Have you got weapons in your classroom in case of an assailant?

[noblegiraffe]

I just read this thread on twitter asking if teachers have considered what to use as a weapon in their classroom in case of an attack. Teacher after teacher saying they have baseball bats, heavy objects, things to break windows with, throw at a shooter. Teachers planning which cupboards to hide children in, trained to create barricades.

twitter.com/pernilleripp/status/963947498036449280

It’s just heartbreaking. I suppose I’ve idly thought ‘I’d lock the door and get the kids to hide in the far corner’ but this is something that those teachers have to seriously be prepared for. There have been 8 school shootings so far in the US in 2018 and we’re only halfway through February.

Reading that thread and feeling the fear I can see this heading towards the call for teachers to be armed and some teachers wanting that.

Those poor children. Their poor teachers. And how these events affect all teachers and children over there.

Not a teacher but son at a London primary school and yes they have a separate alarm for lockdown and I think they have practiced. The children were told: “The purpose of doing this is to keep us safe in the classroom in case it is not safe to go outside eg. A dangerous dog on the loose.” My child asked me what other situations there might be and I said sometimes people are dangerous. He seemed to accept that.

Lock Down Procedures
In the event of an intruder on site who is believed to be causing a threat to the safety of staff and students, a lockdown procedure should be applied.
A whole school tannoy announcement of Code 1.
On hearing this announcement, the following must be observed by all staff immediately:

• Close all windows and doors
• Lock up
• Out of sight and minimise movement
• Stay silent and avoid drawing attention
• Endure – be aware you may be in lockdown for some time

The School Receptionist should move into the Heads PA office, lock the door and call the police. The Site team should lock all external doors where possible without putting themselves at risk. Individual teachers and teaching assistants should lock classroom doors and windows. The nearest adult should check and lock the entrance/exit doors

This is one of my dcs secondary school lockdown policy - part of a much more exhaustive critical incident policy document.

We have a lockdown procedure, the music in the bells for that is so awful I hope any would be assailant will bugger off to somewhere with a better choice in music.
My only weapon is my sizzling array of sarcasm ( oops sorry forget we are not allowed to be sarcastic, actually the kids quite like it)

We have a lock down alarm (sounds different from the fire alarm) and a lockdown procedure. The students have to drill it once a year. I don’t have any ‘weapons’ though!

No lockdown procedures in my school, S.E England

There's a lockdown procedure at my kids school (small town, secondary school) - they have practices every now & then as with fire alarms.

@Haskell

. I'm guessing if it's a rural school, you're not to likely to have random nutters walking in off the street

Umm, Dunblane?! The only major school shooting of recent times and that caused complete review of gun laws in the UK? Pretty small town back then. Odds may be against it but as someone who was affected by this, I find your post rather ignorant.

We recently had a lockdown due to an incident near our school (thought at the time to be terror related/gun men on the loose)

The children had no idea we were in lockdown as we got the message round for all blinds and windows to be shut and external doors locked as we waited for the all clear from the military and police.

All staff and pupils handled it very well.

All of the schools in our academy chain have a lock down procedure and have a drill every half term. The primary school tell the children it's in case an unfriendly dog is loose in the playground.

It's just as much for practising at school as it is for trying to be as prepared as possible if you are in an incident outside of school, drills help you react instinctively instead of panicking. You lock the doors, close the windows, pull the blinds and get out of sight and be silent and if it wasn't a drill I'm sure we would barricade the doors.

I was thinking about this today. I often idly wonder what I would do if there was a shooting/intruder incident and I'd guess my school is at very low risk of one. It must be terrifying as a US teacher.

There's not a lockdown procedure at my current school, or at any of my previous ones, as far as I know. If there is one, I've never been told about it (and I'm on the extended leadership team so I'd expect to be involved).

My own 'plan' mostly involves gaffer taping the door closed (see pic) and getting strong kids to help me move heavy furniture. I have a large cupboard that I could get about twenty kids into; the other ten would need to shelter under tables.

Absolutely so procedure at the FE college I work in. And we have an ex pupil who is in prison for plotting a terror attack on one of our buildings...

