Would I be fast enough?

That’s the thought that ran circles in my head after the news of the school shooting at the Perry Middle and High School campus on Thursday.

A 17-year-old student shot and killed a sixth grader and shot and wounded the high school principal, two other staff members and four other students.

The 17-year-old student took his own life.

I have no desire to opine about gun laws or the frequency of school shootings.

These arguments are left to people with political agendas and social causes.

Nor will I chastise the news media for continuous breathless coverage of the shootings despite there being precious few facts available leading to reports padded with faux or meaningless details from the scene.

All I can do is thank God that I no longer practice that trade full-time and do not have to try to coax strangers to tell me how they feel after a child murdered another child, wounded four more children, and shot a principal.

These days, I think about these kinds of incidents as a teacher.

Our students drill at least twice a year on internal threats, which include active shooter scenarios.

I teach sixth grade. Students joke around during the drills, but there is underlying fear.

The first time I led my students through an internal threat drill, a boy crawled over to me on the floor and asked: “Is this real?”

There was fear in his eyes.

I assured him it was a drill, but I could see how unnerved he was by the thought of this.

Sometimes the school has lockdowns.

This is usually because a student has a medical issue or has lost their composure and it’s just better not to have students in the halls, which can exacerbate an already difficult situation.

We had a lockdown on the day of the Perry shootings.

Someone said something they shouldn’t have said, leading to a police call.

Students were asked to stay in their classrooms for about 20 minutes longer than usual.

It scared many.

The kids had already started to hear sparse details about Perry schools.

The terrible story quickly became even more exaggerated. The numbers of dead and wounded inflated.

The students wildly speculated about the lockdown at our school despite our principal sending home a very well-crafted note detailing the specifics to families and caregivers.

Lockdowns don’t make me edgy. They make me wonder.

I wonder: Will I be fast enough?

If the unthinkable happens, will I get the door locked in time?

Will I get the students to their hiding places or out of the building fast enough?

If the shooter comes to my door, will I move fast enough to get between the gun and the children in my care?

Will I be able to charge the potential killer and sacrifice my life for theirs?

I would.

Sometimes my students drive me batty.

But I would lay down my life for them without hesitation.

I don’t know a teacher who wouldn’t.

Make no mistake: I don’t want to.

But I would.

I think all teachers think about these things on days like the one that just happened in Perry.

They are terrible thoughts, but this is apparently a part of the job for teachers and administrators now.

Society asks us to feed the students, to attend to their social and emotional growth, to entertain them with extracurricular activities, and to help them meet basic needs such as toiletries, clothing, and groceries.

These are all in addition to the challenging task of teaching math, science, reading, and other subjects to young people with minds and bodies changing so quickly each day.

They don’t have a course in teaching school about how to deal with school shootings.

I know it’s rare.

Driving a car is the most dangerous thing most of us do in a day, statistically speaking.

Still, the school shooting problem has hit close to home too much in the last two years. A student was gunned down outside of East High School in 2022 and two others were shot. My friend Will Keeps, who runs an alternative school, was shot and two students were killed in a school shooting in January 2023.

My friend Dana Wingert, the Des Moines police chief, said the disputes once settled with fights now go straight to guns.

There was no real danger at my school on Thursday.

I prayed for the people in Perry.

This will never make sense.

But in my middle school classroom, in the quiet moments between lessons, I thought about it.

Would I be fast enough?

——

Daniel P. Finney wrote for newspapers for 27 years before being laid off in 2020. He teaches middle school English now. Daniel P. Finney wrote for newspapers for 27 years before being laid off in 2020. He teaches middle school English now.