Since the start of the school year, there have been more than 70 shootings on campuses across the U.S., according to the K-12 School Shooting Database.
That level of violence is why educators in the U.S. face what feels like an impossible but very American question: How do you prepare kids for the possibility of gun violence at school without traumatizing them?
It’s a question Amy Kujawski, principal of St. Anthony Middle School near Minneapolis, thinks about a lot.
“The biggest, the most important message I can share to my students and my families and my teachers,” Kujawski says. “Schools are really, really safe places.”
It’s likely her school will never have to deal with violence, but she has to prepare the kids anyway.
‘We will emphasize the belonging’
NPR visited Kujawski at the middle school this month during the first of five lockdown drills, mandated by the state. It’s also the first drill since the August mass shooting at nearby Annunciation Catholic School and Church, which led to the deaths of two children.
“It’s terrible. It’s unacceptable. I cannot believe we just carry on. And…we do use different language in positive, affirming ways because of all of that tragedy,” Kujawski says. “We will emphasize the belonging, the safety, the love and care and warmth.”
In Kujawski’s office, there are colorful stickers with breathing exercises, as well as fidget spinners for anxious students.
Pinned on her wall is a sign that reads “Hate is Loud. Love is Strong.”
There’s also a laminated poster that hangs in every room in the building with the school’s safety protocols.
“Look how simple it is,” Kujawski says. “Hold in your room or area. Clear the halls. Secure. Get inside, lock outside of doors. Lockdown. Locks, lights, out of sight.”
The students all know this language, as do the fire and police officers in the area.
Even though statistics show most schools will likely never have to deal with an active shooter, these drills are how American public schools get ready for the worst.
Kujawski and her staff lead with this message.
“Remember, we do this because we want to make sure we feel prepared regardless of any situation that happens,” she says.
‘This is a lockdown drill’
Seventh-grade English teacher Kathleen West looks around the classroom and points out where intruders might see her students if they were prowling the halls or peering in from the outside.
“We want to stay away from that window over by my desk. So if you can see that window, you’re not in a good spot,” West says to her students.
Once everyone is in place, West says: “We just have to kind of sit in this unpleasantness for a little bit.”
The drill is announced over the loudspeaker.
The classrooms go dark. The hallways are quiet.
School staff check the doors to make sure they’re locked. They listen for chatter and peek in windows to see if students are visible.
Minutes later, it’s all over and students go from hiding, back to their regular day.
The drill, West says, is as normal as the Pledge of Allegiance.
“You start in like first grade or something,” says Phoebe Strodel, 12.
Raegan Dunkley, 12, chimes in, saying the drills aren’t scary and if the emergency was real, she knows police would come quickly.
“Thankfully, there’s like a police station right next to our school.”
‘Rehearsing’ for their own deaths
But should these drills be normal?
That’s a question psychologist Jillian Peterson is trying to answer with her research at the Violence Prevention Program at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn.
She says St. Anthony is an example of a school doing these drills in a trauma-informed way.
They prepare the students, allow families to opt out, work with particularly sensitive kids, and debrief afterwards.
“Because even high schoolers will say, you can’t expect me to rehearse for my death and then go back to learning a math assignment,” Peterson says.
But overall, Peterson sees lockdown drills with younger kids as concerning.
“A: The most likely perpetrators are already in the building. B: We’re not totally sure they work,” she says. “C: We don’t really, truly understand what we’re doing to the young kids. We’re just normalizing this type of violence.”
Back at St. Anthony, West is unsettled by how ordinary this has all become.
She started the school year a week after the Annunciation shooting.
“You’re getting me at a really vulnerable time because my brother and sister both send all of their kids to Annunciation. So they were all in the shooting there. And my brother was there. And my brother-in-law there just happened to be at Mass that day,” West says. “So six of my family members were in a mass shooting event this school year.”
She says she wishes the right people would take action to make this stop.
“I don’t think it’s fair, as a school teacher who started out making $30,000 a year and will never make more than $100,000 a year,” West says. “My job should not be to save your child’s life.”
But on this day, during the lockdown drill, she thinks about how she would try to save as many lives as possible.
