School windows, covered in lockdowns. A Seattle teacher makes art to ease the terror

A lot of schools go through lockdown drills to prepare for an active shooter. During a lockdown, teachers must secure the classroom doors and windows. It can be scary.

At Franklin High School in Seattle, a teacher found a way to address one of these security measures — with art.

The window of my math class is covered with a beautiful piece of art. It's a picture of a misty forest at sunset, with silhouettes of birds flying through the trees.

I enjoy the picture, but it also makes me sad. I know it's there in case there is an active shooter in the hallway.

The cover blocks a shooter from seeing into the classroom and, hopefully, discourages them from coming in.

Jeannette Bath is an instructional assistant at my school and the artist behind these window covers.

We walked around the school together to check them out.

One of my favorites is a photoshopped picture of the art teacher, Mr. Dunkerly, in a dinosaur scene.

On Mr. Hailey's window, there are silhouettes of three saxophone players with blotches of color surrounding them. It feels like you can hear the music through the painting.

I asked Ms. Bath how she got this idea in the first place.

Ms. Bath told me that going through her first lockdown drill as a teacher was a pivotal moment for her.

She felt completely unprepared — and responsible for a lot of lives.

In the event of an active shooter, Ms. Bath was trained to lock the doors and cover windows. She wanted to focus on how she could help her students rather than on feeling helpless or scared.

"And so covering windows became very important to me," she said.

These window covers have tiny peepholes with duct-tape flaps on the backside so students or teachers can look out, but people in the halls can't see in.

The feeling of being watched was something Ms. Bath experienced as a child, and it got her thinking early on about security.

"I remember having a classmate in middle school telling me he could look through and see into my bedroom at night," she said.

"I don't think at that age we had any concept — either of us — of how weird and scary that was, but ever since I did get a bit obsessed with privacy in my own home or apartment."

Later, she became interested in conflict resolution, self-defense and martial arts.

But the wildest thing she's done is help police train for mass shootings. She's been a volunteer actor in role-playing scenarios.

"There are definitely some moments after a scene has concluded," she said, "and officers are going through their wrap up of what they would do, and you're just laying there, thinking about what that would actually be like. I think it's a really positive experience for me, but it's sobering too."

For me, thinking and preparing for scary scenarios adds more stress to my life. Sometimes I'd rather ignore my fears and not do anything about them. But Ms. Bath seems to feel the opposite way.

"For me, it's not really about the fear," she said.

Instead, she said, it's about giving people tools to survive. "When I look at the door covers, " she said, "I don't think, 'Oh, if harm comes. . . .' I think, 'Hey, what a cool little tool if something were to occur.'"

It's a tool that gives students and teachers some power in a real lockdown.

A tool that, at the end of the day, might save their lives.

This story was created in KUOW's RadioActive Intro to Journalism Workshop for 15- to 18-year-olds, with production support from Kyle Norris. Edited by Liz Jones.

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