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God, or kismet, or intuition, or chance, wakes me up. My cell phone’s home screen lights up my bedroom. I reach for it. My news app notifies me that there is an ACTIVE SHOOTER targeting NED PEPPER’S BAR in the OREGON DISTRICT of DAYTON OHIO. The alert was originally sent fifteen minutes ago. I immediately dial Brianne’s number, one of three numbers I’ve committed to memory. I need to know if my friend is oh please I can’t even think it.
Read MoreOnce a year at the place I work we have this training. It starts off like most trainings you’d have at your work. Everyone comes together, complaining that they have better things to do than be here at this. You find your friends and sit together and talk about your day so far. We have an expert come in and talk to us, and then we do some group work on the topic and call it a day. It’s a workplace training that myself and the people I work with are used to. It’s a training for what to do if there an active shooter in my building. My building is an elementary school that is filled with 800 children everyday. The active shooter training is the one we dread the most. We are educators, not police or military. We are experts in reading, and math, not barricading and disarming. Yet, there we are. Learning how to do those very things from some very brave police officers.
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