This is not a drill.

Today at about 10:00 a.m. we had an announcement at our school that no teacher wants to hear, "We are going into lockdown. This is NOT a drill." Holy crap! The more scary part was that for the first half hour, we didn't know if the threat to cause the lockdown was inside our school, or outside the school in the neighborhood. Turns out there was a sucidal, possibly armed (he wasn't) man in the area and the police were trying to track him down. Things turned out fine and everyone was safe, but it was a pretty scary situation. We were the first school to be put into lockdown, and by the time they apprehended the guy at about 11:20, there were seven other surrounding schools in lockdown also.

After determining that there was not a threat directly within our school, both my students and I breathed a sigh of relief, and then about half of them realized they needed to go to the bathroom. Funny how many more kids have an "emergency" when it is actually unsafe to go out of the classroom. (Because getting to the bathrooms would require students to pass by glass doors to outside, which had not been determined safe.) The upside is that no one in my classroom peed their pants. If you ask my students, the upside may have been that they got to watch two hours of Dr. Suess movies today.

Oh, yeah. Happy Birthday Dr. Suess. Sorry that more pressing matters took over your day at Jordan Hills.

The story as posted on ksl.com.

P.S. I was slightly reprimanded for being on the internet while I should have been "consoling kids." Dude, I wanted to know what was happening too! If only they knew that I was also texting the teacher down the hall with my own personal cell phone, which was on during school hours. He he. I didn't fess up to that one.