I guess I would not consider myself a traditional educator after reading that quote. I believe that once a child is born, they are an active member of society. They are experiencing everything that we experience, even if it does not affect them on the same level.
I am a substitute teacher for Lorain City Schools, and when Deb was giving her presentation and passed around the emergency procedures for LCCC and Amherst, I started to think about all of the different schools that I am in each day. I don’t think that I put much attention toward what the emergency procedures were in the different schools. I of course have noticed the picture hanging by the door that directs you in the proper direction for a fire drill, but other than that I believe that I would be quite lost of what to do in any other emergency situation which makes me very uncomfortable. The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me; I don’t really understand why the procedures have to be different for the schools. This is why I think it is crucial to have practice drills for all types of emergency situations, so the students are each aware of what they need to do. If your students are prepared for the situation, then hopefully if their regular classroom teacher isn’t there, they would still be able to complete the task.
By establishing a plan with your students ahead of time, will better prepare them for an emergency situations that they may incur over the course of their lives, this is a large correlations between the schools and society. This is a large part of what teachers as role models prepare their students for.
The article about disaster drills mentions “even with the recent lowering of the national alert level, administrators remain on their guard”, I think regardless of what the alert level is, schools and the children that attend should always be prepared for any situation that may arise. A real emergency is not going to be planned, so being caught off guard and not prepared could result in disaster.