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.

Bobbiepin, do you not have a couple of door wedges?

Not a teacher, but a Londoner, and I know that several schools round here have lockdown drills, just like they have fire drills. Plus briefings at assembly about emergency plans including evacuation plans.

I would not want to see reachers with weapons (you need to be well trained, including regular practice, to be safe with weapons). I did notice in the opening post that something was needed to smash windows for alternative exit. All rooms should have this - it's important fire safety.

How do the lock down procedures work with whatever you'd do in a bomb threat?
Yhere were a load of bomb threats to schools a couple of years ago weren't there? Did they ever catch the hoaxes?

I hate to say it but if you're a lonely gunman and you call the school with a bomb threat... What then?

"Check out ‘ school lockdown policies’ and the name of your LEA. See what the advice is."

I just did something similar to this, to see if what I know of some London schools is indeed in line with policy. But my google search term was 'School lockdown London' and there were pages of hits (often from local news sites) about schools which had actually used them usually on police advice because of gun crime or security alert nearby.

@novemberwitch no, nothing. The doors aren't on fire door closers so stay open when left open. It did occur to me that bookshelf in front of the door means its obvious that the classroom has people in. Hopefully this won't be something we have to deal with in the UK.

If a school is invaded during school hours, every classroom is likely to have people in it.
A bookcase delays entry, might put someone off if they are moving quickly through the building and at a pinch it will slow or block a bullet.
Yes, hopefully we will never have to face this in our schools. Or a significant fire. But thinking calmly about what to do is useful, should we be in that situation.

We have a lock down procedure and there is a coded tannoy announcement which sparks it off, rather than an alarm.

We don't practice often as chances are it'll be someone in the school currently who goes on a rampage so we don't actually want the kids to be too au fait with it.

We have to lower the blinds, lock the doors and hide under the tables.

I thought all schools in the UK had to have lock down procedures now? My last school did, although we didn't do drills.

My school has never mentioned it, perhaps I should bring it up after half term.

I have thought of my own plan though which was to barricade the door with heavy tables ( secondary so students could help) and then sit in front of them to add extra weight. Not sure how we would be alerted in time though?

We also had some windows fitted (on the cheap) a few years back . They open about an inch (lovely in the summer) . There is supposed to be one per classroom that somehow magically opens more fully but no one knows how. I was told years ago you have to kick them with force (because I can do that!). We do joke about fires sometimes...

This is all very British..

When I was at secondary school a girl in the year below me became very famous due to being in a big US tv series and some films, we had to have loads of training and drills for if a shooter came as she had death threats online. All pretty useless, getting under a flimsy plywood table isn't going to provide much protection against anything but an air rifle. Apparently we had plain clothes police watching the school for months too. Thankfully never had to be used, in very thankful that I don't live in the US.

I'll admit that I'm more worried about the lack of sprinklers than lack of a lockdown plan. It seems vanishingly unlikely in this country that a disturbed ex-pupil would be able to get his hands on a semi-automatic weapon.

I'm on the second floor and while the safety catches on the windows don't work so we could climb out, there's a massive drop. We'd just have to sit tight.

No but we have a lockdown procedure and I’ve thought about where we’d be safest in the classroom.
So horrible that it’s necessary at all.

We have a lockdown policy. Many of our doors are electronic and can be locked off and each classroom has a heavy lockable door.
We have a fairly secure site (mostly to keep them in rather than keeping people out it seems). I'm sure someone could jump over a fence if they wanted.

DCs school is open plan, no classrooms! Rooms are separated by cupboards and display boards.

God knows how they’d lock down

We do lockdown practise. Alarm sounds differently to fire alarm, we lock classroom door and pull down blinds. Sit it out. Wait until alarm stops to indicate safety.

We are in Australia. Kids school (both high school and previous primary) practices lockdowns. Classroom door is locked, blinds pulled down and hide/shelter as best as possible within room. Funnily it would seem the male teachers keep a bat in their room and seem happy to use it if needed but the female teachers don’t.

I wonder how useful it is though. Any deranged shooter should still have enough sense to either call in a bomb threat or lob in a molotov prior to set off the evacuation alarm so they would have everyone together in a mob to start shooting. Also kids are always out doing sport/pe etc on the oval which is a considerable distance from the nearest classrooms and bounded by a high fence. No cover whatsoever there so no idea where they would go/what they would do in the event of a lockdown given all classrooms, office buildings locked. Also, kids always wandering about to the toilets or going to office for something during class time. What happens to them once the siren sounds and all doors immediately locked I have no idea. Hopefully we will never have to find out but who knows these days.

Yes, the shooter in this case setting off the fire alarm rendered all lockdown procedures useless. The real problem was the type of weapon that he had access to.

I went to a school near a RAF camp during the time of the IRA being very active. We had a credible bomb threat and they evacuated the school. The thing was they didn't sound an alarm or anything they told us the water had gone off so they were sending us home which we all knew wasn't true as we were in the dining hall drinking the water at the time the problem with this approach was whilst it stopped anyone panicking we also felt no real urgency to leave the building and we're all going back to our lockers to collect our bags, wandering round to find our friends to walk home with meanwhile the teachers were getting more and more agitated and then when we did get outside we were met with the bomb squad.

Just seen this news - the DfE are reviewing advice to schools about lockdown procedures following last year's terrorist attacks. At the moment it's up to individual schools.

www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/dfe-reviewing-security-advice-schools-following-terrorist-attacks

I found that Twitter thread very upsetting, as were the posts on an English teaching Facebook group - one of the members teaches in the Florida school affected and described being in her classroom while a colleague across the hall was shot. What was perhaps equally disturbing is the fact that normal posts about resources etc continued around the posts about the tragedy, and teachers talked about lockdown drills so matter of factly - what happened in Florida was a tragedy, but not unexpected or out of the ordinary.

I have thought about what I would do, and plan to ask SLT if we have a lockdown plan after half term. I teach in a very rural school, and I can see the argument that we are perhaps less likely to be targetted, however when I was in sixth form my school was attacked by a deranged former pupil, and it would have been considered a very unlikely target.

Lots of schools here are completely fenced now, at a few inspections OFSTED has pushed it. The secondary I work at wouldn’t be easy to randomly shoot students as there’s only a couple of classrooms near enough to the fence. Breaktimes would be a weak spot though.

I remember when we had the Cumbrian gunman rampage the schools were locked down as far as no playtimes but that was it.

We don’t have any lockdown procedures (will raise with SLT after half term - London secondary!!)
I do know where cans of spray paint (I teach in a workshop) are though, just in case. I also have a wood store with very large planks but in terms of realism, blinding someone temporarily so the kids can escape is probably more realistic than trying to take an armed assailant out. At my last school we had a parent under restraining order enter the premises (visible through my classroom windows) and we had to lock the door, and hide the child and carry on with the lesson so as to not arouse suspicion.
I am going to tell all of my students how glad I am to see them on Monday. I cannot even begin to process how they will move on from such an attack.