My Turn
Sniper Attack

A teacher opens the school door to discover one of her students has been shot.

by Karen Pumphrey

I thought he was kidding. Eighth-grade boys have a way of kidding about the most serious matters. It's part of their charm. And this boy was definitely charming--the kind of kid you love to have in class.

Just the previous Friday, he had smiled as he endured the good-natured chiding of his classmates. He had created a collage that I had assigned to another class, not his. As he pulled it from his binder, the other students pointed out that he had wasted his time. He had done a superfluous assignment "for nothing." He sheepishly began to put it away. I stopped him and told him I'd count it as extra credit. Suddenly, his classmates wished they had made the same mistake. "Ha," he grinned, satisfied that his effort would pay off after all. I dismissed the class to their buses. The weekend was underway.

The following Monday, October, unfolded routinely. Although a sniper had terrorized the area, the weekend had been quiet. Those horrific events felt alien somehow, anyway. They were happening in other places to other people. Not very far away, to be sure, but not here either. Benjamin Tasker Middle School, nestled in the leafy suburbs of Washington, is the kind of place where teachers are content, students are safe, and parents are satisfied. (Insofar as teachers can be content, students can be safe, and parents can be satisfied.) The weightiest concerns usually involve bathroom passes and hallway traffic patterns.

Hurrying through the hallway to a meeting, I heard a loud "bang" on the front door and then yelling. I assumed that some of the rowdiness that sometimes accompanies the bus ride was being carried a little too close to the building. I headed to the door intending to admonish the offenders. I opened the door and was surprised to find no one near it. I saw the boy close to the curb, doubled over and on his knees. "What are you doing?" I asked, somewhat annoyed that he was carrying on so dramatically.

"I'm shot," he said, as he went down on his side. I was unsure what to think. Was this kid playing with me? Would he joke about something like that given recent events?

"Are you kidding?" I asked, half believing and certainly hoping that he was doing just that.

Shot? Kids don't get shot. Kids don't get shot in front of their schools. Kids don't get shot in front of their schools on an ordinary Monday morning in safe and sheltered suburbs. Not good kids who do extra credit homework. Not nice kids who smile and joke, and play and write, and draw and laugh. Shot?

I looked to where he was clutching his abdomen. There was nothing to indicate that he was injured except the look on his face. I looked around--no one else was in sight. I knew he was in pain, but surely, I thought, not shot. All the news of the sniper must have made him think he was shot. Maybe he pulled a muscle. Maybe he had appendicitis.

I leaned over and told him I'd get some help. As I stood up, I noticed a car, which I assumed had brought him to school, backing up toward us.

I went back in the building and told the secretary to call an ambulance. I told her a student was shot out in front of the building. Even as I said it, I still didn't believe it.

Within seconds I was out front again, accompanied by the principal, administrators, and every teacher in the vicinity. We returned to the curb to find...nothing. No student, no blood, no indication that anything was wrong. If it wasn't for the backpack left against the bricks I might have thought I was hallucinating. The car that had dropped the boy off was pulling out of the parking lot.

"He was right here. He said he was shot," I explained to the puzzled assemblage. Maybe he was kidding. I hoped he was kidding. We all hoped he was kidding.

The call came from the medical center down the street confirming the gunshot injury to the student. His aunt had taken him directly to the facility. He was in critical condition. Within minutes the school was transformed into a fortress. Administrators diverted the buses, and security personnel put emergency plans into effect. Police seemed to outnumber students. Helicopters hovered over the campus, and in the surreal atmosphere fear was palpable. For the first time, I realized that the "bang" on the door was actually the gunshot.

The media blitz was immediate. Our quiet, anonymous middle school was on every channel in the country. The world changed for us as a community and as a school that day. The world changed for me as a parent and teacher. It will certainly never be the same for the victim.

Oh, my God, he wasn't kidding

Karen Pumphrey teaches science at Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie, Maryland. One of her 13-year-old students was one of 13 victims in a series of sniper attacks that terrorized the Washington, D.C., area in October. The student is recovering. For resources on dealing with crisis in schools, visit www.neahin.org/programs/schoolsafety/.

Editor's Note

Everyone who works in schools knows there's a certain rhythm to the school day.

There's the academic part, and, after school, a whole other rhythm of sports and extracurricular activities clicks in.

For the most part, schools in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area were able to stay on their academic schedules during this past fall's six-week sniper ordeal though they frequently operated in lock -down mode. But while the academic pace of schools continued in a more or less normal way, the after-school rhythm was thrown way off.

School officials were forced to call off many games. Practices, if they were held at all, were held indoors. As weeks passed and the fall sport season slipped away, school administrators took some unusual steps to get athletes back on the field of play.

On one October weekend in Northern Virginia, hundreds of high school athletes rode buses for more than two hours to Richmond and Charlottesville, Virginia, to play their field hockey and football games.

When some of those games were rained out, and no other playing fields were available, some teams played their games on military bases.

Field hockey teams played on the fields at the army base at Fort Myer in Arlington,Virginia, and the Marine base at Quantico, watched only by the soldiers on the base. (Athletes' parents could only attend these games if they rode on the team bus.)

When the suspected snipers were arrested, and normal play could resume, school officials were left to figure out how to finish the regular schedule as well as tournaments to determine champions in football, soccer, field hockey, and other sports.

Still student athletes seemed to roll with the times, playing with their usual exuberance. The rhythm had returned.

Bill Fischer
Editor