Oh, Hey, I'm Really Here!

I know my postings have been a tad...um...sketchy lately, mostly because I've been off my normal schedule. Buzz's car has been in the shop so I've been playing chauffeur to him...I've been hitting the gym for double workouts and this week I've been attending workshops at the local college in preparation of returning to teaching in a week or so. So yeah, very busy...that's me!

Yesterday's session "Orientation for New Employees" was a bit of a melange of topics - everything from benefits offered (only to full time employees - oops, not me) to results from the employee engagement survey (only full time employees get to take this survey, again, not me) to ISO Quality 9001: 2008. I nodded off through this session...it was something about ensuring the institution maintains their "quality" rating. Frankly, after being told earlier in the week that a student's "effort" was good enough to get a passing grade (but you know, no real requirement for ACTUALLY getting the work right) I really didn't think the college had a lot of credibility in the "quality" department.

So, I spent the day sort of half-listening to a bunch of topics that had little or nothing to do with my employment. And just when I thought the day had been a total waste of my time, the guy that heads up the Facilities department took the stage and began talking about "Lockdown." Holy shit..."Lockdown." Like Columbine lockdown. Like Virginia Tech lockdown. Like Montreal Polytechnique lockdown.

I had honestly never really thought that trying to teach first year college students how to write a business document could actually put me in a position where I could be in lockdown. With lots of statistic ("Don't think it can't happen here, because it happened here, and here, and here and here and here and don't think that the incidents are decreasing because you know in the last 10 years only 10 people have lost their lives to fire, but 62 have lost their lives to gunshots in North American schools") - was enough to keep my attention and of course to set my imagination into spin mode. I now know how to assess my line of sight in my classroom and should an incident occur I know where the safe zone is. I now know that I need to keep myself and my students low to the ground and silent...just like the room was unoccupied. I now know that if it can happen there, there and there...there is no reason it can't happen here.

Funny, those things seem so far away when they happen in Montreal, Virginia or Colorado. But after yesterday's presentation, those places don't seem so far away after all.