Scarily my DH is a caretaker for a large local college and they have no such procedure that he knows of (and as the guy that locks and opens all of the doors you would think he’d be the one to know)

We don’t have a plan at all. We’d be sitting ducks tbh, we have so many windows and a glass door. Our cupboard is fit to bursting so no hiding in there either!

PrincessHairyMcClary I asked the dc if they did lockdown drills and the youngest responded the same way you did about wild animals in the playground.

Although distressed to learn that they put all the children in the main hall (due to the school being open plan).

It's 18 this year. Not 8.

7 classed as serious. I.e. Fatalities.

In my childrens' schools (not in the UK) they have regular intruder drills where each classroom has a system of barricading the doors and putting the tables together and hiding under them. They also have termly nuclear/chemical leak drills where they seal up all the windows and doors and wee in a bucket in the corner.

When I was a child, I had to do tornado drills. We had to go into the hallways and kneel with our heads on the floor with our hands over our necks.

My sons school (midlands) has a lockdown procedure and practices it.

It was used once when the petrol station opposite was robbed at gunpoint. It was terrifying receiving a generic ‘the school is in lockdown’ text message from them while I was in work.

My children practice lockdown drills in their elementary school in Texas but then they also practiced them in their primary school in the U.K.

The school here is designed so that classroom windows all face an internal corridor and they have curtains ready to whisk closed should a lockdown occur.

The children also all know how to activate the magnetic door lock on their classrooms.

On the other hand, they also have hurricane/tornado drills.

Each room in the school has a red or green label on the door to clearly identify whether it’s safe in extreme weather.

I teach at one of the biggest schools in the country, we have no intruder plan or any guidance as such. There is a panic button in reception but nothing else. Fire drill leaves the whole school standing on the field like sitting ducks. In my classroom there is a blind corner where I would bundle the kids and try to push a bookcase in front of the door. The classroom doors cant be locked from the inside so maybe another teacher would be able to lock us in.

Frankly the best hope we have is that my classroom is on the third floor of a big building and hoping the intruder would be caught before getting to us.

My dc all practice lockdown (uk primary and secondary). Not sure what story they tell them but even the yr3 thinks it is in case of an intruder. The yr6 talks about sniper angles but then her class is getting into hunger games territory.

We have an invacuation protocol which we have practised. No weapons though. That would be unwise in our school.

I work in a 6th form college. We have no intruder plan or lockdown policy that I'm aware of.

DC1 is at a Jewish primary school. We were told that teachers do receive training (I guess on an inset day) on intruder situations so I imagine they’re aware of the risk (there are security guards around the school and in school at all times, intercom entry only, and it looks quite fortress like from the outside, they’re very safety conscious naturally). They have had a lockdown drill where windows and doors are locked, blinds pulled down and children move away from windows/doors (not hiding though), any computers or tablets being used are turned off, you have to be silent and if you’re in the corridor etc you go into the nearest classroom the moment you hear the bells, but that’s it. Not as bad as one of my friend’s experiences - her children go to a school on the other side of London where the children have to learn ‘sleeping lions’, which to my Dc is a game but for her dc is a drill they hide under a desk during lockdown drill which I think is upsetting to think for me as it seems so much more ‘real’.

I know those teachers at that scuooo have definitely received traininh on an active shooter type situation (I don’t know the details about my own dc’s teachers’ training so it might be the same though). Because of that I imagine a lot of teachers at both schools are aware of safety for their classrooms, hiding spaces etc.

I was thinking about this earlier : we were all sent some convoluted email a while back about how a lockdown would involve messages to laptop s(because all teachers are constantly looking at their laptops all lesson...) and this would be practised on a training day. We got no further info and didn't do the practice. Standard.

My school has an enormously porous site so I have made note to speak to union rep.

Just over a week ago DS2's school had intruders. All dealt with though because happily these intruders weren't armed. It would cause panic if it happened next week, though, am guessing.

There was also the whole fad of bomb hoaxes a while back.

The drills don't really achieve much though, do they? The school in Florida had loads of drills. 17 people still lost their lives because the intruder knew the school and pulled the fire alarm . And had an AR-15. Arming teachers and security staff could lead to more deaths and more extreme actions from nay 'shooters' such as bombs.. It's an astonishingly stupid idea.