Today, schools are paying lip service at best to the first part of that mantra, running. Most schools that train for shooting urge students, teachers, and other staff to shut out or hide from a gunman, but almost never run for their lives if they can. My friend Frank DeAngelis, a retired principal of Columbine High School in Colorado, told me he wished his students and teachers had learned to flee. At Sandy Hook, nine first-graders survived when they were able to escape their classroom, thanks to their brave teacher Victoria Leigh Soto, who was shot and killed standing in front of the killer.
I still have nightmares about details of school shootings where survivors told me they were under their desks hoping against logic that the shooter wouldn’t see them. It’s hard to shake off the images of victims’ bodies huddled under plastic tables, behind fabric walls, or together in a group against a wall.
I remember telling my kids that if someone approached them in a car while they were walking, they should run as fast and as far as possible. But in many school settings, we have wrongly discouraged students from doing their best just to stay alive.
Now my youngest child is a teacher whose high school classroom is at the end of a hallway with a side door to the outside. The classrooms are filled with desks. She knows that killers who attack schools will take advantage of opportunities to find more victims. I share my daughter’s experience not to criticize the actions of educators who respond to deadly situations, but to underline how essential good training is to the survival of teachers and their students.
We are told that the best way to learn is from the mistakes we make. In recent years, according to FBI data, the average number of casualties per active gunman attack has fallen, while the number of attacks has increased. I think this is a reflection of better policing and greater public awareness.
Still, the police are unlikely to be present in the critical early minutes of an attack on a school. In the wake of the heartbreaking tragedy at Uvalde, it’s clear that nearly 10 years after Sandy Hook, we need to ask ourselves if the training designed to protect us from killers in our schools is the training that works.
Katherine Schweit, an FBI special agent who retired in 2017 after 20 years, created and directed the agency’s active shooting program following the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. She is the author of “Stop the Killing.”