There are so many worries that come up when doing a drill at school.  The fire drills we have down.  Everyone leave your stuff; out the door; to the right, out the fire exit door, and down the rickety stairs.  Behind the school, across the yard, and out into the next door field.  Line up. Roll call. Right. Everyone back in through the front door; no shoving; yes, yes, straight back to class, no, not to the bathroom, wait till we are back upstairs and together. Smooth as.  But this year, we tried a few different ones. The first was the scariest.  We had our first Shelter in Place Intruder on Campus drill.

First thing, get all the students out of their desks, back against the far wall – crouching.  Second peek out, if you are able, to see if anyone is trapped in the hall.  Third – make sure the door is locked and secured. Fourth – go to the far wall, and wait with your students.  I turn to them. There they are, knowing it’s a drill, and they are quiet. Eerily quiet. No phones out. Some locking arms.  One of them puts their hand out to me to help me crouch down.  I can see them all.  Our breathing is calm. It is still.

Our “intruder’s” steps are heard approaching the door.  He bangs! Bang! Bang! Bang! The handle jiggles, the door shakes, the pictures on that wall rattle.  He kicks the bottom of the door.  Then all is silent.  His steps move away down the hall.  My students remain quiet, but their eyes have changed; so have mine.  Some have watered. All are wide.  The boy closest to me whispers, “that was really scary, Dr. Flynn.”

“Yes,” I respond, “It was.”

Later my colleague, who played the intruder, will chuckle and say that he wanted us to take it seriously and see how well the students could remain quiet and calm.  Very well it turns out.  But right now, in this moment, I have never felt so protective; so terrified; and so proud.  This is my problem class, the class that can not sit still long enough to hear me finish telling them off.  And here they all sit waiting, together, for the keys to open up our door and give us the all clear.

The second drill occurs a month later – it is a bad weather drill. A tornado watch.  My class, being on the second floor, must leave our stuff, head out our door to the left.  Down the stairs, around the corner to the far back classroom to sit against – as it turns out – a massive glass door leading out into the open area.  We are joined by four other classes in this section down along the corridor.  My students slump against the glass and look at me with shock – “Are they kidding with this? The open area will be the first to go, we’ll get hammered here.”

“Yes,” I respond, “It doesn’t look good, does it?  I will make a note.”

“Perhaps, we could get one of those blast curtains to go up here?” They offer as a possible let’s-not-think-about-what-might-happen-should-a-storm-actually-occur-before-then kind of solution.

“Perhaps.”

The drills are necessary.  And I am glad we have them.  But they really do kick a little when you realize just how helpless we may actually be.  All of these lives here in this one place, all of them looking to you to bring safety and assurance to them.  It’s too much sometimes.  And I think, we need more drills – at lunch; at the end of day; or at the beginning of day when half the staff haven’t arrived yet, but most of the students have.  And these walls are too thin; and the front desk too lax; and and and – I’m not adult enough for this – am I? Is this what being an adult is? Accepting that another human being might walk through these mural-covered halls and start shooting? Accepting that not everyone is going to dodge the flying glass and debris when a tornado rips open our roof? Accepting that sometimes, in schools full of children, no one is really safe?  This is too much.  It is too much.

And all of it – the shooters, and the faulty wiring leading to a fire, and the freak tornado – all of it feels like our fault.  Yet what responsibility do we really take?  When is it enough for us to invest in our schools; in our teachers; in our children? In our futures?  Eegads, I know I sound preachy now, I hear it, I do.  But you haven’t had fourteen fifteen-year-olds look at you with terror in their eyes – looking at you for reassurance that you will protect them even from the fake intruders we organized just for this drill.

Drills are seen as a pain by most.  They interrupt the natural flow of the day; waste time on things we have done a thousand times before; they are repetitive and a little unlikely.  Who knows how it will actually turn out when the bell rings for real? Of course, if you don’t do the drills, then it really is anyone’s guess.  It could have been much smoother if you had just practiced.

This is the same in poetry. Nice segue, no?  There are drills that the writer can practice; in fact, we practice these drills from our earliest days with poetry in the form of acrostics.  One word written vertically on a page.  Each letter of that word begins the line horizontally.  We started out simply with adjectives describing that word, like:

Monumental!
Oh so awesome!
Terrific!
Helpful!
Energetic!
Royal!

Handy in a pinch come Mothering Sunday and you’re a third grader with no allowance. Just saying. Acrostic poems do not have to be one-worded though, a lesson I learned quite recently.  They can expand to imagery and meaning and beauty.  So, let’s give it a go, shall we?

Shelter in Place – Acrostic Form

Down near the ground with my students
Really hearing the reality of the moment
Feeling fearful even in staged events.
Learning not to take for granted the
Youth inside their eyes
Nearing the end of the drill
Noticing just how much they mean.