Tuesday, September 30, 2008
What Is This World Coming To?
I had a PTA meeting tonight on the topic of school safety. I can't believe the drills the kids go through these days. The speakers described the "lockdown" drill. Each teacher locks their classroom door, covers all of the windows, turns off the lights, crowds the kids in the corner and instructs them to be completely silent. We didn't have lockdown drills when I was in school. I guess the closest thing that we did was "duck and cover", the little tune from the 1960s video is going through my head now! Different levels of lockdown are used based on the crisis. Our particular school actually had a low level lockdown last year when a man in the neighborhood locked himself in his house threatening to kill himself. The highest level of lockdown is reserved for a Columbine type incident. It is reassuring that the teachers are able to have the kids in total lockdown within minutes. The scary thing is that elementary school kids have to be exposed to it. The school had a drill last week and Jack didn't even mention it to me. When I asked him about it he acted like it was no big deal. He told me that they just read books in the corner in the dark. When I asked him why they did that he simply told me "it's just a drill mom". I didn't want to scare him so I dropped the subject. What do you think? Should I tell a kindergartener the purpose of the drill?
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3 comments:
Treat it like a sales objection you don't want to cover. Ignore it twice before addressing the problem. It is evidently not a problem for him.
Dad
I wouldn't explain the full meaning behind it. I would just make sure he understands that he needs to be sure to follow the teacher immediately when given instructions in that kind of situation, and let him know it's to keep him safe.
A good teacher will try and make it seem like it's not a big deal. Because, God forbid you did have to have a "real" drill, you don't want 20 kindergartners freaking out. That would just make it harder. I agree with Jaina - just make sure he knows that's an important time to listen to instructions and leave it at that.
I had a time when we had tornadoes spotted in the area and thanks to successful tornado drills the kids were completely calm and cool, which made it so much easier to keep them confined in a small space for an extended period of time!
It IS scary that we have to do stuff like this with kids though.
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