“I know the statistics don’t bear this out, but it just feels like when not if,” West says. “If I’m lucky, whatever event happens in my 40-year career…if I make it to 40, I’m lucky if the shooting happens at the other end of the building and not where I am.”
The radio version of this story was edited by Adam Bearne.
Transcript:
LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Since the start of the school year in this country, there have already been over 70 shootings on campuses – 70 in just over two months. That’s according to the K-12 School Shooting Database, which tracks these incidents. So here at MORNING EDITION, we’ve been thinking a lot about both the trauma of that violence in a place that’s supposed to be safe – a school – but also about the way we now prepare our kids for the day it might happen to them. That includes parents on our show, like our editor Adam Bearne. His daughter came home from her first week of kindergarten and told him about something she called a construction drill.
CLARA: I don’t know why it’s called a construction drill, ’cause that’s really confusing.
FADEL: Clara was actually talking about a lockdown drill.
CLARA: We had to be really quiet, go under our cubbies, close the doors, and then I got scared ’cause I thought it was real.
FADEL: It wasn’t, but her fear was. So we decided to take you, our listeners, into a school that, like many schools, is trying to prepare the kids without making them feel like a violent incident is inevitable.
Hi.
AMY KUJAWSKI: Hello.
FADEL: I’m Leila.
KUJAWSKI: Hi, Leila. It’s nice to meet you.
FADEL: So nice to meet you.
KUJAWSKI: I’m Amy.
FADEL: That’s Amy Kujawski, the principal of St. Anthony Middle School, which she just calls Sam’s. It’s in a suburb of Minneapolis. And as you can hear, she has that larger-than-life middle school principal energy, and she leads with that positivity, even when things might feel bleak.
KUJAWSKI: We will emphasize the belonging, the safety, the love and care and warmth.
FADEL: On this day, her school is going through the first of five state-mandated lockdown drills, the first since the mass shooting at the Annunciation Catholic School and Church nearby.
How far is Annunciation from here?
KUJAWSKI: Oh, my goodness. It’s close. Yeah. I had staff who had nieces and nephews there, who had friends there. Yeah. Yeah.
FADEL: The walls of Kujawski’s office feature posters with messages you might expect, like, hate is loud; love is strong. But there’s also a laminated sign with the school’s safety protocols, like there is in every room in the building.
KUJAWSKI: Lockdown. Locks, lights, out of sight.
FADEL: All the kids know this language and what to do in a medical emergency, or something much worse. Inside Kathleen West’s classroom, the teacher gets her 12- and 13-year-old students ready for the lockdown drill.
KATHLEEN WEST: We want to stay away from that window over by my desk. So if you can see that window, you’re not in a good spot, and you should come closer this way. Yeah, I think you’re good, Henry, ’cause you can’t see the window from there. So I think that will be good. Yeah. We just have to kind of sit in this unpleasantness for a little bit.
FADEL: When it’s time for the drill, there’s an announcement over the loudspeakers.
UNIDENTIFIED STAFF MEMBER: Can I have your attention, please? This is a lockdown drill. Teachers, please secure your students in your classrooms. This is a lockdown drill. Thank you.
FADEL: The classrooms go dark. The hallways are quiet.
And you’re checking each door to make sure it’s locked?
KUJAWSKI: Yep. And I also give feedback to our teachers if I can see or hear them.
FADEL: That’s Principal Kujawski again. She doesn’t jiggle the door handles too much, so the students don’t think there’s a real intruder. And back in West’s classroom, she quietly reassures the students.
WEST: That’s them checking to make sure that our door is locked.
FADEL: After clearing her floor, Kujawski listens for the other staff checking the rest of the school. Then she speaks into her walkie-talkie.
(SOUNDBITE OF WALKIE-TALKIE BEEPING)
KUJAWSKI: Are we all clear? I think we can call it.
UNIDENTIFIED STAFF MEMBER: Your attention, please. The lockdown drill is all clear. The lockdown drill is all clear.
(CROSSTALK)
FADEL: The school gets loud again as everyone moves on to their next class, and we chat with a couple students.
