By: Sofia Schafer
A FSPA Fall 2025 Entry
“CODE RED!!! LOCKDOWN, LOCKDOWN, LOCKDOWN!!!” blares from the loudspeakers as every American student is practicing their monthly routine.
Hide, stay silent, and hope it’s just a drill. Or at least that’s what they’re supposed to do. Over 380,00 students have been affected in school shootings and the leading death in children and teenagers are guns. Yet, when you walk into the average classroom during a code red now, kids are on their phones, giggling and talking with their friends, and even taking a quick nap.
Most of the time it is just a drill, but what happens when it’s not?
To the people who have never grown up with this kind of routine, or don’t know a student who has to follow it, it can seem crazy that students can be so casual about something so serious, dystopian even. But the truth is, these students have become so desensitized to the subject of school shootings that it’s no longer viewed as a catastrophic and rare event, but rather
an unfortunate and reoccurring thing.
“Drills are just annoying to me” stated Hannah Teston, a 12th grade student at South Plantation High School.
This really just shows that students don’t take these drills as a serious thing anymore, but rather just another unnecessary inconvenience. These events don’t carry the same emotional weight as they used to. Most people have formed the “it would never happen to me” mindset. Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Sandy hook Elementary, Virgina tech, Columbine High School, Robb Elementary school, just to list a few. Many victims of these events probably thought the same, but it never occurs to people until a school shooting happens 20 minutes away from their own school that they realize: maybe this can happen to me. It can happen to anyone. This is real. Thats when things change. It goes from “That’s so sad” when they hear about another shooting to, “What if that had been me?”. It goes from laughing and giggling with their friends during a code red to all of a sudden subconsciously planning an escape route “just in case”.
“It only really hits me when people shoot up elementary schools because like what they’re just little kids” said Dalia Levy, a 12th grader at South Plantation High School.
And it’s not just the children and teenagers who are affected by this but also parents, teachers, and staff at these schools as well. Parents with children as young as kindergarteners or as old as high school students have had to introduce the subject of school shootings to their kids and discuss different ways to survive in case one occurs to their children, yet they are still left feeling hopeless when they drop their kids off because, who knows what could happen that day? Left feeling scared that they may never get to pick their children up again. Teachers having to hear talk of potentially taking courses on how to protect their students in the event that a shooting occurs or even learning how to operate weapons for self-defense.
Worried not only about their student’s safety, but the safety of their coworkers and themselves. Feeling the immense pressure of being responsible for so many people in the case of a catastrophic event and having to comfort them about it, even when they themselves are terrified.
Staff also carrying the same weight of being responsible for so many people and knowing that in case anything were to happen, they’d have to put the lives of their students first over their own. Knowing that whatever safety precautions they decide the school should take will determine the outcome of a situation like this. Facing the anxiety, stress, and burnout this all causes every single day. Having to feel as if they’re almost taking a risk by just coming to work in the morning.
Most of these students, teachers, parents, and staff have all “gotten used” to this in a way. It’s become a normal part of their routine and now they’re desensitized. Things would become very different in the school system if this wasn’t the new “normal”. First, Schools would have a different emotional and physical atmosphere. Drills can cause stress, fear, and anxiety for everyone involved and without them everyone would feel more secure and mental health issues would decrease heavily. Secondly, more focus would be shifted from security to learning. Drills interrupt instructional time and leave students distracted after. If drills weren’t necessary, this would be avoided. Lastly, architects would be able to make schools more open and not have to
make so many confined and isolated rooms. This would give students the opportunity to learn in more collaborative spaces which would help their education overall.
School shootings are still a major concern in the country and although these code red or otherwise known as lockdown drills were made to help students stay safer, it teaches them to expect the worst. Experts are warning that with these drills being implemented and becoming the new “normal” it ultimately is teaching students one thing: normalizing violence as a part of education.
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