After another relaxing summer break, students around the nation are returning to class.
After the school shooting at Robb Elementary School, many students were and are still apprehensive about returning to class after the previous school year. One Oklahoma mother, however, has gone viral for the lengths to which she has gone to ensure that her kindergartener is ready for the forthcoming school year, including knowing what to do if he gets caught in an active shooter scenario.
Simply put, you always worry about it in the back of your mind. “It’s always on the table,” Cassie Walton said.
Weston Walton’s mother, 22-year-old Cassie, wanted to prepare him for a productive year in kindergarten by stocking up on the materials he would need.
That includes knowing what to do if an active shooter appeared at his school.
Walton, who lives in McAlester, Oklahoma, with her husband and two small children, told ABC News, “It’s always conceivable no matter where you live or what sort of school you attend, you just never know.”
Walton used what she learned in high school and utilized it to prepare her son, then five years old, for kindergarten by teaching him how to hide in the event of a school shooting.
She emphasized the need for his having some direction by saying, “I believe that it’s vital for him to at least have a few thoughts of what he should be doing rather than just walking in blindly and without knowing anything.”
She filmed herself going through exercises with him while wearing his Spider-Man bag, which has a bulletproof insert and posted the videos to TikTok, where they quickly gained popularity.
Walton, who entered the world around the time of the Columbine High School shooting, recalled participating in similar active shooter exercises throughout her school years.
“We would constantly receive threats, and you’d never know which ones are genuine and which are not,” she claimed. “So no matter what, you must be ready to go from zero to 100 instantly.”
@thewaltonfamily1 Happy back to school season…. #foryoupage #backtoschool #foryou #needschange #PostitAffirmations #momiktok ♬ L$d – Luclover
It’s terrible that she has to tell her five-year-old son about a potentially horrific event, but she figured out that “it’s better to be prepared than to be sorry.”
