ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. – Keeping students safe during a mass shooting and helping parents worry less are the main reasons one St. Augustine man with a law enforcement background created Student Survival Training.
Michael Chapman, the founder of Student Survival Training, says the goal is to help as many people as possible. He says that with school mass shootings happening so frequently, he wanted to make sure people knew what to do, so he put his class online and made sure parts of it were free.
Chapman says his 17 years of experience in law enforcement have helped him create his online Student Survival Training course — for students if they’re ever in a mass shooting.
“Most of my time at the sheriff’s office has been on the swat team and special operations,” he said.
Chapman says the idea for creating this came from friends and family constantly asking him for tips each time a school shooting happened on how to keep their children safe.
“Once the parents kind of knows what goes into it and how to better prepare kids, themselves, they will have a more sense of confidence and less fear and anxiety around this subject,” Chapman said.
According to the Washington Post, since 1999, there have been more than 300 school shootings.
With so many, Chapman says, he wanted to keep his advice simple and easy to remember:
1. Run: If someone is shooting, run away from them as fast as you can.
2. When you’re running and you need to take cover, find a spot behind something that is thick but do not choose the wrong place.
“Most definitely would not go into a restroom,” he said. “That’s a dead end.”
3. Fight: Chapman says, if this is what you’re going to do, be committed to it and try to have others help you tackle the gunman. There have been recent conversations where some people suggest fighting first—instead of running in school shootings, but he says that’s risky.
“Why risk getting injured or shot or hurt or killed just to go engage someone unnecessarily,” he said.
Chapman says he wishes he did not have to offer training courses like this but that’s not the reality of the world we live in.
The course does have a free video anyone can access. It goes over run, hide and fight. A paid version will also talk about that but how to react in high-stress situations, as well.
To learn more, visit Chapman’s website. Those who sign up for the free download of top tips will be sent a PDF and get access to a video.