Have a Good Life

We had a lockdown drill today at school and I was nervous that my students would not do well with it, but they managed to do OK, for the most part. There were a couple kids who did not do very well. They were making faces and laughing at each other. It is really frustrating that some kids (and adults, too) think that everything is a joke and that we don't need to be serious about things. Lockdowns are serious business. It is very important to have procedures in place to keep everyone safe if something were to happen...say nothing of the legal implications if something goes horribly wrong. It is really important. One of my professors at BYU-Idaho told a story about how she was shot at in the hall of a high school in Salt Lake City. These things do happen, and it is important to be as prepared as possible for everything. Obviously, there is no way to prepare for every contingency, but it is certainly worth our best effort to prepare for as much as possible without being to overcome by paranoia.

So, I sent one kid down with a referral for goofing off and the other kid I sat and talked to for about ten minutes. The student eventually agreed that he should not let someone else get the blame for something he was as equally to blame for, and he went down to the VP's office with me and fessed up to acting poorly. I sure made sure that he understood his mistake before I let him off the hook. It was a very brave thing to do, though. Too bad he didn't think of it on his own.