What would you do if your teacher crashed out?
Preparation for Survival
My seventh grade teacher, Miss Zen, had watched 26 children die in a school shooting. She was found doing CPR on their bodies, screaming, “I was supposed to keep you safe.” When she became our teacher, she made us practice hiding silently for hours and ranked us by survivor scores.
Then she dripped red paint on a crying student and said,
“This is what happens to loud children. They leak out and die.”
After the school shooting at the nearby high school, 26 children were shot dead under the care of their math teacher, Miss Scene. She was found performing CPR on dead children, shouting,
“I’m your teacher. I was supposed to keep you safe.”
Two months later, she became our seventh grade teacher. She immediately installed these door stops with her own money. She even created emergency backpacks with first aid supplies.
But by the third week, something shifted. She started flinching every time the intercom crackled on. She pressed herself against the wall and her eyes went wide until the principal finished announcing picture day. Nobody said anything, but everyone was thinking the same thing, PTSD.
She wouldn’t let us use the bathroom during what she called high-risk times, which turned out to be most of the day. She’d search our backpacks and volunteered to organize school shooting escape demonstrations. The real changes started after Thanksgiving break because that’s when she introduced us to the quiet game.
I remember the first time she randomly screamed,
“Threat there’s a threat.”
during a math lesson. Everyone froze before scrambling under their desks. This kid, Michael, started crying because he hit his knee on the metal bar and Miss Zen completely lost it. She made him lie on the floor while she dripped red paint on his shirt, saying,
“This is what happens to loud children. They leak out and die.”
Michael’s mom complained, but the principal just said Miss Zen was keeping us safe. Looking back, the school probably figured that at least Miss Zen was helping them avoid a lawsuit.
She created these survivor scores on the board, ranking us by how quiet and fast we were during drills. I was stuck in the middle at number 15 and hated myself for caring about it. But when you saw how Miss Zen’s face lit up for the top five kids,
“You wanted to be better at being quiet.”
She’d tell us stories about her old students while we hid under our desks.
“Tyler breathed too loud,” she’d whisper.
I’d press my hands against my chest, trying to make it quieter. She made us wear only socks in class because sneakers make fatal sounds.
She covered all the windows with what she called art projects, but were really survival maps showing hiding spots and exit routes. I helped her tape them up one afternoon and noticed my hands were shaking.
Good, she said. Fear keeps you alert.
We had to eat lunch at our desks in our hiding positions because attacks happen during transitions. Every subject became about survival. Math problems were about calculating response times and history lessons were about children who didn’t hide well enough.
I stopped doing homework. What was the point of learning algebra when she kept telling us we probably wouldn’t make it to 8th grade anyway. The week before everything went wrong was when things got really bad.
On Monday, she locked this girl Emma in the supply closet for solo survival practice and forgot about her for 2 hours. I was in the bathroom when they found her, and I’ll never forget how Emma looked when they brought her out. Her face was red and puffy, and she kept whimpering.
I was good. I was quiet over and over. I threw up in the sink. Tuesday, she made us write goodbye letters to our parents so they’d have something if we failed. I wrote, “I love you, Mom and Dad,” about 50 times because I couldn’t think of anything else.
The girl next to me, Katie, just drew pictures of her dog. Wednesday, she showed us actual news footage of school shootings on the Smartboard, pointing out everything the kids did wrong. The kid in front of me wet his pants, and the smell filled the room, but Miss Zene didn’t even notice.
She just kept rewinding the same clip, saying,
“See, he ran wrong.”
Thursday was a full day of silence training where nobody could talk or use the bathroom. Kids were crying silently by lunchtime, but she just nodded approvingly at our proper technique. Friday, she sent home a note saying,
“Next week we’re doing extended drills. Be prepared.”
My mom read it three times at dinner.
Maybe I should call someone.
She kept saying,
“But my dad just shook his head. Miss Zen’s the expert.”
He said. She lived through it.
