OPINION
Last week, students in Pilot Point and Aubrey celebrated being 100 days smarter.
On Thursday, I popped over to the Pilot Point Early Childhood Center for what I thought would be just a cute assignment of grabbing some photos of Caitlin Gorman's kindergarten students decked out in their 100-yearold fashion.
Shortly after I got to the room, Mrs. Gorman and Special Education Aide Anna States had the students search for 100 Hershey's Kisses throughout the room, all labeled with a matching number to correspond to a space on the number board.
The kids diligently search the room, finding all 100.
They made their way toward their seats to enjoy the candies just in time for a lockdown alert to go off in the classroom and the Go To Green light to be illuminated in red, telling us not to go into the hallway.
Mrs. Gorman quickly and calmly got her class gathered where they needed to be, as most all American public school children know to do now.
They gathered there while their diligent and visibly pregnant schoolteacher prepared her room to best protect her students and the other adults from being detected if there were an intruder.
The kids patiently waited, an impressive feat, especially considering they're just 5 or 6 years old.
One of the kids repeated a few times 'I'm scared,' but overall, they stayed calm and quiet and listened to their teacher when she gave them whispered instructions on how to handle the situation.
As the minutes crept by, they just waited patiently as they've been prepared to do, despite the poster covered in 100 chocolates sitting a few feet away from where they were. Officers from the Pilot Point ISD Police Department made their way to each classroom door, letting the staff and students know they were free to go back to their day at the conclusion of the drill. 'We might just have two pieces of chocolate,' Mrs. Gorman said to reward the kids not only for their effort in the 100-day search but also during the lockdown drill.
I think every adult in America should sit in a classroom of kindergarten students while they experience a lockdown drill without knowing whether it's a drill or a real emergency when that alarm goes off.
I'm grateful for the educators who go above and beyond and who put themselves in a situation where they are potentially in harm's way for children they love like their own every workday.
I pray that there's a day in our country's history, ideally in the near future, where our children will look back on lockdown drills and wonder how and why they were so prevalent in our society.
For that to happen, our lawmakers need to focus on the root causes of the crisis, not just mitigate the symptoms.
I'm proud of those kids and those staff members, but I'm utterly disgusted that our children live in a society where they have to face their mortality on a regular basis in their classrooms.
We must do better for our kids and their teachers.
Abigail Allen is the Editor & Publisher of the Post-Signal. She can be reached at [email protected].
