MURFREESBORO, Tenn. - Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.

ADVERTISEMENT

The mock attack Thursday night was intended as a learning experience and lasted five minutes during the weeklong trip to a state park, said Scales Elementary School Assistant Principal Don Bartch, who led the trip.

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

But parents of the sixth-grade students were outraged.

"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.

Some parents said they were upset by the staff's poor judgment in light of the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech that left 33 students and professors dead, including the gunman.

During the last night of the trip, staff members convinced the 69 students that there was a gunman on the loose. They were told to lie on the floor or hide underneath tables and stay quiet. A teacher, disguised in a hooded sweat shirt, even pulled on locked door.

After the lights went out, about 20 kids started to cry, 11-year-old Shay Naylor said.

"I was like, 'Oh My God,' " she said. "At first I thought I was going to die. We flipped out."

Principal Catherine Stephens declined to say whether the staff members involved would face disciplinary action, but said the situation "involved poor judgment."

With morons like this teaching our children it really gives me A LOT of hope for the future.

Hardcoregirl wrote:With morons like this teaching our children it really gives me A LOT of hope for the future.

yea no shit!

They could have done it some other way, hell any other way would have been better

Yeah, they actually did this sort of thing at Powell High School back in '88 when I was there, but it was more of a "Red Dawn" scenario. They loaded eveyone into the gym and had us sitting there, then they turned out the lights and a bunch of Guardsmen who had just choppered in came into the dark gymnasium firing machine guns for about a minute or so, then they turned the lights on and when into the "lesson". I think I still have one of the shell casings somewhere. But. We were high school kids, not elementary school kids, and a takeover of the US via the public school system had NOT just recently occured, so, yeah, of the month to the braniacs who decided this would be a good idea.

TheInfiniteMonkey wrote:Yeah, they actually did this sort of thing at Powell High School back in '88 when I was there, but it was more of a "Red Dawn" scenario. They loaded eveyone into the gym and had us sitting there, then they turned out the lights and a bunch of Guardsmen who had just choppered in came into the dark gymnasium firing machine guns for about a minute or so, then they turned the lights on and when into the "lesson". I think I still have one of the shell casings somewhere. But. We were high school kids, not elementary school kids, and a takeover of the US via the public school system had NOT just recently occured, so, yeah, of the month to the braniacs who decided this would be a good idea.

did something like taht at loudon , during my senior year....

Wow.

I went to Oak Ridge High School and they never pulled any ignorant shit like that.

Maybe thats because the threat of Oak Ridge getting bombed is quite real and they didn't want to rub it in, lol.

Hardcoregirl wrote:Wow.

I went to Oak Ridge High School and they never pulled any ignorant shit like that.

Maybe thats because the threat of Oak Ridge getting bombed is quite real and they didn't want to rub it in, lol.

being a site on the top ten first strike list, that would have to suck