are totally still, their eyes shifting around the room.

Josie locks the door to our classroom while I close the curtains, making the room even darker. We do this quickly, as instructed — we’re supposed to pretend this is a real scenario, after all — but I try to be nonchalant about it. I don’t want the kids to get caught up in the simulation. The line between reality and pretending can be so thin for a kid that young.

The students who aren’t scared become bored almost immediately and start testing boundaries, sticking a leg out from behind the desk or peeking around it. I hate that I have to scold them, remind them that no, we cannot do that. We have to remain hidden until Principal Anderson tells us it’s okay to come out.

“This is serious,” I remind them. Such a useless thing to say, I know, but I don’t want to use any more detail than that.

“Is someone in the school right now?” Oliver asks, his expression shifting more toward nervousness than uncertainty.

“Is someone gonna shoot us?” Maria pipes in.

Suddenly, the whole room goes quiet, which is what I’d been trying to accomplish…but not like that.

“No one is here,” I say, emphatically. “We are totally safe right now.”

“Then why do we have to hide?” Kaden asks.

I try to explain again, using fire drills as an example.

“But we don’t have to hide for those,” he says.

Again, I try to explain that drills are all different, each one addressing a different type of situation. I can see that my words are only confusing them.

Grace, a diminutive little brunette who always wears longs skirts, gathers up the fabric pooling around her lap and presses it into her face. “He’s here!” she cries. She’s genuinely afraid, I can see, but I don’t understand why. I glance at Josie and she shrugs, also confused.

“Is someone going to shoot us?” Maria asks, again.

Josie tries to calm everyone down as I lean to the side. I realize Grace is just at the edge of the desk and has a better view than I do. Once I move closer to her, I can see Principal Anderson’s shadow at the window of the door. He’s looking inside to see if we’ve hidden well enough.

I know he can probably see Grace, if she saw him, so I try to get her to scoot over, but she’s crying now. “I want my mom!”

“Sweetie, that’s Principal Anderson, okay?” I’m grabbing at her arm, now, even though we’re supposed to be very careful about touching the students. I’m dragging her toward me to get her out of view of the window, and trying to comfort her. “Listen to me, Grace. There’s no one here who’s going to hurt us. It’s just a drill.”

Brandi crawls over, putting her arms around Grace. “It’s just a pretend bad guy,” Brandi whispers to her friend.

I look at Josie again. She looks away.

It’s December 19, 2012

Kids’ memories are short. Thank goodness for that. No one has said anything about the lockdown drill today. With the holiday break coming up, everyone is focused on happier thoughts.

At recess, I notice a woman I’ve never seen standing near the swings. She’s not wearing any visitor ID. I approach her, immediately, but I’m nervous. I know she’s probably a parent, but I’m required to treat her like a suspicious stranger.

“Hi,” I say, an apologetic smile on my face. “Did you check in with the office? I noticed you aren’t wearing a visitor ID.”

“Oh, sorry,” she says. “I had to drop off my daughter’s lunch and the gate was open.”

“You’ll have to go do that now. I’m sorry, but it’s policy.”

“I’m glad you’re being so careful,” the mom says before turning away with a wave.

I pull out my walkie-talkie and start to tell the office that the gate is unlocked and that a parent is heading their way.

“You all should be allowed to carry guns. It would be so much safer if you could defend yourselves and our children,” the mom hollers back to me.

I say nothing, watching her walk away. I’m truly baffled by this perspective that so many parents in my town share. Research suggests their assertions about increased safety are entirely false. Further, I don’t understand how they could be comfortable with the idea of their little ones being surrounded by firearms every day.

When I get home, I see a post on Facebook from my cousin, who lives in my hometown of Los Angeles. It’s a meme that states “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” Then it goes on to say that baseball bats and cars are also deadly weapons in the wrong hands, so if we ban guns, we should ban those, as well.

I don’t usually engage in political arguments. None of us is going to change our minds. We disagree. That’s that.

But I can’t help myself. I know my cousin and her friends will likely never have to sit in a lockdown drill with a bunch of first graders. They have no idea what it’s like. They don’t seem to be thinking about the emotional and psychological ramifications on the children of this country.

I type a comment: “Baseball bats and cars were not invented for the sole purpose of killing people. Guns were.”

I check the next day. And the next. And the next.

She never responds.

© Yael Wolfe 2019