Jacob Gebelein
EDU 462
Professor Wigant
7/12/13
Article Review
May 25, 2008 an EF5 tornado came through a town called Parkersburg. This tornado killed several people, injured an estimated 70 people, and destroyed the small town of Parkersburg Iowa. The cleanup had citizens from the football team, Iowa residents, and citizens of other states come to help the travesty that had occurred. (Stegmeir, 2013)The school was destroyed which brought up my question what would have happened if a safe room was inside the school.
A safe room has an endurance to withstand wind gusts of up to 250 mph and resist the impact of a 15-pound 2-by-4 board traveling horizontally at 100 miles per hour. This is an almost perfect place for students to go during a tornado, but only 37 of 1,400 public schools in the state of Iowa have a safe room. Many parents are lobbying for a safe room in many schools, but with the outstanding safety it provides, that safety requires money. Valley High school has gone through renovations at their school, and have installed a safe room that can hold up to 2,200 people inside. Athletic director Brad Rose voiced his opinion of the safe room, “As a parent and as one of the (Valley High School) people in charge of getting kids to a safe place, I know having a safe room makes me feel better.” (Stegmeir, 2013) As a Valley alum I went and visited my former place of education and saw the massive size of the safe room, and I noticed that there are still class rooms and a weight room for students. With this safe room, comes a time when the room is used what to do with managing the students.
Having a safe room is a very satisfying feeling, knowing everyone will be safe from the inclement weather. However when every student is in the safe room, students are not exactly in recess. Even though I have never been in a situation where I was in a safe room, I can only imagine how students would interact with being in a room with nothing to do but stand or sit. At valley going through a safe room drill with over 2,000 standing or sitting students it baffles me how the teachers would handle a drill. I endured an experience during a school lockdown that was not a drill. I can recall this experience very well as I remember it being one of the most boring times I had in school. I vividly remember my teacher turning off the lights and closing the door in a classroom filled with thirty students. The students became restless as many thought it was just another drug dog search throughout the school. Many students started walking towards the door, wanting to leave. My teacher became agitated as she could not tell the students to do homework, as the school made the teachers turns the lights off for safety precautions. Thirty minutes into the lockdown, she lost control of the classroom. After an hour and a half later in the circus we were allowed to leave the classroom. In a situation like the one I endured where you aren’t allowed to do school activates there are not a lot of behavior management strategies to rely upon, other than hoping a teacher student relationship is strong enough to control the kids.
Controlling students is something that is almost relied upon by doing class work. Every school should have a safe room if the budget was not an issue. If Safe rooms or a lockdown are in need, the big picture is the teacher’s job is not to teach anymore, it is to keep the students safe from whatever the need may be.
