“We are moving to run–hide–fight protocol. This is not a drill”… x2

[two incidents at my school, less than two weeks apart]

Words no teacher wants to hear: “This is a lockdown. This is not a drill. We are moving to run–hide–fight protocol.” 

I said two words to my students: “Let’s go.”

Naturally I have talked with all my classes about what we will do in such a situation. “Run–hide–fight protocol” means that you hide if you can’t run, and you fight if you can’t hide. Running is the best-case scenario, but only if it’s feasible; fighting is the worst-case scenario, only when there is no alternative. This year, every classroom I teach in is near enough to an exit to make running practical—and there are other reasons why I prefer to try to make an exit. Our policy is run.

We were out of the school building in under a minute. As we were exiting the building there was a second announcement, but I couldn’t hear it. This made me second-guess the lockdown, though—so, after directing my students, I turned around to try to ascertain what was going on.

This was, of course, theoretically a mistake, and in principle it might have been my last. Maybe I’m just stupidly optimistic. Maybe I won’t really believe I’m in a live shooter situation until I hear bullets. Or maybe something was off—a random staff member in the hallway who might have heard the second announcement I didn’t and wasn’t acting like a person in a live shooter situation.

In any case, I found a colleague who said he thought the second announcement called off the lockdown, and then a second person confirmed it. When I went out to collect my students, another teacher was already out turning them around. So my students wound up taking their quiz after all, which, all things considered, some of them might have been more anxious about than a live shooter scenario.

So. Anyway. It’s nice to know that my students will do what they’re meant to in a non-drill scenario—and, I mean, it’s nice to know that I can follow my own plan in a non-drill scenario too. Not so great to live in a country where we have to think so much about scenarios like these.

Update: October 30, 2024

Less than two weeks later, a second non-drill lockdown. I immediately took my students out of the school and to a safe distance. In the interim, I had asked administration what to do after evacuating: How would we know if it was another false alarm. I was told: “You’ll know within a minute or two—you’ll hear sirens or you won’t.” Before long we heard sirens.

I started allowing students to call their parents to pick them up or walk home if they were close enough. Meanwhile, police went through the entire school with drawn guns, going door by door to every classroom, which couldn’t have been fun for students sheltering in place.

Eventually the police determined that there was no threat, and students that hadn’t left were allowed to return to school. We went through the motions of class, but I had no more than a few students in any class.

Uncharted territory for the next day or two.