What to do when students treat safety drills like a joke
Frequent false alarms and blatant defiance lead students to ignore instructions, laugh, and goof around during emergencies. This forces teachers to abandon uncooperative students in the hallways and lock their doors to protect the few who actually followed protocol.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Locking the classroom door and leaving non-compliant students in the hallway to protect the ones who listened.Did this help you?
- 2Messaging or calling the parents of students who goofed off to warn them that their behavior could get them killed in a real emergency.Did this help you?
- 3Telling students bluntly that teachers will not risk their own lives to save them if they refuse to follow instructions.Did this help you?
- 4Accepting that protocols will fail and planning to flee and preserve their own life instead.Did this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I say “tried” because the number of kids that heard the announcement and saw us and heard us yelling for them to move who just rolled their eyes, laughed, even rolled their lip to sneer at us, all while the clock was ticking … I consciously gave up and thought “I got as many as I could” and slammed the door for the sake of the few who had followed the directions, leaving dozens of kids in the hall.”source ↗
“I had an awful group one year. A drill was called, and two kids were goofing around.”source ↗
“I was at a school last year that had the fire alarm go off 2-3 times a week from vaping and everyone just ignored it. A real fire might've been devastating.”source ↗
“During a drill a few years ago, I was subbing when I had three ish students just stroll in 30 min after their earlier "bathroom break" laughing like they had been Very Clever.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 8Why won't students do the reading assignments?
- 3Special education pull-out services during core instruction time
- 9Why do high schools pass and graduate students who don't do any work?
- 5Can I use just a hydraulic jack without jack stands?
- 73What do you call students who copy or police classroom instructions?
- 5Students constantly forgetting materials, am I overreacting?