Phantom Thoughts

We Need A mid-morning break!

The Junior Class of 2021 proposes that high school students at Grand Canyon School should have mid-morning breaks.

We need a mid-morning break because we are tired and hungry. We need energy and need to move around to wake up, so we won’t have to take restroom breaks in the middle of class or eating in the middle of class. Also, we get to laugh and have fun on our break time--a little bit of down time to help us get through the morning. In the morning, we students have 5 classes with NO breaks at all, and the teachers ask why we are so grumpy... IT'S BECAUSE WE NEED FOOD and a brain break.

Students using the bathroom and getting water takes up class time. If we get a mid-morning break, this will be less of an issue. Where is the 10 minutes going to come from, you ask? We will take away 1 minute of passing time between 1st and 2nd periods, 3rd and 4th periods, 4th and 5th periods, lunch and 6th period, 6th and 7th periods, and 7th and 8th periods, which will give us an extra 6 minutes. We will then add 6 minutes to the existing 4-minute passing time between 2nd and 3rd to give us a 10-minute break.

Proposed Schedule:

1st 7:50-8:52

2nd 8:55-9:52

Mid-morning break

3rd 10:02-10:59

4th 11:02-11-59

5th 12:02-12:29

Lunch 12:29-12:58

6th 1:01-1:58

7th 2:01-2:58

8th 3:01-3:58

These changes will not be taking away any instructional time from teachers, guaranteed, but they may help teachers by getting students to be more focused during morning classes.

A quick survey of the high school showed that out of 60 respondents (some students were absent and some teachers abstained), 52 (87%) are for this change, and 8 (13%) are either undecided or against it.

Students who were surveyed said that they loved the idea of the mid-morning break for many reasons, which include catching up with work, taking a brain break, taking a restroom break, and having a snack.

• One student suggested to open the concession stands, which could offer more fundraising opportunities for the classes and teams.
• Students say they sit for a long period of time and want to move around and get to take a break and move around.
• Other students recommended they would like to cut more minutes time of Phantom Academy since three minutes since it is not enough for a passing time.
• One student said they have been to another school where they have a mid-morning break.
• Another student pointed out that a lot of people also use the bathroom between 2nd and 3rd.

Signed,

Laila Ben, Fatima Romero, Craig Wadsworth, Alana Keebahe, Kaleb Smith, Savannah Longhoma, Madelynsia Anthony, & Ms. Schoeffel

We Need More Lockdown Drills

Imagine this: You're sitting in class, on your computer doing an assignment. Suddenly someone comes over the intercom and says, alarmed, "Lockdown, lockdown, this is not a drill! Lockdown, lockdown." Your teacher rushes over to the door, closes it, and locks it, then ushers your class over to a corner of the room. Just as you all get settled, someone starts banging on the door shouting, "Police! Open up!"

Would you know what to do in this scenario and how to stay calm? Chances are, no, as we only have one lockdown drill a school year, in spite of the increased number of fatal shootings.

The first recorded school shooting in America happened in 1764, when four people entered a schoolhouse near present-day Greencastle, Pennsylvania, then shot and killed the schoolmaster and nine or ten children. But when school shootings really came to the public eye and became a major thing was in 1999, on April 20th. The Columbine shooting. The Columbine shooting, at the time, was the deadliest school shooting in American history, with 15 dead and many more wounded. It was pushed out of first when a gunman at Virginia Tech killed 32 people on April 16, 2007. Other more recent shootings of note are the Parkland shooting (2018, 17 dead), the Sandy Hook shooting (2012, 20 dead), and the one that people believe started the mass shooting trend, the shooting at the University of Texas (1966, 14 dead).

Mass shootings in general, have been on the rise since the above mentioned UT shooting in 1966. Since then, there have been 165 mass shootings with four or more dead, compared to the 25 mass shootings of that definition in the 50 years leading up to 1966.

So with this information in mind, you might ask, why are lockdown drills not more common? We have one or two lockdown drills a year, compared to our one fire drill per month. In response to the increase in violence, most schools have not really upped their safety procedures. Yes, we may technically now know what to do, but we rarely ever put into practice the actions we are supposed to take. As an example as to how good preparedness can save lives, at the Rancho Tehama Elementary School shooting in California in 2017, no children were killed, as fast-acting educators and students executed lockdown procedures that kept the gunman out of the school. This is a perfect example of how good preparedness can save lives, as the staff had executed many lockdown drills before, which helped them make the split-second decisions that save so many lives.

There is no good hard evidence that school lockdown drills help improve survival rates, but what research has been done and is being done seems to point to lockdown drills being effective in schools being more prepared for an active shooter situation. Jaclyn Schildkraut is one of the main researchers looking into if lockdown drills help.

One of the major complaints of lockdown drills is that they can be traumatic. My response to this is, yes, they can be, if the drill is carried out to an extreme. Some schools will carry out drills that have blanks being fired, fake blood, the works, and won’t announce this extreme drill before hand. This can, and will, be traumatizing to kids and adults alike. But if a lockdown drill is held where you shut off all the lights, lock the door, and huddle in a corner, that is much less traumatizing. It will still achieve the same goal, preparedness for an active shooter, without the violence. A drill just consisting of sitting in a corner and waiting, versus a drill with gunshots and blood is much easier on a child's mind. And if you are still worried about trauma, just announce it as a drill. The same goal, in theory, is still achieved, but the drill might be taken less seriously (.).

I will admit, fires in general cause more deaths in the US than shootings, but since we have all been doing fire drills every month since first grade or sooner, we have the knowledge of what to do during a fire drilled into our heads. But I am not saying that we cut most of our fire drills out to have more lockdown drills. No. I'm saying we need to find a better balance of them so we will be equally prepared to face a shooter as a fire. As we get told, again and again, practice makes perfect.

Berkowitz, Bonnie, et al. “The Terrible Numbers That Grow with Each Mass Shooting.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 19 Aug. 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/mass-shootings-in-america/?noredirect=on.

Glavin, Chris. “History of School Shootings in the United States.” History of School Shootings in the United States | K12 Academics, K12 Academics, 26 July 2018, https://www.k12academics.com/school-shootings/history-school-shootings-united-states.

History.com Editors. “Columbine Shooting.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 9 Nov. 2009, https://www.history.com/topics/1990s/columbine-high-school-shootings.

Chuck, Elizabeth, et al. “17 Killed in Mass Shooting at High School in Parkland, Florida.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 14 Dec. 2018, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/police-respond-shooting-parkland-florida-high-school-n848101.

Kohli, Sonali. “Why No Children Died during the Rancho Tehama School Shooting.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 19 Nov. 2017, https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-tehama-shooting-school-response-20171116-htmlstory.html.

Minor, Nathaniel, and Andrea Dukakis. “How Effective Are School Lockdown Drills?” NPR, NPR, 19 Apr. 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/04/19/715193493/how-effective-are-school-lockdown-drills.

Thompson, Carolyn. “Parents Question Whether Shooting Drills Traumatize Kids.” AP NEWS, Associated Press, 10 Feb. 2019, https://www.apnews.com/e8ea3acddb574f07ad3b6b3cf2278711.