Students shuffled through Archer’s halls as alarms for the last fire drill of the school year echoed through campus. The front veranda and back field were crowded with middle and upper school students awaiting instruction as faculty members completed head counts.
The fire drill was held Wednesday, May 14, to prepare students in case of a real fire emergency on campus. Students and faculty practiced an evacuation route as a way to get out of danger efficiently and quickly. Director of Middle School Reed Farley said emails were sent to teachers beforehand, sharing expectations of facilitation and organization.
Loudspeakers were used during the drill as a way to inform everyone on campus that it had started. Leaving their belongings in their classrooms, students evacuated to either the front veranda or back field. Teachers took attendance depending on One Card scans at the beginning of the day, attendance records from each period and multiple head counts for an accurate number of students.
Eighth grader Elyse Harris said she thinks fire drills are necessary in having a confident and prepared student body in case of an emergency.
“When you are properly prepared for a situation that might not always happen, but it is dangerous, it helps you to stay calm,” Harris said. “It helps you better prepare for the actual situation so you can be at 100%.”
Harris said that despite the drill’s importance, it was stressful to hold the drill in the middle of class time. A simple solution to this is to send an email reminder the day prior to remind students of the upcoming drill, she said.
“I was panicking because I was like, ‘Why didn’t anyone tell us we had a drill today?'” Harris said. “I was in history [and was] stressed out about a research project.”
Jaya Srinivasan (’28) said having a drill in the middle of class can cause anxiety for students because it reduces the time available to do classwork. She said an alternative option to help reduce this stress would be to have the drill at a different point in time of the day.
“Coming closer to the end of the year, every minute you spend in the classroom is pretty important,” Srinivasan said. “I do think Archer does well in creating these drills … I just think that it would be nice if they would happen, maybe during mentorship. I feel like that’s a more convenient time because it is a designated 30 minutes where you don’t have any academics going on.”
Although they may cause momentary anxiety, Srinivasan said fire drills are essential ways to practice what to do in case of a fire and are an effective way to prepare calmly.
“They serve as a model for what would happen if this were a real-life situation,” Srinivasan said. “I think that it is good to be best prepared for any situation, because you never know when something’s going to happen.”
Farley said he was amazed by the student body after the drill and was happy with the students’ focus during it.
“I think from year to year, our students, returning students especially, really know the drills and take them seriously. They are always quiet and efficient, and the new students just get right on board,” Farley said. “It’s kind of a beautiful thing, actually … so I’m always incredibly impressed with how seriously our community takes these drills.”
