Technolandy

Day 31 (of 2024/25) @shakeoutbc

I do an annual assembly associated with ShakeOutBC’s Earthquake awareness campaign: https://youtu.be/Yk0SqOZJb10

I try to focus on each of the 3 major drills we need to do as a school/program – even though we are online and have mostly at-home learners… which is why we went live and allowed others to Teams-In (zoom in still sounds better) and put it onto our school website for a couple of days…

The three emergency! drills we focus on are: fire drills (6x a year) lockdown drill (1x a year) and an earthquake drill (1x a year) though I added in an alert for the similarity for Tsunami awareness and added that we need to all know where to go if we need to evacuate our property (whether school or home or out and about). 

Fire Drills – the most feared, though I’d like to say unnecessary – but I do have friends whose schools have suffered from fires – mostly due to accident… one intentional… makes quite the mess and fortunately usually when nobody is around – though one door decorating contest definitely caused a reason to leave the school… challenge was that it was cold and wintery and everyone was focused on getting out quickly – but then the school population was outside and getting colder by the moment but couldn’t go back in until the fire department cleared and confirmed the school was safe. Learning: speed is important, but if you can… make sure you are dressed for the conditions outside! That doesn’t mean going from the gym back to the classroom… that’s not safe… but if your coat is on your chair… take it with you…

Lockdowns – despite the media (and one student did ask about school shooters – ) the ministry does not have us do ‘active shooter drills’, though my nieces and nephews south of the border are familiar with this – odd that David Haight didn’t include this when he wrote about school and anxiety… most of the times I have needed to do one has involved animals… a few because someone was having a rough day… and once was because of a request by the authorities to keep people inside while they deal with an issue in the neighbourhood… The media makes lockdowns seem a lot more common and scary than they end up being – except for the uncertainty that sometimes happens about the ‘why’.

Earthquake Drills – the theme of the day is about when the earth starts to move. Get down, cover your head and then get outside. Interesting that some areas are focusing more on getting out than getting down… because why get down to the ground in a building that is not up to code to be earthquake resistant? But good to remember that there is more to the drill than just pretending there is a rumble from the ground… there are other side effects such as Tsunamis – if you see the tide go out very quickly – it’s a signal to get to higher ground asap… but be mindful of the ground as water will seek ‘common paths’ and may try to go up the streams and creeks that are underground but feed into the ocean – so even if you’re at a higher elevation, the water could still impact the land that you are standing on… so be careful…

Be safe.