By Alex Giles
CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) - Van Barkley, a physical education teacher and wrestling coach at Butler High School, says he wasn’t expecting to get the response he did when he posted a video on Facebook Tuesday defending his school’s immediate response to Monday’s deadly shooting.
In the video he talks about why the school moved students to their classes after the lockdown had been lifted. At the time, many parents had rushed to the school to pick up their children. Some wanted to have their kids immediately released from the campus.
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People are still grieving after Monday's deadly shooting at Butler High School - I spoke with a teacher tonight as students prepare to head back to class tomorrow @WBTV_News @ButlerHSClt pic.twitter.com/U6GK6fccxa
— Alex Giles WBTV (@AlexGilesNews) November 1, 2018
"We wanted to get the students with teachers they know. We wanted to get the students to where they were supposed to be so as these parents came to pick up their kids, we knew exactly where they were gonna be at. It would have been so much more difficult if they were still spread out everywhere where we had gone into a lockdown," Barkley explained to WBTV in an interview Wednesday.
The teacher says he found himself defending the actions of the school online. He says people thought that the teachers were sending the kids back to class to learn, when that was not the case. After sharing the same message with several different people, he decided to make a video.
"I just got tired of typing and I just wanted to make a video and tell everybody 'this is what happened, I was there, don't believe anything else, don't believe what the media is saying, don't believe what the rumors are spreading around, this is what happened- I was on the front line'," said Barkley.
He posted the video to Facebook Tuesday afternoon. It has been viewed more than 100,000 times and shared more than 2,000 times. Barkley says the video has been getting positive reception.
"I wanted people to know that Butler did exactly what we were supposed to do," said the teacher.
Students at the school were out of classes Tuesday and Wednesday. They are scheduled to return to classrooms Thursday, but Barkley says the learning process may be a little different.
"Tomorrow is going to be a very student-led day. It's not going to be a lot of teaching going on. It's going to be us there for the kids and help them transition through this time," said Barkley.
He described the day as one where the students and staff will get close and be a family.
"We're all different, but we're all Butler and this is 'Butler Strong'. This is what we do, the love we have for these students, the love we have for the community. We want to make sure that everybody knows that."
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