Abstract
This found poem combines a notice of a lockdown drill, my reactions, and my children’s interpretations of the event. Drawing on motherscholarship, the poem expresses my concern as a mother for my children as they experience these drills and my dismay as an educator at how such drills are embedded in our culture. Three perspectives in the poem capture how a regular occurrence impacts students, schools, and communities. This work adds to conversations circulating around the culture of school security, the impact of lockdown drills on both students and families, and serves as a means of mothering activism.
Sitting at my desk writing an annual program report, I noticed the text. Anything that can distract me from the banality of the report is appreciated. But not this text. A text to check our email for an official notification of a planned security drill at the school. No. Just no.
Jumping into my personal email, I read the notice. Nothing earth-shattering, just the first evacuation drill of the year. But then, really, it is earth-shattering. My five-year-old, my youngest, my baby—just lost a large chunk of her childhood innocence. Actively practicing for the terrifying possibility of an armed shooter, a terrorist, a bad guy, coming into the school intent on harm and evil. My seven-year-old will later tell my five-year-old, “it’s ok, we practice these all the time.” Why?! Why do we do this? I reread the email in utter despair.
I am a mother. I am an educator. I am a scholar. I am a motherscholar. According to Matias’s (2022) explanation of motherscholaring, my scholarship and pedagogy are informed by my mothering, while I draw “from [my] activism to inform [my] practice of mothering” (p. 247). This is not the world I want my children to know. This is not school as it is meant to be. Motherscholars reflect on and use their positions to rethink what is just and equitable in education (Matias, 2022). And so, armed with my deep and unending commitment to the holistic care, safety, and well-being of all children, I constructed a found poem that mimics the email using lines from the district’s public website detailing their security procedures, which is then infused with my own thoughts (read: outrage) and my children’s explanation of the security drill that I recorded as we drove to an appointment after school. This poetic juxtaposition (Thomas, 2021) allows us to interpret this event through three distinct lenses to gain a sense of how these drills create a culture of anxiety in schools and communities. This poem was not only a therapeutic way to process this moment as a mother, but a means of scholarly activism as poetry is particularly well-suited for the work of motherscholars (Howard et al., 2020). While these are small, singular moments, the juxtaposition created here offers a brief insight into how young children are interpreting these events and highlights the lasting, emotional impacts these drills may have on both students and their families. As these drills have become so commonplace in our schools, we need to deeply consider what they do to our national school culture and the world we are actively creating for our children.
A Thief in Schools
Footnotes
Author’s Note
I confirm that this manuscript is original and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
