Active Shooter Drills - Pre-K and K

[cuplizanggoro]

@overcommer The best way for your kid not to be involved in a “school shooting” is for your kid to not join a gang and sell heroin.

If they abstain from that one practice, their odds of being involved in a “school shooting” drop almost to zero, or at least to such a low statistical likelihood that your kid will have more probable threats to worry about, like being struck by lightning on the walk to school.

 

[coakland]

@cuplizanggoro I appreciated the first guy using citations; do you happen to have any to support your claim? Genuinely curious if that is substantiated in any way other than anecdote…

 

[cuplizanggoro]

@coakland Domestic violence and criminal activity make up 80-88% of all Mass shootings in the US. https://www.hsdl.org/c/abstract/

Escalations of disputes (23 incidents) Drivebys (18 incidents) illegal activity (15 incidents) in 2020-2021 were the 3 most frequent occurrences for school shootings when the motivations were known. 1/3 of all incidences the motivation was unknown. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/a01/violent-deaths-and-shootings

School shootings in general are just not common at all. We are a nation of 330 million people, with 73 million people under the age of 18.

 

[jubida]

@cuplizanggoro IMO them being prevalent enough to warrant drills as young as kindergarten is something worthy of condemnation and great consideration, certainly not to be ignored or downplayed. Such a terrible terrible thing to even comprehend.

 

[sflare]

@anna_jackson From a European standpoint, the fact you need 5 year olds to do active shooter drills is so incredibly fucked up beyond words.

 

[cathyo]

@sflare It’s also fucked from an American standpoint.

 

[armyman84]

@cathyo You guys are a democracy right? Why not do something about it

 

[jubida]

@armyman84 Gerrymandering is a real issue

 

[imsilly]

@sflare It's stunning. So awful for everyone. I feel for the Dad here, and the kids that have to go through this.

 

[jennc03]

@anna_jackson Yes, many elementary schools do safety/lockdown drills. They’re not going around calling them “active shooter” drills, even though the procedure would be used in a situation like that. Yes, it sucks that there’s even a small risk of something like that happening in a school.

These do also get used for other kinds of emergency situations. The principal at my son’s elementary school said they had a lockdown a few years ago when an aggressive dog was loose on the school property, similar to your bear situation. Stuff like severe weather, earthquake, a fire nearby, downed power line, etc. could require kids to “shelter in place”. They should practice that just like they practice emergency evacuation in case of a fire in the building.

 

[katrina2017]

@anna_jackson What a world we live in... Wish I had some advice, but it's really sad this is what we've come to.

 

[sahadul123]

@anna_jackson I did nuclear bomb drills as a kid. I remember thinking "oh ya, this is good info to know. The desk will definitely save me."

It's funny how a kid's mind works.

 

[dynisty]

@sahadul123 I was reading through this thread looking for this....

We have a generation and a half that grew up doing air raid or nuke drills.

And they continue to function as normal people.

Living a prepared life SHOULD lead to less anxiety. Which seems to be apparent in the comments here - parents are freaking out, not the kids.

I work in a high risk occupation. We do A LOT of drills for a variety of disasters that we may be faced with (and I've seen the real things happen), but I don't worry about the events that we drill for....I'm prepared to deal with it.

My family, OTOH, worries about me constantly.

Now, let's all calm down. Like I tell my family.

And I tell myself that when I got the first email that my kid's school was doing a lockdown drill.

 

[extremeboy]

@anna_jackson Yes, our school does active shooter drills. It fucking hurts my heart that my kindergarten and 1st grader have to do this. I'm glad that they try to prepare for this, but it just kills me that this is where we are (US).

 

[brandim]

@extremeboy So maybe one thing you can do is vote for a party wanting gun reform? And cut anyone who votes the other way out of your life.

 

[extremeboy]

@brandim Why do you assume that I don't?

 

[helptheman]

@anna_jackson My son went back to preschool the day of the Covenant School shooting and it was a very stressful day (we're in a different state but it was still stressful to hear about). The next day my wife and I had to try and explain to a 3 year old that when the teacher says to be quiet and turns off the lights, that he needs to listen and that she's doing it to keep him and his classmates safe and protected.

We were holding back tears the whole time, it's not a conversation we should be having. He was actually out of school the day his school had a drill, and I was kind of relieved he didn't have to go through it yet, but IDK what else we can do but try and prepare him. It's gonna be a long road with no change in sight.

 

[gorphean]

@anna_jackson Yeah my daughter calls it the quiet drill. She’s 6 just finished kinder. Not going to lie I took the first day off and I was outside I heard sirens and panicked it was a cad accident by my brain went to the worst.

 

[papilindo]

@anna_jackson Yes, my (going into) 3rd grader has been doing them for 3 years now. We live in tornado alley so they have like 3-4 different drills they do and that’s just one of them.

The tornado drills have actually been more traumatizing to him and it’s the only drill he ever talks about.

His school seems to do a good job of making them feel relatively non-scary.

 

[rme09]

@papilindo We live in the midwest and I did tornado drills growing up along with fire drills. They seemed a little scary at the time, but routine most of the time. One time a fire department brought their simulation trailer to our elementary school and any kids that wanted to practice crawling through it could. It seemed more like an obstacle course game than real-life risk. I guess that our staff did a good job not making a big deal of it as well.

But shooting drills just seem like a whole other level to me. Maybe it's just because it was only introduced to me as a late teen and I only had to actually do them once or twice before I went to college.

I don't know what to think and am terrified for our 4 year old.