With the recent school shootings that have occurred across our country all schools, students, and families are looking for ways to make our schools safer anyway they can. The effects of these events have rippled across the country and into our own school. After our recent return to school, we have discovered a new policy at WS, teachers must keep their doors closed and locked at all times throughout the day.
As much as I appreciate the attempt to make our school a place where students feel that they are in a safe learning environment, the policy to lock all classroom doors throughout the day decreases the school’s efficiency and interrupts learning in classrooms. With the constant flow of students leaving their classes to use restrooms, visit other teachers, and even just to get water, the constant unlocking and locking of doors serves as a disruption to teaching.
Teachers should be focusing on their lessons and students should be able to be constantly engrossed in what is being taught. Recently, however, some students seated near the door have found that they are required to repeatedly open and close the door for the outpouring of students leaving the classroom. I find that this policy makes it frustrating for students to leave and enter their classrooms during the day, and that by continuing this policy throughout the year WS students will have a difficult time adjusting to constantly being locked out of their own classrooms.
Would locking the doors save students in the case of an emergency? We do not know the answer to that question. What we do know is that currently, the constant locking of classroom doors is fostering an unwelcome environment that leads to distractions in and out of the classroom.