I’ve experienced dangerous situations before—like trial fire alarm tests and even real fire alarms going off in primary school—but my first ever lockdown happened in Year 7. It was one of the first weeks at the new school, and I was still figuring out how to get around. I had already gotten lost so many times that week, but thank goodness for the Year 10s. I was in a class called ‘Check-In’. We had to go to these once a day in the morning for about an hour back then. One day, while I was in that class, the teacher (let’s call him Mr. Gold) was telling the class about the daily notices—which felt like they would never end—when all of a sudden, the lockdown alarm went off. It was so loud I could have sworn it burst both my eardrums. It scared me so much that I was shaking. I don’t think it was actually that loud, but I’d just had a mapping appointment, and they’d tuned my implants up an extra level for sound, so everything was about 15 times louder than usual.

​The only problem was that Mr. Gold kept talking over the alarm, so I had no idea what the alarm was for. He didn’t stop to listen to the instructions, thinking it was just a test—not realizing it was real. All the students took that as a cue to keep talking too, which meant there was all this background noise happening at the same time. I was just sitting there, trying my hardest to listen to the alarm instructions. This was something new, and I knew it wasn’t a fire alarm because of the different siren sounds. With all the background noise, not even Mr. Gold could hear what was happening (since he decided to ignore the alarm and keep talking 🙄). He started to freak out when the noise didn’t stop, which made me especially worried and almost froze me in fear. It didn’t help that some of the students started to freak out as well. This whole situation really created some emotional trauma that stayed with me for several weeks. I felt confused, helpless, and afraid of misunderstanding instructions. 

​Mr. Gold kept trying to get the students to calm down so he could tell everyone what to do. Some of the older students managed to get others to quiet down, but not everyone did. It was finally quiet enough for Mr. Gold to try to give instructions, but I still couldn’t understand a word he said because some students directly behind me kept talking—particularly loudly. I got more stressed and eventually gave up on listening to Mr. Gold and the alarm instructions, which could have put me at serious risk if it wasn’t for one of my friends who noticed me zoning out and freaking out. I don’t think I would have gotten through it without her.

​That experience was truly terrifying, and it didn’t help that no one stopped talking, and the teacher did nothing to make sure any of the students felt safe or to get them to be quiet. I was so scared that I ended up messaging my mum after the experience and got her to come pick me up, since it was the first time something like that had happened. She spoke to the school, and then the school spoke to the teacher about what happened, to make sure nothing like that would happen again. Thankfully, it didn’t—but I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have that one friend there to help me understand what was going on and repeat the instructions to me. She understood how hard it was to be deaf and in a difficult situation like that, since she has a family member who is Deaf.

The most frightening part wasn’t the lockdown itself—it was not knowing what was happening while everyone else seemed to