When you read this you think, somewhere out there there is a lawyer who is drooling:
Staff members of an elementary school [in MURFREESBORO, Tennessee] staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.
As someone who does a lot of programs in schools, I can attest to how kids believe what their teachers tell them. Will the students trust these teachers again? MORE:
The mock attack Thursday night was intended as a learning experience and lasted five minutes during the weeklong trip to a state park, said Scales Elementary School Assistant Principal Don Bartch, who led the trip.
“We got together and discussed what we would have done in a real situation,” he said.
Problem: They could have done this without telling the kids (if the story is true) that this was not a drill but for real.
But parents of the sixth-grade students were outraged..
“The children were in that room in the dark, begging for their lives, because they thought there was someone with a gun after them,” said Brandy Cole, whose son went on the trip.
Prediction: You’ll likely see a lawsuit due to the emotional trauma suffered by one or more students.
Some parents said they were upset by the staff’s poor judgment in light of the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech that left 33 students and professors dead, including the gunman.
And it gets even WORSE:
During the last night of the trip, staff members convinced the 69 students that there was a gunman on the loose. They were told to lie on the floor or hide underneath tables and stay quiet. A teacher, disguised in a hooded sweat shirt, even pulled on a locked door.
Some kids are quite fragile. What is the likely impact on an elementary school kid who for several terrifying minutes is CONVINCED that he/she may die…because her teacher tells her it’s real and there’s someone outside disguised and pulling on the door so it looks real to them?
NOTE: I can attest to the QUALITY of teachers I’ve met (and had). Several weeks ago I was doing a program at a school when a lockdown was ordered. This was after Virginia Tech and police had spotted someone suspicious circling the neighborhood. The teachers and principal told the students in a calm, matter of fact way that they were in lockdown, and in an orderly fashion they filed out of the auditorium to their designated places. The kids knew what lockdown was. The upper grade kids knew about Virginia Tech. No one panicked about being in lockdown because those teachers set the mood.
UPDATE: A story in The Tennessean notes that this was supposed to be a “prank” and that district officials feel the story has been exaggerated and overblown:
Elementary school students on a field trip had been told to expect a “campfire prank” by the teachers, but a tale of a gunman on the loose went too far, the Murfreesboro, Tenn. school system said in a statement.
Sixty-nine sixth-grade students from Scales Elementary were told Thursday during a field trip to Fall Creek Falls that someone was shooting in the park and they should lie on the floor or crawl underneath tables and keep quiet.
And:
The district conceded that the prank crossed the line in light of recent incidents but stated that there were many versions of the story and news coverage of the hoax had been sensationalized.
Several Murfreesboro City Schools board members said Sunday that the phony attack was foolish and an error in judgment.
But they said they trust the director of schools, Marilyn Mathis, to decide what action — if any — should be taken against teachers and an assistant principal who staged the prank.
“I’m not sure punishment is even the right word,” said Nancy Phillips, a board member who knows the assistant principal involved. “I think they need to take the appropriate action, but I don’t think they need to overreact.”
Question: isn’t joking about terrorism and/or impending terrorist attacks something adults know they can’t do (just try fooling around with it on a plane or with a TSA inspector)?What made these folks think that telling elementary school kids they were really under attack by terrorists would be taken by all the kids (and seen by their parents) as a harmless “prank?”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.