Opinion

Radio Review: The club no school leader wants to join

Radio 4 programme hears from headteachers who have dealt with the trauma of high school shootings

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann is an Irish News columnist and writes a weekly radio review.

Presenter Sam Walker met US school leaders coping with the trauma of mass shootings
Radio 4 programme The Club Nobody Wants to Join spoke to US school leaders coping with the trauma of shootings
The Club Nobody Wants to Join, Radio 4

Groucho Marx famously said that he wouldn’t want to join any club that would have him as a member.

This episode of The Club Nobody Wants to Join didn’t pull any punches.

The club in question is the PRN – Principal Recovery Network – set up in America in response to high school shootings.

It’s a network that offers the kind of support most school principals pray they’ll never need.

The PRN helps headteachers who have lived through a shooting in their hallways and classrooms.

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Read out loud, the PRN guide sounds practical, a kind of “how to fix a boiler”, but in this case, it’s how to respond to gun violence.

This programme’s presenter and producer, Sam Walker, moved from Manchester to Arizona seven years ago.

Her children went to the local school and were taught how to run and hide in the event of a shooter. It was almost matter of fact to them, she said.

The presenter moved from Manchester to Arizona seven years ago. Her children were taught how to run and hide in the event of a shooter

Her interviews with teachers and school heads who have dealt with school shootings are chilling.

They talked about overhearing two young people talking in the bathroom.

“Hey, it’s okay. You haven’t killed anyone,” says one.

Inside the bathroom, one kid is holding a gun and another is trying to get him to put it down.

One kid is lying on the ground and another is in the toilet cubicle.

“All I could see was the gun sticking out of the stall.”

And then there’s the blood. After the detectives go, there’s a mess that would cost a fortune to pay a cleaning company to sort.

Trauma upon truama; you mop up physically and then more.

People visit a makeshift memorial outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 students and faculty were shot dead in Wednesday's mass shooting in Florida PICTURE: Gerald Herbert
People visit a makeshift memorial outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida where 17 students and staff were shot dead in 2018

We heard from Kacy Shahid, former principal of the School of Central Visual and Performing Arts School, about an ordinary day turned extraordinary.

She heard the words “Miles Davis is in the building” – the school drill for intruders which means lock doors, turn off lights, get out of the eye of the window.

“He’s shooting my babies,” she thought.



That’s where Frank DeAngelis comes in – the head of Columbine High School at the time of the shootings there.

Now he helps other school heads cope. They call him the Godfather.

When the media din fades and you’re in a club that you’d never want to join, Frank’s in your corner.