During sixth period on Wednesday, Oct. 8, Redwood went under lockdown due to a suspected gun threat. While the threat turned out to be a false alarm, teachers and students took the situation seriously and followed lockdown protocol. Teachers from various classrooms throughout the building shared their unique experiences and discussed how they may handle future lockdown procedures.

Science Teacher David Nash:

After hearing the announcement that Redwood was under lockdown, physics teacher David Nash immediately took action.

“You just kind of had to assume that maybe it is worst case scenario,” Nash said. “I mean, a shooter on campus is what everyone fears. You better take it seriously—that was our first reaction.”

While Nash rushed to get the main doors locked, he instructed his students to sit underneath the epoxy desktops rather than the wooden ones due to his belief that they would better protect against bullets.

Nash’s situation was unique because his science lab, unlike most English, math, language, and history classrooms, has three doors, which he said put the class in a risky position.

“It’s good in that there’s more than one way out, but there’s also more than one way in,” Nash said. “Between Mrs. Rubio, Mr. Samet, and my room, there are internal doors between three connected rooms and we never lock them, so that was kind of worrisome.”

After securing the doors, Nash advised students to spread out rather than stay close together.

“You shouldn’t put 25 kids in one group,” he said. “You’re supposed to spread out—otherwise, it calls for an easier target.”

While some classrooms began to settle down after the first 10 minutes, Nash’s classroom remained in full fight-or-flight mode for the duration of the lockdown.

“At one point I thought to myself, if somebody’s coming in here, what do I have to defend myself?” Nash said.

In response to the the possible threat, Nash grabbed metal rod support bars from lab stations in the classroom, hoping to use them as a defensive tool.

“About five boys asked me within a few minutes if they could grab a rod too, and I said, ‘You sure can!’ If they want to make their own decision in being in a more defensive posture, they should go for it. A couple kids guarded each door and kind of looked for shadows and listened for sounds,” Nash said.

After school shootings like Columbine and Sandy Hook, Nash said he had thought and strategized about what he would do during a lockdown that posed a legitimate threat. Nash keeps a 30-foot-long rope in his room that he once used for a physics demonstration.

“If you’ve got to get the hell out of here, you better think of some other ways to get out, and out the window down a rope is one way,” Nash said. “I also know how to open the windows a little farther than normal. The normal window opens about 20 degrees, enough to kind of squeeze out, but you can change it to 30 degrees or 45 degrees.”

Math Teacher Elizabeth Eichler:

Elizabeth Eichler has been a math teacher at Redwood for 11 years and has never undergone a “real” lockdown prior to the one earlier this month. Eichler said that she became  worried after hearing the announcement and immediately yelled at six students in the hallway to come inside her classroom.

Eichler then moved her students against the perimeter of the back wall and proceeded to accidentally unlock her door in the process of attempting to lock it.

Eichler explained she was unaware that, prior to the lockdown, a teacher who shares the classroom with her had already locked the door.

“I got up and I checked which way the lock was, and it was turned away from the lock, so I thought that it must be unlocked so I locked it,” Eichler said. “In order to check it you have to go into the hallway, so I couldn’t check it.”

Campus security guard Levi Hooks began walking through hallways and banging on doors to check that they were locked.

“[Hooks] opened the door, and he stuck his head in, and I screamed,” Eichler said.

To insure an upkeep of the lockdown protocol, Eichler keeps post-its above the door that say which way to turn the lock to unlock or lock the door.

Later on in the lockdown, students in Eichler’s began whispering to each other.

“I struggled with that in terms of what I should do, because some people were upset that the kids were talking to each other,” Eichler said. “We weren’t loud, but people were whispering. I was okay with it because at that time we hadn’t heard shots; we hadn’t heard anything.”

Leadership and Social Studies Teacher Dave Plescia:

Dave Plescia had just entered the library to go to the Leadership office when he heard the loud speaker announcement.

Plescia stayed put and attempted to calm the students who were in the library at the time. Lockdowns are no novelty for Plescia, as he experienced a false alarm gun-related lockdown when he was the principal of the TUHSD Summer School four years ago at Redwood.

Because Plescia had been through a similar situation, he said that he was knowledgeable and calm compared to other staff members.

“I thought it could be someone with a gun on campus, but I had been through it before so I knew the protocols of what could happen,” Plescia said.

However, Plescia said that, as the time passed, it was still very casual outside of school, and since he couldn’t hear anything in the hallways, he assumed the situation was safe.

Math Teacher Rebecca Kittredge:

“GET IN THE CLASSROOM!” Rebecca Kittredge screamed after the announcement came through the loudspeaker. However, everyone in Kittredge’s sixth period class was already in the room and had already tucked under their desks.

“They were all down, which I was pretty impressed by,” Kittredge said. “But I did have juniors and seniors, so they did know the drill a bit.”

Following lockdown protocol, Kittredge’s next safety precaution was to tape the window of the door with cardboard so no one could see through it.

Throughout the duration of the lockdown, Kittredge said that many of her students asked her questions that she could not answer.

“One student cried a little bit…they were relatively nervous, but calm and quiet,” she said. “They really looked to see if I knew if this was going to happen, and I did not know what was going to happen. They wanted to know if this was a drill, and I didn’t know,” Kittredge said.

For the remainder of the hour, Kittredge contemplated whether she should barricade the door and what to do if someone entered the room.

“I didn’t know what the best thing to do was,” Kittredge said. “Barricading sounded smart, but I thought to get out really fast, the barricade would be really hard to get down.”

Kittredge also stated that she didn’t know what she would do if someone entered the room.

“I just kept thinking, what are we going to do if someone walks in this door? And you don’t know what you’re really going to do. Am I really going to throw myself on top of this person? You kind of hope that you would act in a noble fashion, but you don’t really know if you would,” she said.

Future Steps:

Kittredge also said that the administration is implementing new solutions to a few problems that arose during the lockdown, such as teachers in the computer lab not having keys to lock the door.

Other situations being explored are what to do if the lockdown extends for over a few hours, where students should go if they are outside of the classroom, and how to accommodate teachers’ worries.

First year art teacher Nicole Mortham has a classroom located in room 404, where she said two glass walls put her students in a vulnerable position.

“We can’t just create one standard plan that will work for everybody because you don’t know what situation you’ll end up in,” Mortham said.

Mortham took it upon herself to revise the lockdown procedures by talking to an officer present at the all-staff meeting after the lockdown.

“I brought a police officer into the classroom so that he could help me practically figure out how to protect my class the best way possible, and so we strategized the best way to keep everybody safe and what we would do in an actual situation,” Mortham said. “We talked about barricading the doors. If someone did try to get through the barricade at one door, we could try to bail out the other.”

Assistant Principal Larry Pratt said that there have not been any official changes implemented at this point and that there may be more information about lockdown procedure revisions the second week of November.