Florida teacher asks students to write their own obituaries during active shooter drill, gets fired hours later
Jeffery Keene’s students told him that the school authorities were calling them one by one to inquire about the ‘assignment’ that he gave his students. By the end of the seventh period, he received a notice from the school asking him to end his employment
Miami-Dade Schools Police Officers perform rescue operation during a Large-Scale Functional Active Shooter Drill at Hialeah Senior High School in Hialeah, Florida. AFP/Representational image
Florida: A psychology teacher at a high school in Florida had to lose his job after he asked his students to pen down their own obituaries during an active shooter mock drill.
Having no remorse, Jeffrey Keene told NBC that even after getting fired he believes that he used the right judgment by asking his students to write an obituary for themselves at Dr Phillips High School in Orlando, Florida.
Defending his lesson, Keene, 63, said that he wanted his 11th and 12th-grade students to reflect on their lives if the worst possible scenario of active shooting ever occurs in their school.
He recalled telling his students, “This isn’t a way to upset you or anything like that.”
“It wasn’t to scare them or make them feel like they were going to die, but just to help them understand what’s important in their lives and how they want to move forward with their lives and how they want to pursue things in their journey,” the psychology teacher added.
He further explained, “If they died 24 hours from now, what would they do differently than they did yesterday? And that’s to get them to get rid of all the fluff and show them what’s important in the world.”
An ‘inappropriate’ lesson
Keene’s students told him that the school authorities were calling them one by one to inquire about the ‘assignment’ that he gave his students.
And by the end of the seventh period, he received a notice from the school asking him to end his employment.
He told NBC, “When they said you have the option to resign without violating your contract, I said, ‘I didn’t do anything wrong.’ I said, ‘If I did, tell me what it is.’ They said, ‘We can’t do that.’ I said, ‘In that case, since I don’t know what I did wrong, you can go ahead and terminate me without cause.’”
Later, the school issued a statement to parents saying, “Dr Phillips High School families were informed that a teacher gave an inappropriate assignment about school violence. The administration immediately investigated and the probationary employee has been terminated.”
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