I became a teacher within the year after 9/11/01, resolved to tell my students The Truth. In general, that policy has been pretty useful, but it's not that simple.
At some point in my first two years of teaching, though, I found myself in a moment where I was not going to tell my 5th graders what was going on. The intercom announced that the school was on lockdown, as it had been for three weeks while the Beltway Snipers were at large. I kept teaching, but stepped out into the hallway when another adult came by to find out what was going on.
It seemed a call to district headquarters had threatened to detonate bombs in 12 unnamed schools at noon. The district leadership had chosen to respond to this threat by locking all the children in all the schools until after noon. FWIW, they had also send cops around to search classrooms and ask teachers if they had noticed anything unusual. But as soon as I heard this, I said, "I'm not going to tell the students that."
Perhaps I find incompetent leadership more terrifying than terrorists. Well, that leadership has been replaced a couple of times since then. That job was always a hot potato.
Last edited by Beckee; 03/13/12 11:22 AM.
