Posted on 05/13/2007 3:04:17 PM PDT by TornadoAlley3
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. -- 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.
"We got together and discussed what we would have done in a real situation," he said.
But parents of the sixth-grade students were outraged.
"The children were in that room in the dark, begging for their lives, because they thought there was someone with a gun after them," said Brandy Cole, whose son went on the trip.
Some parents said they were upset by the staff's poor judgment in light of the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech that left 33 students and professors dead, including the gunman.
During the last night of the trip, staff members convinced the 69 students that there was a gunman on the loose. They were told to lie on the floor or hide underneath tables and stay quiet. A teacher, disguised in a hooded sweat shirt, even pulled on locked door.
After the lights went out, about 20 kids started to cry, 11-year-old Shay Naylor said.
"I was like, 'Oh My God,' " she said. "At first I thought I was going to die. We flipped out."
Principal Catherine Stephens declined to say whether the staff members involved would face disciplinary action, but said the situation "involved poor judgment."
They are public school teachers/staff. They think the children belong to the State and they are employed to indoctrinate them. They see the parents as their enemies.
Fired at on the spot. Sounds more like it.
Also home to to the dig-your-own diamond National Park.
Ok, this was horrible, but let’s look on the bright side...
Every one of this kids felt what it was like to be told there was a gunman on the loose, and that there was nobody around who could protect them.
They know now what they need to do when they grow up. Protect themselves. And the parents who they tell the story to should get the same message — they can’t protect their children, either from stupid teachers OR gunmen on the loose. And the school can’t protect their kids from gunmen on the loose.
Yeah this pretty much sounds like the worst teaching idea of the year.
Dresden.
But you were told it was a drill—only practice.
This should have been done only as practice for the teachers, with actors as stand-ins for the kids. Performing a “live” test with the seeming intent of instructing elementary kids is asinine.
Well, really! How anyone in a school system could be so stupid to do something like that is beyond me! I would be outraged also if my child had been there. Heck, just what they can see on the news is awful enough without something like that being perpetrated by their own teachers.
What show is that picture from?
So, Otaku6, you are telling me that in the 60’s, there was no 10 MT bomb on a russian rocket?
Huh. I guess the teachers lied.
“Da, Komrad - the potatoes, they stack from here to the foot of God!”
“Komrad, this is the Soviet Union. There is no God.”
“Good, because there are no potatoes, either.”
This is exactly what I envision as a proper response from the students. It's just a simulated execution... really. ;-)
Somehow, tho, I remembered it with the image reversed.
163 posts later...I think you are getting to the real heart of the matter. Why anyone would allow his/her child into a public school anymore I cannot imagine.
I have read dozens of replies on this thread and found no definite “PLAN OF ACTION” against these teachers and school board. Have I missed something?
Students were not taught any way to help themselves.
They were scared for no reason.
The squeaky wheel still gets greased...what can we all do to help these parents. Have they organized and are they asking for support?
If they were told to get on their feet, rush the attacker and fight, this would have been fine with me.
I have several friends who're retired military who have decided to move into the classroom to counter the liberal slop fed our kids. Mostly to counter the liberal doctrine of deliberately teaching kids WHAT to think, rather than HOW to think. For example, after Colombine, the school where I was working at that point had six ex-military. Four were combat arms branched and three of those were Special Forces with all of them having seen extensive combat operations. We agreed that there would be NO Colombines at that school. If we got word there was a "shooter" on campus, we had a rally point at which to meet, form up and find the punks and take them out.
This was a really old school with tons of tight blind corners, nearly impossible to negotiate safely, especially for folks untrained in that art. We reconned the whole school. Knew the choke points, blind spots and hard cover. I never felt the need to keep a firearm in my car, but I knew some of those other guys, did. Had one of them been a chaperon on this field trip, there'd have been one dead "bad guy" on site and he would have fully deserved his fate. I wouldn't have lost a wink of sleep over that.
“Also home to to the dig-your-own diamond National Park.”
That would be the other Mufreesboro, in Arkansas.
No we didnt find a diamond but did find some pretty quartz crystals at Mount Ida.
These teachers are nuts and should not have a job Monday.
Included after their initial “fake” report, the teachers should have conducted weapon handling and firing techniques for the kids. That way, if they were able to find a weapon from a dead security guard, they could protect themselves. Or even how to use other tools to kill the terrorist.
All with the parents permission, of course.
But I don’t think that would be part of the curriculum. The teachers would rather the students lay cowering on the floor crying and being quiet, rather than defend themselves. What a bunch of doofballs.
If it happened to my kid, I think I would break into one of these teachers homes in the middle of the night, tie them up and threaten them with their life, maybe choke hold them a bit, and then say it was all in fun, and hoped she/he learned something from it. I would then force them to buy some candy from me and say its for a school field trip.
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