Throughout my upbringing in the public school system, the threat of someone entering the school has been drilled into me. Procedures were laid out and practiced once a month. Every time the alarm sounded, a chill fell over the entire classroom. Silently, we would all huddle in the corner of the classroom, as far away from the door and windows as possible and wait until the message was delivered that it was only a drill, and we could resume class.
As of this month, there have been 50 school shootings in America since the beginning of the year. In the last decade, more than 230. Of the school shootings to take place this year, 13 of the 50 have been on college campuses and 37 were at K-12 schools, leaving 24 people dead and at least 66 people injured.
While it is abundantly clear to me that this is without a doubt a crisis that needs to be addressed on the legislative level, this has yet to be accomplished. Still, preschoolers and college students go to school every day with the lingering threat of violence in the air.
Instead of reaching a legislative conclusion to protect our country’s students while they are in the classrooms that are meant to be a safe haven of learning and community, teachers and students are now being encouraged to bulletproof their classrooms. In addition to learning how to read and write, kindergarteners are learning how to deploy their bulletproof desks in a split second to save themselves if they are in imminent danger. Bulletproof backpacks, sweatshirts, clipboards, whiteboards, window shields and even collapsible safe rooms are also on the market for teachers to stock their classrooms with.
Nearly every state in the country is facing a shortage of teachers in at least one subject area or grade level. The U.S. Department of Education defines this shortage of teachers as “unfulfilled positions, positions filled by under-qualified teachers and positions filled by teachers in a different subject than their certification.” On top of that, teachers also face a critical shortage of supplies for their classrooms. Teachers have reported a lack of physical resources and classroom basics like pencils, markers, papers, desks and other technologies, as well as programmatic resources like after school programs, literacy programs and other academic programs. To expect our country’s teachers, whose importance in children’s development cannot be overstated, to provide their students with bulletproof materials when they are struggling to even get them pencils is honestly disgraceful. On top of that, the idea that companies are profiting off of students’ lives being in danger while they are in school trying to learn is also an incredibly jarring thought.
Perhaps the most upsetting part of this is the fact that these bulletproofing measures in the classroom could be what saves a student or teacher’s life. These are marketed to be able to protect “all vital organs” from gunshots, and have been tested against “high-caliber handguns, AR-15s, submachine guns, hand grenades and .308 sniper rifles.”
In all honesty, it is unfathomable to me that anybody could see children being shot and killed in their classrooms and not take every measure possible to prevent this from happening ever again. School shootings should have ended after the very first one. No child should ever have to learn how to turn their desks into a bulletproof shield or have to wear a sweatshirt that will protect them from a gunshot to their stomach. Politicians who claim to care about innocent lives should care about children dying in their classrooms. Our country desperately needs strict gun laws so that no child ever has to go to school fearing that the lockdown drills they’ve been practicing won’t be a drill next time.
mkane10@ramapo.edu
Featured photo courtesy of @ramapocollegenj, Instagram
