美国国家公共电台 NPR Experts Worry Active Shooter Drills In Schools Could Be Traumatic For Students

 

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

More states are requiring public schools, from elementary to high school, to hold active shooter drills.

JONANN HORN: I am JonAnn Horn, and I am the principal at Brookside Elementary in Nicholasville, Ky. I really struggle with being required to conduct the lockdown drills and how I'm afraid it makes a lot of our students feel. You know, when you have to take 6-year-olds to the cafeteria and have them practice running to a kitchen storage room and hiding quietly, it is really - it's really unsettling.

NADIA ANEBTAWI: My name is Nadia Anebtawi (ph), and I am a preschool teacher. I'd like to think that I would be able to fight a shooter off, but, you know, I was trained to be a teacher, not someone that would protect students from an active shooter. It's not something that's in my job description.

MICHELE GAY: So I am Michele Gay. I'm a former teacher - elementary school teacher - and I'm also the mother of three beautiful girls, one of whom I lost at Sandy Hook School on December 14, 2012. Because we're talking, in a lockdown situation, about the potential threat of human-made violence, it's very different than a natural disaster or a fire disaster or something like that. So it's really, really important that all students and staff, especially those like my girls with some kind of trauma¹ history, know very clearly and in advance that this is a drill.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: As you just heard there, regular lockdowns can upset children and the adults responsible for keeping them safe. It's a tricky² balance many administrators³ face as they try to make sure students and staff are prepared in the event of a school shooting.

Melissa Reeves is the former president of the National Association of School Psychologists, and she joins us now. Welcome.

MELISSA REEVES: Thank you for having me.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So for a lot of people, these drills might seem harmless - right? - telling kids to be quiet, stay calm, what to do during an emergency. But they've actually really changed. What are we seeing in schools? How are these drills enacted⁴?

REEVES: Yeah. What we're starting to see is definitely more of a shift. What more schools are starting to do is to actually simulate what an active shooter situation would be like, which means they're having someone dress up, pretending to be the active shooter. They're actually firing off blanks, or they're actually using rubber bullets in some of the trainings that we have seen, which has some various concern for many of us.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Right. And does it seem like these drills are becoming more prevalent?

REEVES: Yes, it does. And I think part of that is, quite honestly, we have more companies that are seeing especially K-12 and, you know, higher ed school safety as a way to make money. What they are also doing is they are scaring superintendents⁵ and administrators into thinking that they have to have these types of drills in order to be better prepared. I've heard some of them, you know, use the argument, if you don't do these kinds of drills, then everybody's going to freeze, and they're not going to know what to do. And that couldn't be further from the truth.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So what kind of toll⁶ can these drills, as they are at the moment, have on children and on teachers?

REEVES: Well, what you're doing is, you know, you are creating, you know, a sensorial experience, which really heightens all of our senses. And what these drills can really do is potentially trigger either past trauma or trigger such a significant physiological⁷ reaction that it actually ends up scaring the individuals instead of, you know, better preparing them to respond in these kinds of situations. And there's actually examples of where these drills have been done very irresponsibly...

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah.

REEVES: ...And they have traumatized individuals or have actually led to bodily harm.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah. I mean, there have been instances where active shooter drills became too real. At an elementary school in Indiana, teachers were reportedly hit with plastic pellets, leaving welts and bruises⁸. Children have cried in the classroom after them. What is the most effective way to handle these drills? What should be the standard, in your view?

REEVES: What we can do is we can prepare our students and our staff members through lockdown procedures. You know, and that is where you get, you know, behind a locked door, if possible, out of the line of sight. But we can do that in a way for which - first of all, we talk them through, you know, what it means to go into a lockdown and where should we be positioned in that room. And then we can practice that in a very calm manner.

And the analogy that I use is, we don't light a fire in the hallway to practice fire drills. You know, when we're teaching stranger danger, we don't put, you know, a child on a street corner and have someone grab them and scare them. We are able to teach these things through ways where we talk them through it, and then we walk them through it. And they respond accordingly.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Melissa Reeves is an associate professor at Winthrop University and the former president of the National Association of School Psychologists. Thank you very much.

REEVES: Thank you.

1 trauma   

n.外伤，精神创伤

参考例句：

• Counselling is helping him work through this trauma.心理辅导正帮助他面对痛苦。
• The phobia may have its root in a childhood trauma.恐惧症可能源于童年时期的创伤。

2 tricky   

adj.狡猾的，奸诈的；(工作等)棘手的，微妙的

参考例句：

• I'm in a rather tricky position.Can you help me out?我的处境很棘手，你能帮我吗？
• He avoided this tricky question and talked in generalities.他回避了这个非常微妙的问题，只做了个笼统的表述。

3 administrators   

n.管理者( administrator的名词复数 )；有管理（或行政）才能的人；（由遗嘱检验法庭指定的）遗产管理人；奉派暂管主教教区的牧师

参考例句：

• He had administrators under him but took the crucial decisions himself. 他手下有管理人员，但重要的决策仍由他自己来做。 来自辞典例句
• Administrators have their own methods of social intercourse. 办行政的人有他们的社交方式。 来自汉英文学 - 围城

4 enacted   

制定（法律），通过（法案）( enact的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• legislation enacted by parliament 由议会通过的法律
• Outside in the little lobby another scene was begin enacted. 外面的小休息室里又是另一番景象。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

5 superintendents   

警长( superintendent的名词复数 )； （大楼的）管理人； 监管人； （美国）警察局长

参考例句：

• Unlike their New York counterparts, Portland school superintendents welcomed McFarlane. 这一次，地点是在波特兰。
• But superintendents and principals have wide discretion. 但是，地方领导和校长有自由裁量权。

6 toll   

n.过路(桥)费；损失，伤亡人数；v.敲(钟)

参考例句：

• The hailstone took a heavy toll of the crops in our village last night.昨晚那场冰雹损坏了我们村的庄稼。
• The war took a heavy toll of human life.这次战争夺去了许多人的生命。

7 physiological   

adj.生理学的，生理学上的

参考例句：

• He bought a physiological book.他买了一本生理学方面的书。
• Every individual has a physiological requirement for each nutrient.每个人对每种营养成分都有一种生理上的需要。

8 bruises   

n.瘀伤，伤痕，擦伤( bruise的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He was covered with bruises after falling off his bicycle. 他从自行车上摔了下来，摔得浑身伤痕。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The pear had bruises of dark spots. 这个梨子有碰伤的黑斑。 来自《简明英汉词典》