Lockdown Drills and the Physical and Emotional Safety of Our Students and Staff

Introduction

W

hile schools remain the safest place for children, our sense of security has been deeply affected and shaken by recent tragedies and shootings. One of the unfortunate outcomes is the imperative upon schools to conduct lockdown drills in the event of a dangerous intruder.

While the pragmatics of such drills is of parmount importance, it is equally essential that schools consider the psychological impact lockdown drills have on their students and staff. Not unlike fire drills that have been conducted for years, the school must convey a sense of urgency and implant the course of action in the student’s memory without causing any undue panic and fear.

The following are guidelines for schools addressing both the logistical and psychological considerations when implementing lockdown security drills. These are offered as general guidelines that will likely need to be tailored to the specific setting and makeup of your school.

Logistics • Studies indicate that although trainings are contrived, they prompt people to act more responsibly in the event of a true emergency.

• Ensure that all doors have locks with keys or combinations that are accessible at a moment’s notice.

• All windows should have functioning opaque shades.

• Code words for a lockdown are ill advised. Such unfamiliar codes that can be easily forgotten or misunderstood can cause added anxiety and confusion. An unequivocal announcement such as “The school is in lockdown” is clear and prevents any delay or misunderstanding.

• The school must be able to communicate with ALL teachers ALL of the time. There must be adequate speaker systems or planned methods of communication (like walkie talkies) available in every room people occupy. This should include trailers, basements and outside school yards.

• The lockdown drill should be practiced in different environments and at different times of the day over the course of the year, i.e., during lunch time, recess and instruction outside the routine classroom (e.g., resource room, gym, lab, lunchroom).

• After doors and windows are secured, the teacher and children should congregate in the safest and most blocked part of the classroom and remain silent.

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Lockdown Drills and the Physical and Emotional Safety of Our Students and Staff

Logistics continued • The mood during the drill should be serious but devoid of panic. Some children respond to fear with jocularity and rowdiness. Levity should be discouraged, but the potentially imminent presence of danger should not be highlighted.

• It is recommended to have a lockdown practice drill every three months.

• The first lockdown drill of the school year will require the most preparation before the drill and time after the drill to debrief with students and staff. Everyone should be informed of the precise time of the first drill to minimize fear and anxiety and to help everyone get accustomed to the process. The subsequent drills can be without warning and the entire school community and parent body should be made aware of this following the first drill.

• Prior to the first drill, a letter should be disseminated to the parent body explaining the exercise and letting them know when the first one will occur. Parents should be encouraged to properly reinforce the importance of this drill despite the unlikelihood of such an event occurring.

The letter should also include instructions on how to debrief their children following the drill and how to detect any lingering deleterious effects on their child.

We recommend using the three P’s approach: Predict, Permit and Plan.

Predict Let children and staff know what will transpire in a lockdown drill and what kind of personal reactions they should anticipate. Familiarize them with common emotional responses, but with sufficient explanation of individual difference in order that these responses do not emerge merely as a self-fulfilling prophecy. By predicting and anticipating potential responses, the students transition from being passive victims with emotional or visceral responses to active participants with understandable and manageable reactions.

Encourage and allow time for questions.

Permit

• While debriefing, school personnel should focus on any child who has a personal or family history of violent assault or any student with a propensity to anxiety. If that or any child evidences an adverse reaction, have him seen by the school mental health professional. It is estimated that onethird of any population is subject to high levels of anxiety.

• As previously noted, the parent body should be encouraged on the day of the drill to reinforce these messages and observe their children for any untoward response.

• Mental health counselors and/or administrators should meet briefly with staff at the end of the day to review and critique the exercise, as well as to ensure that their own collective and personal equanimity as well as sense of safety have not been compromised.

Although it is unlikely that our Jewish day schools will need to implement a real lockdown, we recognize the vital importance of practice and preparedness with emergency drills.

We hope this document will guide your school in preparing staff and students for this important process. If you have additional questions or would like someone to come to your school to train, consult or advise, please contact Dina Rabhan at rabhan@yu.edu.

• A letter should be sent to the parent body after every subsequent lockdown drill for the reasons enumerated above.

There is no greater sense of comfort than to be validated. Give permission to everyone in your school community to feel afraid, anxious or any emotion that might emerge as a consequence from the drill. School personnel should facilitate student discussion on the psychological impact of this drill. Allow them to admit fear and reassure them that there is no cowardice in being scared but courage in facing and responding responsibly to one’s dreaded anticipation. Moreover, for older children, it can be helpful for adults to acknowledge their own fears and discuss how they cope.

Psychological Preparation

Plan

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• Children in the third grade and younger probably do not need extensive explanations prior to the drill. At this age, they are more inclined to follow the instructions without much consideration of its implications. While children this age can be prepared in a more playful or carefree manner, this should not be done at the expense of clear instruction and precaution. (For a model of such instruction developed in Sderot, Israel, see www.yuschoolpartnership.org/lockdown)

Create a coping plan for the aftermath of the lockdown drills.

After understanding what will take place, encourage students to devise individual coping plans for lingering fear and distress.

Ask children to enumerate what distresses them in general and at least three coping mechanisms that they employ to defuse such concerns. Ideally, the students themselves should devise methods for reclaiming their prior sense of realistic safety and security. Include in your anticipatory planning that many children may have no adverse reaction and that doesn’t connote any type of superiority or inferiority vis-à-vis others.

• Younger children in particular will be attentive to the teachers’ tone of voice, facial expressions and body language as much as the words employed. Teachers should nurture their own levels of composure and certainty before instructing the children.

• Students from fourth grade and up possess a better understanding of the danger and potential catastrophe represented by this drill. They will require more preparation for the drill and a formal debriefing once it is completed.

Debriefing

This publication has been created through the research of:

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DR. JONATHAN FAST

Associate Professor, Wurzweiler School of Social Work, Yeshiva University Author of Ceremonial Violence: The Psychological Explanation for School Rampage Shooting n

DR. DAVID PELCOVITZ

Straus Professor of Psychology and Education Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration, Yeshiva University

• A debriefing in each classroom should immediately follow the drill.

• Reinforce the message that we reside in a predominately safe world populated by a preponderance of law abiding and civil people. The school is a safe setting and the rarity of such violent assault should be emphasized as well.

DR. NORMAN N. BLUMENTHAL

Director of Trauma, Bereavement and Crisis Intervention OHEL Children’s Home and Family Services Educational Director, Bella and Harry Semikha Honors Program and Kollel Elyon Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, Yeshiva University

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DINA RABHAN, LMSW

Director of Recruitment, Placement and Induction The Institute for University-School Partnership, Yeshiva University