Michael: Active Shooter Drills

 Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Lately I’ve been pondering how fortunate I am not to be going back into the teaching profession.

Six months ago, while I was living in Panama, my wife and I decided we wanted to return to the United States. We can’t afford to live in the U.S. without my working full time, or at least working a decent part-time job that included health insurance. So I thought the best way to make that happen would be to obtain a physical education teacher position.

Then last month I received an offer to train for a full time position at a health spa. Following the “bird in the hand” admonition, that’s where I am now. It is work, but nowhere near as demanding as teaching would be and I’m therefore hoping this will work out.

Up until last week I would’ve still considered teaching as a fall back option in case I fail to make the grade during my trial window. But no it wasn’t the school shooting directly that has me x-ing out teaching as fall back option. It was the news I heard this morning of schools undergoing Active Shooter Drills.

This is how the arc of my life has gone as related to school drills. When I was a kid growing up in the 60s every Friday we underwent Nuclear Bomb Drills, which were much like the earthquake drills I would later give as a teacher except they were tipped off by a long and loud pulsing air raid siren.

A few years before I left the teaching profession in 2013 we began “Lockdown Drills”, which I imagine are similar to the “Active Shooter Drills” occurring now but had the fig leaf of being necessary in case the police were chasing someone who happened to hop over the school fence, or some other bizarre random occurrence. Now it’s just the naked truth of the threat of massive death and violence by a well armed assailant.

And no it’s not the miniscule odds of being shot that has ended my thoughts of going back into teaching. It’s the idea that I would be fine with accepting and leading 6 year olds in routinely participating in drills that I never would’ve imagined happening not that long ago, and drills that should not be occurring now.

I wish I could believe that I was the type of person who had the guts to stand at a window, while asking my students to cower under their desks, during these drills as a protest against the absurdity of U.S. society failing to take rational measures to eliminate mass killings and the need for these inane, tragic, pathetic and sad drills.

But I’m not that kind of person. If I did have the guts that would get me fired for being insubordinate and, like many teachers, I couldn’t afford that. So I, as forlorn and philosophically torn as I would be, would almost certainly, just like my students, do as I was told. And that, as my mom use to say, was the straw that broke the camel’s back.