Teachers have used the Internet to share tips with colleagues on how to keep their students quiet in the event of a shooting.
The debate erupted after four people were killed Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Georgia. Students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, and teachers Richard Aspinwall and Christina Irimie lost their lives, while eight other students and a teacher were injured and are expected to make full recoveries.
Student Colt Gray, 14, was charged with four counts of murder and appeared in court on Friday.
TikTok user @mrwilliamsprek, a teacher and content creator, received 2.9 million views after sharing his advice on school shootings.
Mr Williams said in his video, titled Lollipops Can’t Stop What Happened at Apalachee High School: “I will never forget what [a] An experienced preschool teacher told me that this is the case. They keep a bag of Dum-Dums in their office and they said, “If we’re hiding and I need the kids to be calm and quiet, I can give them the lollipops and if they eat them, they can’t cry.”
The video has received over 450,000 likes and is flooded with comments from other teachers describing the little, essential things they do in their classrooms to keep their students calm and collected.
Mike Stewart/Associated Press
One commenter said: “I’ve been teaching my kids sign language songs like ‘Follow the Rainbow’ and we’ve been ‘singing’ together during lockdown. It’s both heartwarming and heartbreaking.”
In addition to sharing tips with other teachers, Amelia Sexton, an American Sign Language teacher in Florida, spoke with Newsweek on the practical measures it takes to ensure the safety of its students in the event of an active shooter.
She said: “I have a corner in my classroom that has three metal shelves that we can move to create a barrier if needed.
“I also keep enough textbooks in the classroom so that every child has at least two, and I literally teach them to cover their heads and hearts.”
She added that she encourages her students to feel comfortable coming to her with concerns about bullies or weapons. She has lengthy discussions with her students about their concerns and makes plans with them for if and/or when to raise the alarm about their concerns.
Dougal Brownlie/Associated Press
David Riedman, founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database, has been studying how to reduce school shootings since 2018 after the Parkland High School shooting.
He and a classmate from the Naval Postgraduate School hoped the database could serve as a tool to prevent future incidents by documenting school shootings and developing an understanding of threat assessment.
Riedman told Newsweek: “[We need] “Public education and a standardized reporting system, similar to the principle of ‘see something, say something’ so that anyone who spots ‘red flags’ can easily report them to the police.”
He added: “Fully funded crisis intervention programs in every community [are needed] “helping someone who has risk factors before they decide that violence is their only option.”
