Reprinted with permission from Brunswick County Early College High School’s The Firebird Times.
During my freshman year of high school, I was volunteering with a third-grade class. I had worked with these kids all year and had formed a bond with every single one of them. It was a normal day of class. I was walking around helping the students answer the questions on their homework from the previous night.
All of a sudden, the school-wide intercom comes on and the class goes silent. Music starts playing and not the kind of joyful music you hear at a party or a celebration. It was a sort of cold and ominous sound that was blaring from the speakers in all classrooms. At first, I thought maybe someone was playing a prank on us because the school tends to joke a lot with their students. Especially on Fridays when I was volunteering.
Then I looked over at the teacher. Her face dropped and she turned pale. Then I knew something was wrong. The kids were dancing and jumping around to the music because they thought it was a playful joke. They were eight to nine years old so they never really thought anything of it. What else would you expect of them in this kind of situation? They shouldn’t have to worry that their lives may be in danger at school.
I looked over at the teacher again and I knew to take the kids to the corner, turn the lights off, hide and remember not to make a sound. Something I had heard all my life and practiced over and over again throughout schooling. I believed our lives had depended on it. Immediately after I got the kids to stay quiet, they started to realize something was not right and most of them began to cry. Seeing these children so scared about what was going to happen to them when they were just starting life was so hard. Especially when I could do nothing about it but comfort them.
While I comforted the children, the teacher went through protocol and tried to see if other teachers were in lockdown as well. When she was done, she ran to the corner that we were hiding in and began to comfort the kids as well. These children cried their eyes out because they were scared of what would happen next and I was scared too but I couldn’t let them know that.
We sat there in terror with kids huddled together, scared and uncomfortable. The music kept playing over and over again in our ears as if it was replicating a taunt in our faces. Finally, the music stopped and the intercom made sounds again, only this time it was a familiar voice.
We were told we were safe, and that the music was just an accident. That’s what they told the kids. A few minutes later we heard a rumor that the system had been hacked and they were assuming it was a prank from an unknown person.
My friend who was also volunteering was only a few classes down and the kids in that classroom didn’t even hide. They had no idea if this was a serious situation or not, yet they danced around to the music like it was some sort of celebration. In most cases, these kinds of situations are just threats that never result in anything more than a lockdown but in some cases like the Sandy Hook or Columbine attack sadly it is not just a song that plays over the intercom or a prank played by a random humorous person.
The rest of the day I was distraught at the idea of what could have happened and what had happened to kids at other schools who didn’t get to hear that intercom say that they were safe or that it was just an ignorant prank. And the parents that didn’t get to run to their children with open arms when those drills were over because sometimes it is not a prank or a drill or an accident. Sometimes it’s a threat to innocent lives who have everything to look forward to.
One wicked person can stop the life of hundreds from graduating high school and college, from having birthdays celebrated with friends and family, from growing old, from having children, from having grandchildren to experiencing the ups and downs of life.
More than 330,000 children and teens have been through school attacks since the first infamous Columbine attack on April 20, 1999, where the lives of 15 were taken, including the two attackers. The students who attended are still haunted to this day by the horrific event that occurred.
Children live in fear as soon as they step into the doors of their school. At a young age, kids go through drills to prepare for an active shooter and continue these drills to adulthood. Kids should walk into school feeling relief and joy knowing that they are going to learn the ways of the world around them and spend time with their friends but instead, they have to go through drills and tests like soldiers just so that they know how to stay alive when someone wants to take their life from them like it is just a purse a thief can steal in a dark alley.
Hide in the corner of the room with the lights off and don’t make a sound. We tell our kids this as one of the first things they learn in school. Not one plus one, not who was the first president, not how to read. They learn how to fight for their lives at as young as five years old.
The survivors of the Sandy Hook attack in 2012 graduated this year and there were 20 empty seats where those young kids should have been sitting. Sandy Hook is a famous attack but not the only one. Hundreds of seats have been empty in the place of those kids who didn’t make it out of those schools.
The Uvalde school attack is another well-known attack that has left grief all around. This attack occurred in Texas on May 24, 2022, tragically taking the lives of nineteen children and two teachers. The children were stuck in there for over 45 minutes with an active shooter.
As a student at a high school, I am always worried about what could happen. I don’t feel completely safe because there are evil people out there and they are only getting worse. Students and teachers risk their lives every day to either give or receive a simple education. Why is it that to learn we have to learn in fear?
