Flower Shops Huntersville NC

Huntersville NC Press

Kids' Questions on a Lockdown Planet: Thinking the Parentally Unthinkable

Police Officer Jeff Nowacki watches students depart Huntersville Elementary School in Huntersville, North Carolina, December 18, 2012. (Travis Dove / The New York Times) "What did you do at school today, Seamus?" It's a question I ask him everyday. "Well," my proud preschooler begins, "we did not have a lockdown drill today." And that's about as far as he gets in the art of storytelling. Sometimes I'll get something about "bim" (gym) or how "Bambi" (Jeremy) pinched him during free play. But the thing that preoccupies my precocious three year old every single day he goes to school is the lockdown drill he and his classmates had in their first month of school. At a parent-teacher conference in November, my husband Patrick and I got a fuller picture of this episode from his teacher. When the lockdown began, she says, Seamus and his classmates were in the hall on their way to the library. Amid the clangs, they sought refuge in the gymnasium closet. Eighteen kids and two teachers sitting crisscross applesauce on its floor amid racks of balls... http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/34135-kids-questions-on-a-lockdown-planet-thinking-the-parentally-unthinkable