Stocking classrooms isn’t just about having enough pencils and paper anymore.
An Oakland County, Michigan, teacher has shared some alarming but potentially necessary advice with her fellow instructors on a craftier way to combat an active shooter in the classroom.
Her worst-case scenario suggestion went viral on TikTok with 2.1 million views, as other users discussed the dire state of American schools.
Carly Zacharias, a Berkley School District Spanish teacher, shared the video Jan. 3, created with the help of her students.
“Hey teachers! So if you’re just like me you’ve probably been doing a lot of thinking recently about your school safety,” she began. “I just had an idea … feel free to steal it.”
Upon entering her classroom she points to the opposite wall lined with windows.
“I have these big windows along my back wall. My kids know that Plan A is always just to get out of that middle window and run across the street,” she explained.
“But of course Plan B is barricade the door and fight, you all know this,” she says referring to her colleagues in academia.
She points out that the wooden door to her classroom, which can be locked, also features a large glass window pane — allowing an intruder to easily break through.
“So I thought: What can I give every single student just something to prepare themselves?”
Enter: the hockey puck. Zacharias lifts the puck to her camera as she describes why they make the perfect kid-friendly, deterrent. “It can really hurt you, especially 30,” she said, referring to what would happen if 30 regulation pucks — each 6-ounces of solid rubber — were hurled at the shooter at once.
She’s already implemented the protocol in her classroom. Since finding that the new desk accessory was distracting for some students, she also recommended taping the puck to the bottom of their desks, “that way kids can use them if they need them.”
“Obviously it’s just a deterrent, but it definitely makes us feel a little bit better,” she concluded.
The clever, but profoundly disheartening classroom hack was met mostly with lament by those who commented on the clip.
“America is a third world country with a gucci belt,” wrote one critic — with whom nearly 64,000 others agreed.
“The way you said ‘you all know how it is’ scares me,” another said. “In europe i have never had to have a way to defend myself in school.”
And more than 52,000 endorsed one comment referring to other injustices in public education: “Teachers spending their own money so that students have something to throw at shooters. everything is fine.” It’s indeed true that many teachers are forced to use their personal finances on classroom supplies — but never have their shopping lists included defense weapons until recently.
Active shooter drills are now a standard facet of public education for more than 95% of US schools, though some criticize the measure as unnecessarily traumatizing to children. Some schools have even used guns loaded with blanks or pellets to prepare children for an attack.
In 2020, anti-gun group Everytown — formed in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut — observed a 42% hike in feelings of anxiety and stress, and 39% in depression, among those who recently practiced a drill in their school.
“Surprisingly, I’ve seen more kids in my office after lockdown drills and shooting drills than I have from a Columbine or a Parkland shooting,” said New York City child psychologist Joy Levinson in a 2018 interview with The Post.
She added, “The focus should be … on how adults can stop a shooter from getting into the building.”
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