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With the holidays over, hundreds of teachers, principals and lunchroom workers around the country are returning to school a bit more prepared. That's because some districts conducted school-shooter trainings, meant to prepare staff for a crisis like the recent shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. Gigi Douban attended one gathering in Alabama, and sent this report.
GIGI DOUBAN, BYLINE: It's almost instinct. Teachers want to protect kids in a school shooting, but a lot of them don't know how. So over the Christmas break, there were simulations like this, one near Birmingham in Jefferson County, Alabama.
(SOUNDBITE OF SHOUTING, SCREAMING)
DOUBAN: School staff took turns playing sheriff's deputies and teachers. They put on protective vests and dodged wax bullets. Their job? Get the kids to a classroom, lock the door, and turn off the lights.
More than a hundred school employees did this school-shooter training. That's five times as many as had signed up before the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings. Around the country, others did their own drills over the holidays. There were similar trainings last month near Nashville, Tennessee; Omaha, Nebraska; and another in Utah.
Coming out of the Alabama simulation, teacher Alanna Shankles was amped up. On a scale of one to 10, she rated her adrenalin a 12.
ALANNA SHANKLES: Like, I was like, really and truly, like, I had people that I was supposed to be protecting; very, very, very intense.
DOUBAN: It was chaotic - and pretty scary. People were running everywhere; there was screaming. Shankles wanted to do the training both as a teacher, and as a parent of four kids in the school system. An Alabama state lawmaker plans to file a bill to let some administrators and teachers carry guns. Shankles thinks that's a bad idea.
SHANKLES: It's scary. I know that I'm an emotionally stable person. But I don't know if the person teaching my son, or my daughter, is emotionally stable. And in a situation, you just - you don't know how you're going to react until you're in it. And I don't feel like, necessarily, teachers should be given that kind of power.
DOUBAN: Dale Stripling, student services supervisor in Jefferson County, says earlier, these kinds of trainings were limited. But the Connecticut shootings made one thing clear - everyone needs to know what to do, from the school secretary to the janitor.
DALE STRIPLING: In the old days, we used to just prepare teachers or just administrators, but now we understand that if a custodian's in the hall and he hears code red, he needs to get out of the hall also. So we try to better prepare all of our employees.
DOUBAN: And speaking of code red, at the Jefferson County training, there were also tips like instead of using confusing codes like code red, just say there's a shooter in the building. And another thing - don't go running at the police, or they might mistake you for the shooter.
Chances of that happening drop substantially if you're dealing with school resource officers. That's because they know the teachers and the kids, says Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource officers. Canady says his group has been inundated, in recent weeks, with requests for training like this. He says the difference between school resource officers and armed guards, is huge.
MO CANADY: When you're talking about an armed guard, you're talking about potentially a security guard, someone armed to stand guard at your front door. When we're talking about the concept of a school police officer, we're talking about someone who is ingrained into that school and that community.
DOUBAN: And that investment in the community, he says, goes a long way toward feelings of trust and security, a sentiment that's a little harder to come by in schools right now.
For NPR News, I'm Gigi Douban in Birmingham.