The Chinese have a saying that roughly translates to, “May you live in interesting times.” We’ve certainly had that at NRHEG over the past week, with two lockdown situations in two days.
These lockdowns were for very different reasons. However, both were to provide safety for our students. Lockdowns are never fun, but based on all the unfortunate violence in and around schools in the last 15 years, they are necessary.
I’ve seen all manner of blowback online and heard it in person too. One person thought it was dumb to keep kids in the school if there was a threat from within. However, there have been so many situations where someone put a threat inside a building, only to be waiting outside as students poured out of the building. As I told this person, the locked doors and cement blocks will protect us a lot better.
Parents are always concerned; they have a right to be. I was worried, and I was in the same building as my daughter! At least I was able to assure my wife that everything was fine here. Even there, I limited what I told her. I know that goes against my marriage vows, but there’s no need to speculate if I don’t have facts. (Hopefully, this statement doesn’t affect my ability to say Happy Anniversary to Michelle this week!)
Speculation leads to rumors which can lead to slander or worse. It also amps up parent worry. When kids start texting what they think they heard from someone who heard it from someone else in the two minutes between the announcement to go to lockdown and when the lights went off, it can only be bad news.
We’re all human. We gossip. It’s very natural. But as I mentioned in my previous column on the negative aspects of social media, things can get out of hand in a hurry.
Here’s what parents need to know in these situations: There is a potential danger at school, the students are safe, and the proper authorities are doing everything they can to resolve the matter. Outside of that, wait for official information.
That doesn’t help if you’re a parent at home or work when the call goes out. You are going to worry. Still, helping to spread the stories isn’t helpful and might lead to worse situations down the road.
Once the situations were resolved and people had a chance to let all this settle in, I found a sense of anger. The vast majority of our students were mad at having their educational time taken away from them. Sure, some kids relish getting out of class, but most of them would rather be in class than huddled in a corner in the dark for two hours.
Most kids genuinely want to learn. These incidents took away some of that. Teachers expressed anger as well. If someone was trying to get out of class for a while by putting a threat out there, that’s very upsetting. It puts everybody in a panic. If you didn’t want to be in school that day, come down with a case of fakeintitis or something, but leave the rest of us out of it.
I’ve written about parental responsibilities before; here’s another example. Please monitor your children’s social media. Maybe there was some clue from some child that this was going to happen. Check texts, tweets, and statuses. This can help nip things in the bud, since we know that kids always talk about things; privacy means nothing to them.
Dr. Goodwin and Mr. Bunn have done so much work in developing a positive culture in our school, but they seem to have hurdle after hurdle placed in front of them. (Luckily, Mr. Bunn has track experience from high school!) I truly hope we can have a time of normalcy and show them what true Panther Pride is about and just how outstanding our communities can be. Oh, and it would be nice if we didn’t need to hear the word lockdown again until we need to practice for the 2014-2015 school year!
Word of the Week: This week’s word is interminable, which means seeming to be without end, as in, “The wait during the lockdown seemed interminable to students, staff, and parents.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!