Sticky Issues
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In this section, principals tell how they handled a challenging situation, how some policy that was in place actually worked, and the lessons learned from dealing with these Sticky Issues. Send your stories to principal@osu.edu. Please indicate if we may use your name in the “contributor” credits.
Crisis “Drill”
One day an older gentleman wandered into the building from the street before the rule of locking doors was in place and came to the office making inquiries about the school program. I spoke with him and tried to answer his questions. Then he lapsed into a monologue of mutters and incoherent statements to himself. It became clear to me that he was suffering from some kind of dementia so I signaled the secretary to call security to come and escort him out since I was unable to get him to leave. He became somewhat belligerent so I closed the office door to keep children and teachers out and calmly continued to keep him engaged until security could arrive.
About that time, one of the teachers came to the door to come into the office and I shooed her away. I made the mistake of mouthing to her that it was a “Mrs. Robinson” situation. “Mrs. Robinson” was our code word for an intruder. The plan, of course, when these words were mentioned in any context, was that whoever heard the words would pass the word quickly and lock down the building.
Security came and took our “intruder” away to the mental health facility. The secretary and I congratulated ourselves on containing a potentially volatile situation. Meanwhile, we noticed how quiet the building was and that no one had called the office or come to the office in a while. I looked down the halls, and then it hit me! The building was totally locked down! Doors were locked and lights were out. Students were hidden in closets and under desks.
This situation had been an unintentional “lockdown,” but we all congratulated ourselves that our plan worked. We laughed about it later and counted it as our Crisis Plan drill for the month.
The lesson learned was that you never know how a situation will present itself. The quick thinking teacher grasped the situation and acted. We were well prepared and ready.
