Teachers trained to fight back

Training

Even though some teachers aren’t in favor of placing guns in classrooms, that doesn’t mean they don’t wish to defend their classes against mass shooters.

Next to the door of every classroom in Ocosta Elementary, there’s a short wooden bat attached to the wall. Installed this year, the purpose is pretty simple, teacher Jackie George explained.

“The bats are there in case we need to hit someone as hard as we can.”

Along with bats, the rooms are equipped with crowbars, which George said are primarily meant for prying things in the case of a tsunami. But teachers are told they may use them for defense, should they need to.

Ocosta Elementary Principal David Dooley, along with the rest of Ocosta School District, received training from Jon Ladines, a consultant from Eastern Washington who specializes in active shooter response training for schools.

Bats are just one tool in a longer list of strategies teachers were given during a day of trainings in September, Dooley said.

“The bat is just one of several ways of defense,” he said. “It’s an instrument that can be used in a short radius, so basically you have a shot against someone coming in.”

The first training didn’t involve actually practicing these classroom defense methods, and was more of an informational session to let teachers know they shouldn’t just hide in the corner and hope a shooter doesn’t enter.

“Knowing that in a shooter scenario, we don’t want to simply be passive victims,” said Dooley. “We don’t want students to sit and wait for a shooter to come into a classroom.”

The trainings are only given to teachers, who are then prepared when a shooter situation occurs. The purpose, Dooley said, was so that students don’t develop a fear of coming to school, while teachers still have an emergency plan should they need it.

“If you go over these scenarios over and over with students, it can have a negative effect on them as well, because they develop a fear of coming to school, and that’s not what we want,” he said. “Schools are still safe places for students, safer than it is driving to school. We want them to focus on learning, but also know that in the worst case scenario we have a plan.”

The next training for Ocosta will be taking place in June after the school year ends.

In recent years, George said conversations about school shooter response have become the norm, but she wishes they weren’t. Overall, she thinks a general effort to improve schools and improve funding is what’s needed.

“We need more help for parents struggling, it doesn’t start in the schools, it starts at home and comes into schools,” she said. “Parents are doing their best, but there’s a lot of help out there that’s lacking because of funding. Kids just need to be heard, and that’s the big problem right now.”

— Louis Krauss