Lockdown Drills and the Lack of Seriousness

I need to vent. I absolutely hate lockdown drills. As a teacher, I understand why we have them, but I absolutely hate them. This is the world we live in today.

What frustrates me most is how many students treat them like a joke. The snickering, the joking, the complete lack of common sense and empathy. I often find myself wondering, "Would their parents be proud if they saw how their kids act during these drills?"

For me, these drills aren’t hypothetical. I’m both a teacher and a parent, and my daughter survived a school shooting over 10 years ago (years before I got into teaching). She was shot by a classmate and spent months in the ICU recovering from their injuries. She's had 8 additional surgeries to repair damage a single bullet cause to their body. The emotional scars—for both of us—are very real. Every lockdown drill rips that wound open again. Thankfully, she survived, but as you can imagine, that trauma doesn’t just go away. Every time I'm in a lockdown drill or active shooter training I attend, I relive that horrible day.

Usually, drills happen during my prep period, so I’m alone in my room and don’t have to deal with the foolishness. But today, I was asked to sub in another classroom during a drill, and these middle schoolers thought it was the funniest thing ever. The jokes, the laughing—it was infuriating and heartbreaking at the same time.

I’ve tried talking to admin about how these drills affect me and sharing my experience, but I always get the same blank look, like they don’t know what to say—or worse, don’t care. It’s so isolating to feel like no one gets it.

Therapy has helped over the years, but these drills bring up emotions that are hard to process.

Does anyone else feel this way? How do you handle students who don’t take drills seriously? And how do you manage your own feelings when you have personal trauma tied to these events?