Topic: Teachers stage fake gunman attack on sixth graders

[Danzik]

Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.

The mock attack Thursday night was intended as a learning experience and lasted five minutes during the weeklong trip to a state park, said Scales Elementary School Assistant Principal Don Bartch, who led the trip.

It's the AP so take it with a grain of salt but,  the lack of good judgment is appalling.
As for the assistant principal and teachers that were in-charge of the camp out, should they be fired?

Source here.

[PatMan33]

It seems to be a bit much...

But I'm not going to fire any teachers.

[Cobra]

To say bad judgment was used seems just wrong as that implies any form of judgment was used.

"Lets go over the with the kids procedure in case of gunman attack."

"No no, that will be boring here give my that toy gun there, not that one the realistic looking one. Now I'll go around pretending to threaten there lives. It will be so cool to scare little kids."

[Slartibartfast]

Let's see . . . my school had fire drills, tornado drills, and, on one occasion, we had a train wreck/chemical spill drill, but never a crazed gunman drill.  Oh, how times change.

[Mr. Wizard]

My school was a bit more sensible, put bolts on all classroom doors and have an emergency lockdown bell. When the Emergency number is dialed into the phone system, it autodials the police station reporting "shots fired on Campus". We had two drills in it, and I think it was pretty sensible.


This is what happens when teachers try to be clever.

[SBD]

This is what happens when teachers try to be clever

Something which the most certainly are not.

This is appalling. I would fire them all on the spot! the vice prinipal should know better, even if the teachers don't.

[Krakow Sam]

Ummm... why?

They were never in any real danger. It pays to be prepared. What's the big problem?
Sure, it was probably traumatising. But you know whats also traumatising? Your friends actually being gunned down.

Almost everyone is jumping on the "OMG dat not rite" bandwagon without providing any reasons why it isnt.

[Daxx]

This is what happens when teachers try to be clever

Something which the most certainly are not.

This is appalling. I would fire them all on the spot! the vice prinipal should know better, even if the teachers don't.

What's the problem? Would you fire them all whenever they had a fire drill?

[Serdun]

We had one of these in our school after Columbine... except we were told that it would happen and that it was just a drill, just like all the fire drills we had. Personally, I think it's a bad idea to have drills for things like this: In the case of a fire, there are clear rules that you can follow to survive, and going through the fire drill routine thinking there's no fire, even when there is one, works just as well as when you know there's a fire. All this excercise will do is decondition the kids to the danger of an actual attack by a gunman; There's no clear-cut, rote way to safety in an attack by a crazed gunman.

[Mate0]

I think they should have told them it was a drill, I mean its kinda inappropriate to be scaring a bunch of kids a few weeks after the massacre at Virginia Tech. Besides as drills go, a crazed gun man
is quite unpredictable compared to a fire or something

[syphonbyte]

I suppose it's a good thing that none of the kids themselves were packing heat.

[B.A.S.]

At first after I read that I thought that was a bad choice on teachers, especially 5th graders but after I did some thinking I see why they did it. After everything thats happened why not have a Gunman Drill, I think back when people thought nukes were going too be launched they did drills in school too "Protect" themselves from the nukes however correct me if im wrong. I personally think it was appropriate although maybe it might be better in highschools than elementary schools.

[Danzik]

Hostile person drills aren't exactly a new thing. 
They're fairly common in hospitals.   
It's also probably not a bad idea to teach kids how to react to situations of this nature.
Although the need to have

The problem being that the children were not alerted that they were going to take part in a drill
and were therefore unaware this was supposed to be a learning exercise.

[Devoid]

This probably didn't teach those kids anything except to be afraid of a gunman, which they probably already were. A drill is much more effective in that you can actually stop and tell them that they should be hiding, or not leaving the room, or whatever. That's what my school did a while back. Everyone knew what to do if it happened, and they never had to scare the crap out of us.

[Danzik]

The school's official response here.

(Afterward)Most of the children stood up and said, "That was a good one." "Yeah, you got me." 
High fives were exchanged.

This seems highly suspect.