Why My School Is Slowly Starting to Feel Like a Prison
It was 7:40 on a Tuesday morning, and I was standing at the door of my classroom, coffee in hand, watching the hallway. A freshman named Maya walked up to me holding her clear plastic backpack at arm’s length like it was a science experiment. “Mr. Delaney,” she said, “why do we have to use these now?” I looked at the bag—it was the kind you see at NFL stadiums or airport security. She had her pencil case, a spiral notebook, and what looked like a granola bar wrapper visible through the mesh. I didn’t have a good answer.
I just said, “It’s part of the new safety protocol.” She gave me a look that said she was way too young to look that cynical.
That was three months ago. Since then, I’ve watched the school change in small, incremental steps. At first, it was just the backpacks. Then it was the bathroom passes being replaced with a digital check-in system. Then the doors to the main classrooms being locked during passing periods. Then the “no walking in groups of more than three” announcement that came over the PA one Friday afternoon—oh, sorry, “to reduce hallway congestion.”
None of this has felt like a dramatic overnight overhaul. It’s been slow. Like how you don’t notice the room getting warmer until you realize you’ve been sweating for an hour. That’s what teaching here has started to feel like.
I get it. I do. Schools are under real pressure. Legislatures mandate more security, parents are anxious, and the news cycle makes everyone jumpy. When you’re just one administrator trying to keep 1,800 kids safe, adding a rule feels like the only tool you have. And I’m not naive—clear backpacks and stricter hallway rules are not the same as barbed wire. They’re not even close. But the feeling behind them is what matters.
The feeling is this: nobody trusts anyone anymore.
I saw it with my own juniors last week. A student named Derek raised his hand during independent reading time. He asked if he could go to the restroom. Under the old system, he would have just signed out and gone. Now, he has to take a laminated key fob, scan it at the office, wait for the attendant to call the restroom to confirm no one is loitering, and then check in when he gets back. The whole process takes seven or eight minutes. When I explained this to him, he looked embarrassed. “So basically I have to prove I’m just gonna pee?” he asked. The whole class heard him. Some laughed. Most just stared at their desks.
That’s the kind of small, humiliating friction that builds up in a kid’s nervous system. They’re not fooled by the word “safety.” They know what it’s like to be treated as potential threats. And when a school treats you like a potential threat, you start acting like one—or at least, you start disengaging. I’m seeing more kids shut down during class. More heads on desks. More empty eyes.
I’m not trying to say the adults are wrong all the time. There have been a few incidents at our school that made me feel a little less annoyed about the metal detectors. A fight in the parking lot, a kid from another school who got past the front gate last year. Those are real. But the problem is that the security response has become the culture, not the exception.
There’s a deputy assigned to our building now, and he’s a decent guy—he plays basketball with students at lunch and doesn’t walk around with his hand on his belt. Still, having him stationed at the main entrance sends a message. When I see kids slouch as they walk past him, shoulders tensing, eyes down, I know they’re internalizing something. We’re teaching them that being in school means being under suspicion.
I think about what we used to do differently. When I first started teaching about a decade ago, the principal actually knew most kids by name. He’d stand in the cafeteria and call out, “Marcus, don’t forget your geometry packet” or “Sarah, great game on Saturday.” There was a level of personal familiarity that made the building feel like a community. I don’t mean to make it sound like some golden age—there were plenty of problems too. But we didn’t start with a posture of distrust.
Now, I’ve learned to work around it. My classroom has become something of a small oasis. I let students sit wherever they want as long as they get their work done. I let them have their phones out during free reading time as long as they’re listening to music with one earbud in. I’m not breaking the rules; I just interpret them loosely. When a student asks, “Why do we have to do X or Y?” I don’t give the official school answer anymore. I say, “I don’t know. Let’s talk about it.” And we do.
That’s one of the most practical pieces of advice I can give to any teacher or parent who feels this same shift: name it. You don’t have to defend the rules. You can say, “This feels like too much, doesn’t it?” That doesn’t undermine the school. It actually gives kids a model for how to interact with institutions—by questioning them calmly, not by rebelling blindly.
I know a parent whose son goes to a district that installed new facial recognition software. She told me she doesn’t love it, but she doesn’t want to seem “difficult.” I told her that saying “I’m worried this is affecting my child’s sense of security at school” is not difficult. It’s exactly the kind of feedback schools need. Parents can also help by asking kids open-ended questions that don’t assume the worst, like, “What feels different at school this year?” or “What’s a rule that makes you feel uncomfortable?” That can open a conversation, rather than making them feel accused.
In my own classroom, I’ve started doing what I call a “rule audit.” Every few weeks, I put a list of school policies on the board and ask my students to mark them as “makes sense,” “doesn’t make sense,” or “makes me feel safe vs. controlled.” It’s not a formal survey; it’s just a conversation. We’ve had some really honest moments. Kids aren’t saying they don’t want to be safe. They are saying they want to be trusted to make basic decisions. One girl put it simply: “I just want to feel like I’m at school, not an airport.”
I try to remember that for the rest of the day when I see my students shuffle through the metal detector with their shoes off. They still smile sometimes. They still mess around before the bell rings. They still laugh at my dry jokes. The place isn’t a prison yet. But it’s drifting in that direction, and I think it takes ordinary people—not administrators or policy makers—to pull it back.
I don’t know if the clear backpacks will be here next year. I don’t know if the bathroom sign-out system will go away. There’s a part of me that thinks these things are like metaphors that became real—once a school starts locking down, it’s hard to reverse course without feeling like you’ve given something up. But every day, I make a point to leave my own classroom door open during passing periods. I stand in the doorway and greet students as they walk by. It’s a tiny thing, but it’s my way of saying: this space is still a school, not a detention center. The door stays open. That’s what I can control.
And maybe that’s enough for now.
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