Today was the final day of observations. I walked into the inner city school just before it began raining and greeted the secretaries as I signed in. I tailed my cooperating teacher up to his classroom and found my spot in the back of the room.
During first period, the students were given one final day to finish their projects. As the class settled down, yelling erupted in the hallway. At first indiscernible, the hollers turned into syllables and the syllables formed two words: Lockdown drill. A student dodged into our classroom, asking to stay until the drill was over. As the teacher closed and locked the door, students forgot their seat work in favor of the noises that began in the halls.
The first dog bark was muffled and came from around the corner in the hallway or possibly on the floor below. Before the drill was over, five more barks could be heard from our room, varying in proximity. Students exchanged jokes about drugs, and even the teacher jokingly told them that he stashes his behind the closet. Lighthearted humor turned into chatter, not one person working on their assignment.
The drill came to a close by the end of the period. I couldn’t help but wonder at the efficiency of the canine unit in canvasing the school. If it was anything like my high school, the identified locker and both adjacent lockers would be searched. Personal possessions rummaged through on a quest to score some reason to suspend a teenager.
I am conflicted about school drug searches. A part of me thinks they might lower the amount of drugs in schools. Another part of me knows that the results of these searches can destroy a teens educational career.
My thoughts mulled over the dilemma for the rest of the day as classes whirled by. Drug searches in this school are normal events. The suburban school I grew up in saw one drug search my entire four years. This school, according to the teacher, holds a search once or twice a year.
Drugs. Police in schools. Suspensions.
These are complicated. But what isn’t complicated are the negative effects on the entire school’s ability to foster a community of learning. I close out the week wondering what can be done to form a school community that subverts the very premises of the idea that fear is an ideal motivator.
And, yes. I think it is absolutely possible.