The release of the Sandy Hook Promise back to school ad has acted as a chilling reminder of the reality of back to school and what it means for teachers, parents and kids alike.
Schools are no longer what they used to be. Children used to get anxiety about making friends at school. Now they walk into school with the fear of school shootings and when their school will be hit. Parents used to worry about their kids having a good day at school and having a smile on their face at the end of the day. Now, these parents have to wonder if they will even see their kids at the end of the day.
The role schools used to play in the lives of kids has drastically changed. From a place of learning, friendships, self-discovery and what many would call a safe space for kids to grow schools have become a place of fear. Kids have lost their sense of school as a safe place. 6.7% of students skip school out of fear of school shootings. An almost 3 percent increase over the last 20 years. Even more drastic, 57% of teens believe a school shooting can happen at their school.
No longer are fire drills the only drills kids have become accustomed to. The days of getting excited to get out of class for a fire drill are no longer. Schools now run school shooter drills that kids have become accustomed to. Almost too accustomed to. For many student’s it is becoming increasingly difficult to know whether a drill is not a drill this time. It has become to reality for students to expect anything to happen at their own school, as a Texas teen said, “It’s been happening everywhere I always kind of felt like eventually it was going to happen here, too.”
It is clear that schools no longer possess the role in kids lives that they used to. The feeling of being able to go to school and feel safe from the outside world, to feel protected inside the walls of schools and the chance to just be a kid and to grow are gone.
The implications of this are range far and wide. In thinking about safe spaces for kids, home and school would be the first few answers someone may give. Friends houses can still be vulnerable, going out into town doesn’t always offer safey and comfort. Home isn’t a safe place for every kid. So this means that some kids are left with no safe places. And for those that do have a safe place at home, they are left with one true safe place. The effects of this can be psychologically damaging, it can hinder growth, and tamper learning inside and outside of the classroom.
The transformation of schools from a place of learning and opportunity to a place of fear is a transformation that cannot be ignored and must be reversed for the hope of generations to come.
Sources: https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2018/02/28/lost-sense-of-school-as-a-safe.html
6.7% of Students Skip School out of Fear. Worry Over School Shootings Is Up. Yet School Violence Is Down. What Does This Mean?
https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/school-shootings-how-parents-can-cope-their-own-fears-anxieties-ncna908276
https://www.scarymommy.com/school-shootings-homeschool/
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/18/a-majority-of-u-s-teens-fear-a-shooting-could-happen-at-their-school-and-most-parents-share-their-concern/
Excellent post! During my senior year of high school, a woman walking down the street past our school found what she thought was a shotgun in the bushes near the school and immediately called the police. It turned out to be a toy water gun spray painted silver, but for the rest of the day my school was put on lockdown as the police investigated the situation, the next day we had an all school assembly about school safety and gun violence, and multiple times throughout the rest of the school year we started having active shooter drills in addition to our routine fire drills. All because our administration thought, what if it had been real? It felt like our school administration had no faith in the ability of their students to act responsibly in such a situation, saying things like “Thankfully an adult found the gun and not one of the students.” My school’s response was to protect us from ourselves. While thankfully no one was truly put in danger in that situation, I think it speaks to the shifting culture around not being able to feel safe at school. Even 5 years earlier if the same thing had happened, we would not have had nearly as big of a reaction and probably no one at our school would have even heard about the woman finding the water gun until at least the next day because it probably would have been turned into the police with no further involvement with the school. While I do think that school shootings are a problem, the response to the shootings or potential threats of shootings also breeds fear. The level of fear during the lockdown at my school was much higher than it would have been had the school not been so reactive, but seeing all of these school shootings on the news has trained us to respond with extreme caution. I wonder, though, if there is a good balance of being cautious without exaggerating fear or interfering with our education, which is why we go to school in the first place.