PHOEBE STRODEL: I’m Phoebe Strodel, and I’m 12 years old.
RAEGAN DUNKLEY: Hello. My name is Raegan Dunkley (ph), and I’m also 12 years old.
FADEL: OK. So describe to me what you just did in this lockdown drill.
PHOEBE: Well, we go, like, up against, like, a wall or a bookshelf or a space where if there were people, like, coming in, they won’t be able to see you through the windows or any, like, spaces, and stuff.
FADEL: But does it make you feel just generally prepared?
RAEGAN: Yes.
FADEL: It does?
RAEGAN: Yeah.
FADEL: Does it scare you at all? Or does it make you feel…
RAEGAN: No, because – well, I mean, it definitely is scary if it’s a real-life situation. But thankfully, there’s, like, a police station right next to our school. So if there were to be a lockdown drill, the police would be here within, like, minutes.
FADEL: So the drills feel normal to you. They’re just part of life. Fire drill…
PHOEBE: Yeah.
FADEL: …Lockdown drill.
PHOEBE: Yeah. You start it in, like, first grade or something because, like, the kindergarteners probably wouldn’t, like, handle it or anyone younger than that.
FADEL: Lockdown drills aren’t all the school is doing to protect its students. The classrooms are locked during lessons. There’s bullet-resistant film on the windows, and the police and fire department nearby know the school’s security protocols. West, the teacher you heard instructing her kids earlier? Well, she’s bothered that this is all so ordinary.
WEST: You’re getting me at a really vulnerable time ’cause my brother and sister both send all of their kids to Annunciation.
FADEL: They do?
WEST: So they were all in the shooting there. And my brother was there, and my brother-in-law were there – just happened to be at Mass that day. So six of my family members were in a mass shooting event this school year. And then the next week, I came back to work here.
FADEL: What was it like to do a lockdown drill after that, knowing…
WEST: Honestly, it’s so normal. You know, the drills are like how we’re legally mandated to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Like, that’s just something that happens.
FADEL: West was a student teacher when Columbine happened over 25 years ago, so she’s always taught in the era of mass shootings at American schools.
WEST: We’ve been through different waves of, like, how to respond and what the drills are going to be. And of course, now I just always think, like, well, the shooters have all been through all these drills.
FADEL: Oh.
WEST: So, like, I just don’t even know, you know, how effective they’re going to be. They’re not going to shoot us when we’re in our classrooms, locked down. They’re going to shoot us when we’re out at the fire drill. The kids are all in the same place, and the teachers are all in the same place. And I’m always thinking, like, OK, how can I save the most lives in this situation, right? And it’s crazy that that’s just part of the job. Like, that’s not why I got into teaching in the first place.
FADEL: Yeah. What do you teach?
WEST: English.
(LAUGHTER)
WEST: I like reading and writing. I don’t really want to teach about, like, how to escape, you know, active shooters at school.
FADEL: Have you seen a change in the way you think about preparing the kids or how…
WEST: Yeah. The drills have changed over time. And I did work at one school where they wouldn’t tell us if it was real or not, which I thought was really cruel and unusual. So the lockdown drill would happen, and the kids would be like, is it real? And I’m like, I don’t know. Listen for the sirens.
FADEL: (Gasping).
WEST: Like, if we hear the sirens, it’s real. If we don’t, then it’s not.
FADEL: Is there anything that you would want to say or talk about when it comes to preparing these kids or the fact that you do have to prepare them?
WEST: Well, I really wish that the right people would take action to make this stop. And I don’t think it’s fair. As a schoolteacher who started out making $30,000 a year, you know, and will never make more than $100,000 a year, like, my job should not be to save your child’s life. I know the statistics don’t bear this out, but it just feels like when, not if. Like, if I’m lucky, whatever event happens in my 40-year career – I’m at year 24. So if I make it to 40 or whatever, I’m lucky if the shooting happens at the other end of the building and not where I am.
(SOUNDBITE OF PHILIP GLASS AND PAUL LEONARD-MORGAN’S “TALES FROM THE LOOP”)
