Pip and the Land of Blue Trees was born out of the idea that active shooter situations are traumatic for all of those involved, and we believe especially for the littlest among us that can’t really understand the severity of the situation and rely on the “adult in the room” to assess what is going on. 

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For fire we evacuate and for active shooter we huddle in place (currently without protection).  Since the dry-wall being used in the built environment offers no protection we advocate evacuating no matter what.  Hiding should be done only as a last resort and only if there is no time to evacuate.  Throw a chair through a window, kick out a hole in the dry-wall but get out of the space and as far away as quickly as possible.  Unfortunately for smaller children this option becomes a little less achievable as the children are too little to assist the teacher, as is the case with older pupils.

 

The reason students are not alarmed during fire drills is due to the repetition of the actions to be taken – line up, walk out in single file, no talking.  We believe active shooter drills should be the same. However, the circumstances surrounding an active shooter situation changes the actions that are necessary as the threat is not normally coming from inside the classroom.

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Since students look to their teachers for safety and tranquility, especially during stressful situations; for example during fire drills, we thought that if we could provide a safe place that teachers would feel comfortable in they could teach the kids that the space is safe.  With that in mind, we designed an environment that could be used in new construction or when retrofitting existing facilities.

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Pip and the Land of Blue Trees, is for use as a training tool for pre-school through 3rd graders.  The book illustrates a cast of fictitious animal characters that find themselves in unsafe situations, leave those situations behind and walk together to The Land of Blue Trees, where they are safe together.

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Pip and the Land of Blue Trees is part of a larger situational awareness and response protocol called Student and Faculty Emergency Response (SaFERST).  SaFERST training teaches age-appropriate techniques throughout a student's school-life and better equips them with encountering dangerous situations in the real world.