Inside Fatherhood

Teachers Prank Little Kids Into Believing There is a Gunman

by steve on May 14th, 2007

Unreal! What has this society turned into? I mean for real folks!?

Parents are upset and have every right in the world to be. There were sixty nine 6th graders on a week long field trip when the teachers thought it would be fun to pretend there was a gunman in the area. How dumb is that? One of the staff even wore a hooded sweatshirt and pretended to be the gunman? Did I read this right? I reread this like 4 times to make sure I was actually reading this and not making it up.

Picture your kid on a field trip away from home for a week under the adult supervision of teachers and they all team up on your kid and their peers telling them to run and get under their chairs while another staff member dresses in a hooded sweatshirt pretending to be the gunman.

Some of the kids began to cry, some begged for their life, and most thought they were going to die.

No I am not lying… this truly happened. Read on…

MURFREESBORO — Parents of students at a Murfreesboro elementary school are outraged that teachers and an assistant principal staged a phony gun attack on their children, telling them repeatedly it was not a drill, while the children cried and took shelter under tables.

Sixty-nine sixth-grade students from Scales Elementary school were on a weeklong trip at Fall Creek Falls, a state park about 130 miles southeast of Nashville. On Thursday, the last night of the outing, the staff played a prank on the kids, convincing them there was a gunman on the loose.

A teacher wearing a hooded sweatshirt pulled on a locked door, pretending to be a suspicious subject in the area.

The students were told to lie on the floor or crawl underneath tables and keep quiet. The lights went out, and about 20 kids started to cry, 11-year-old Shay Naylor said. Some held hands and shook.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God,’ ” Shay said Saturday afternoon as she recounted the incident. “At first I thought I was going to die. We flipped out. (A teacher) told us, ‘We just got a call that there’s been a random shooting.’ I was freaked out. I thought it was serious.”

Some parents said Saturday they were outraged, especially in light of the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech that left 33 students and professors dead, including the gunman.

Scales Elementary Principal Catherine Stephens held a meeting Saturday afternoon at the school to discuss the matter with a handful of concerned parents who contacted school officials Friday night.

She said she was saddened by the situation and that the school was handling it, though she declined to elaborate on whether the teachers involved would face disciplinary action.

‘Poor judgment’ blamed
Assistant Principal Don Bartch, who led the trip, said the entire scenario lasted about five minutes, after which the teachers gathered the students and explained it was a prank.

“We got together and discussed what we would have done in a real situation,” he said.

Several parents said they were troubled by the staff’s poor judgment.

“The children were in that room in the dark, begging for their lives, because they thought there was someone with a gun after them,” said Brandy Cole, whose son went on the trip.

“This was not a good experience,” said Alisha Graves, whose son attended. “Those kids were crying, and they were terrified.”

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