A teacher’s last resort plan to fend off a dangerous back-to-school” target=”_blank”>classroom< on TikTok, and the defense strategy seems to be one worth considering in the wake of recent school shootings.
High school Spanish teacher Carly Zacharias shared a one-minute video to the social media app in early January with the hashtags #TeachersofTikTok and #SchoolSafety.
In her video, Zacharias explains that while her classroom door does have a functional lock, she still has concerns about it being made out of wood and having a window that could potentially break in the case of an active threat.
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Berkley School District high school teacher Carly Zacharias shared a last resort defense plan she came up with to try to fend off a dangerous classroom intruder to TikTok, and the viral suggestion involves hockey pucks.
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“I have these big windows along the back wall. My family-and-friends” target=”_blank”>kids<
“I just cut a strip of tape for every puck and put a puck under every single desk within reach, so kids can use them if they need them,” Zacharias continues. “Obviously it’s just a deterrent, but it makes us feel a little better.”
Since sharing her video on Jan. 3, it’s been viewed more than 2.7 million times on TikTok and has garnered more than 538,500 likes..
Zacharias, who is a high school teacher within the Berkley School District in Oak Park, Michigan, shared her classroom intruder fight-off plan five weeks after the mass shooting that occurred at the Oxford High School in Michigan’s Oxford Charter Township – which is roughly 28 miles away from the school where Zacharias teaches.
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In a statement provided to Fox News Digital, Zacharias wrote, “After a recent school shooting here in Michigan claimed four lives, I started to brainstorm ways that I could make my classroom even just a little bit safer for my students.”
Zacharias’ defense plan is worth consideration, though the National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO), recommends schools have an emergency response protocol in place for potential threats.
“Any defense against someone who is an active threat towards you is a good defense,” NASRO President D.J. Shoeff told Fox in a phone interview. “If they’re an immediate, active threat against you, regardless of the tool that they’re using, if it is a matter of your life or your safety, then we certainly want to empower our communities to ensure that they’re safe even if we don’t want to ever have that experience.”
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He continued, “We don’t ever want to have the experience of a plane crash, but every time we fly a plane, they’re going to talk about what we do if the plane were to crash. In that same token, it’s important for us to have conversations and preparation with the hope and the anticipation that we never experience that, but I’d much rather be prepared to respond and never have to respond rather than not be prepared in a moment where we needed to respond.”
Hockey pucks are made from vulcanized rubber, which is the material that make it rigid, durable and smooth.
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In his line of work, Shoeff said he’s seen teachers arm their classrooms with baseball bats and collected canned foods for the purpose of throwing if a threat arrives, but Zacharias’ video is the first time he’s seen hockey pucks as a suggestion.
“I’ve heard of a lot of creative methods,” Shoeff said. “But, from our perspective, we think first and foremost, carefully selected and specifically trained school resource officers need to be in school buildings guide [teachers and staff] on what techniques they use in the result or circumstance of an active threat.”
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He added, “The other piece of the puzzle that’s important from a law enforcement standpoint is that it’s valuable for us to know if [hockey pucks are] inside a classroom because our response to that building may be in a building search. If there is a threat in that classroom specifically, we would want to make sure we know what we’re walking into as police officers, so it’s certainly something to be mindful of on our end.”
Shoeff noted that school resource officers, education professionals and institutions can work with a liaison who relays information back to local law enforcement agencies. Together, the groups can come up with options-based response plans to potential active threats that all parties are aware of.
“Every school district would then need to evaluate what their best options are,” he said.
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The National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO), recommends schools have an emergency response protocol in place for potential threats.
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Shoeff said he could understand parenting” target=”_blank”>parents<
“If you talk to any teacher, every one of their classes has a slight different personality as a whole. There might be a teacher that says they’ve got a really mature collection of students who would understand this [defense mechanism],” Shoeff told Fox. “Kids have all sorts of things that they could be throwing at each other – book bags and papers and pens, so I don’t know that it’s necessarily introducing something that creates more of a danger for students necessarily, but again, I would just make sure that the SRO has involvement in the conversation and has the ability to communicate back to the local agency.”
