Kayleigh explains the lockdown procedures for when you’re in the bathroom, and advises listening for things that may be able to help the police — that is, if you survive the “bang, bang, bang” noises coming from the other side of the door.
“If the shooter comes into the room, screaming won’t do anything,” she says flatly. “You have to try and fight back.”
You might be thinking Kayleigh must live somewhere dangerous — where there are active shooters or school shooting threats all the time. But you would be wrong. Kayleigh is just one student out of the 95 percent of public school children across the United States who are forced to practice active shooter drills on a regular basis.
And in more cases than not, the survival training has had to be put into real-life practice, as schools continue to become a growing threat to the safety of our children.
Kayleigh ends her crash-course training session with a song she learned at school to help her and her classmates remember all of the life and death steps they have to take if and when there is an active shooter.
“Our teacher used to sing a song to make it easy to remember. ‘Lockdown lockdown let’s all hide. Lock the doors and stay inside. Crouch on down. Don’t make a sound. And don’t cry or you’ll be found.’”
Growing up in Colorado, I was used to everything from fire drills to tornado drills. It was always something that could happen, but the weight of a fire drill was nothing compared to an active shooter drill. If anything, it was a way to waste 30 minutes of teaching time and get us that much closer to lunch.
But as I advanced in school, active shooter drills became more and more of a reality for us. After all, Columbine High School was just a 15-minute drive from my high school, and the memory of that massacre alone was enough to keep school officials on their toes.
