I’m calling my school out because it happened and I was scared. I had a right to be terrified like I was.
Just recently my school had a fire drill. I sat in AP World History when the familiar, but scary sound started ringing in my ears, making me jump. My teacher looked frantic and confused. My immediate thought was, If anything, teachers are the ones who are supposed to be calm and collected. But he wasn’t, and at first that made me confused. Because we’ve done this for as long as we can remember, most kids immediately got up when they heard the fire drill and headed for the closed door. My teacher, as strictly careful as he was, told everyone to sit down. “Settle” is what he said if we want to get into specifics.
At this moment, for some reason, I still wasn’t scared. I was getting a little nervous though because our teacher scrambled to his computer and looked through his emails. They’re supposed to get emails about these sorts of things. He expressed aloud that there was no email and proceeded to tell remaining standing kids to sit down and, under any circumstances, to not open the door or leave the room.
He himself opened the door though and asked surrounding teachers if this was really a fire drill and was meant to happen. He seemed so frantic to get an answer he shouted, even though the fire drills aren’t even that loud. I still was so confused, the only thing I could think of was, Oh my God we’re gonna fail this fire drill test. He stepped back inside the classroom and assured us we could follow the crowd outside the doors.
We stood outside in a huddle, and then it hit me. It hit me so hard that I could feel my heart beating faster, and my head getting lighter, and my legs wanting to move. I didn’t just realize it, I was afraid of it. The confusion was still there, no doubt, but this time it wasn’t the biggest emotion I was feeling. Fear. Fear was eating up my insides, feeding my adrenaline. The puzzle pieces were falling in place and I knew exactly why my teacher did what he did.
A surprise fire drill, my teacher panicking and checking his emails, and everyone hesitating to go outside. A shooter. To be clear, there was no one there who had ill intentions of doing just that; pulling the fire alarm, watching us all walk outside, and picking us off one by one like a pack of sardines. But the fear was real. The adrenaline was real. School shootings are real.
According to the Center for Homeland Defense and Security at NPS, in 2015 there were 15 school shooting incidents in the United States and in 2018 there were 110. That’s a 633.33% increase. This means that about 9 schools experience having a school shooter every month. In 2015, ten people died and in 2018, the number was 61. This means that in the year of 2018, on average, 1 person would be shot dead every week and about five people every month.
School is a place where I feel safe, it’s honestly the safest place I know to go if anything goes wrong. But, in that moment where I had the worst epiphany any person could have, I realized no school in America is safe. I don’t want to violently die the same place I made friends, joked around, learned, and started growing my future. I don’t want to die or fear gun violence in a place where I have started my future plans.
Some people argue that it’s not their time when laying on their death bed and maybe it’s not, but if you’re sitting in a desk in a classroom at school, it’s definitely NOT your time.
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