Day One Hundred Thirty-One
Well. I don’t think I pissed off The Police Chief, but I definitely pissed off some other people.
If you haven’t been following along at home, today’s a teacher workshop day, and we had to spend it doing ALICE training, which I very much did not want to do. I don’t think traditional lockdowns are good, and I have no problem learning about other options through videos, discussions, etc... I objected to the practical drills- having the PD guys shoot nerf guns at us in mock shooter scenarios- and I object even more stringently to the possibility of doing them with students because there’s no evidence they’re effective and lots of evidence they’re traumatic. I also object to the obscene amount of money going to these “school safety” companies instead of being used to keep school lunches free, or hire more SAPs and counselors, or pretty much anything else. And I’m generally angry that we have to do this rather than actually fixing the brokenness in our society.
But I still showed up at 8:00 and filed into the auditorium with everyone else . Chief and some of his officers (the SRO, Detective T, and Sergeant J) began by showing us the tools they’d use that day (a gun modified to fire blanks, an air horn, the nerf guns) and then spoke about what the police had learned from incidents like Columbine and Sandy Hook, the learning experiences of our lockdown, etc, etc... Then they explained ALICE itself. I suspect The Principal told The Police Chief to anticipate some of the things I’d ask because he was quick to say they’re not endorsing that particular company, we’re not paying for the training, they’re taking their own time to be here, they just want to empower us with more options.
(Spoiler: I’m still not feeling empowered).
When they did pause for questions, I thought to myself, well, now or never, and I asked for proof that ALICE training is effective. The Chief and his officers showed some information about survival rates when students/staff chose to lockdown versus barricade doors or flee, which didn’t quite get at what I was asking since it didn’t tell me what those people were or weren’t trained to do beforehand. Detective T did say that they know it isn’t perfect, and the drills are stressful. One of my colleagues said kids get used to them, and that’s probably true, but someone had to say that they shouldn’t have to (and neither should we). So I said it.
Cue a lot of people, including Sergeant J, getting annoyed and telling me variations on, “This is the world we live in.”
They finished their presentation, opened the floor for questions again, and I put my hand back up. I told Chief I was grateful that he and his officers had come in- I didn’t want their impression to be that I’m not- and that I understood the benefits of learning how to not be a sitting duck, but I still wasn’t convinced of the necessity and efficacy of the practical drills. Detective T said that I would see improvement after the first one, and I cut him off and said it’s still just training, though, and there’s no way to make training realistic enough without it being too dangerous, and all the training in the world didn’t keep the SRO at Parkland from running and hiding. Cue more annoyance directed at me.
Detective T wasn’t annoyed, though. He told me to go through the training and see what I thought afterwards, which wasn’t an unreasonable ask, and I did pull him aside as we were heading out of the auditorium to apologize for being snippy (the apology was accepted). I probably could’ve tried harder to go into the drills with an open mind, but I just couldn’t get the wrongness of having to do them out of my head, and I couldn’t get myself to be less angry. I got more angry, actually, because so many people were treating it like a competition- we’re divided into six groups, let’s see whose group doesn’t get shot!- and that just seemed so messed up to me. So when my group started to discuss “a plan,” I reminded them that there is no planning in a real situation because it’s sudden, so we’re already making the scenario unrealistic. Nobody really talked to me after that, and I guess that’s fair.
And during the debrief, Mr. F told me to knock off my negativity because it wasn’t helpful, which was also fair. But he’s one of my closest friends, so between that and the apparent enthusiasm everyone else was showing- even folks who’d had similar objections to mine just yesterday- I just felt really alone at that point. I went back to my classroom and took a breather, and wondered if it really is just me, if I’m crazy for hating that we had to do this today, and thinking trying to have fun with it is gross, and not wanting to accept “this is the world we live in.”
I came back out for lunch- pizza, courtesy of our administrators- and did what I’d been asked to do: knocked off the negativity. The Police Chief stuck around afterwards for one more round of questions and comments, and the conversation turned towards how to roll this out the students. I thought about asking him one more time to convince me that the practical drills make a significant difference, but I knew people were done with me, at that point, and it wouldn’t actually change any of the decision-making going forward, so I just... took the L.
My cacophonous friends spent the rest of the afternoon playing ball in the hallway, and pushing each other in Mr. F’s desk chair because it’s got awesome wheels. I didn’t want to bring down the mood, so I stayed in my room and did the readings for an online course I’ve got coming up. At least, I did until Mrs. T’s son, who’s got today off from school, of course, burst into my room to hug me and drag me out into the hall for the fun. Can’t say no to a little kid, you know?
At least now it’s the weekend. Time to relax, de-stress, let the adrenaline crash happen, and get on with life.