LISTEN | Teacher recounts being barricaded inside classroom with students during shooting:

The Current19:58How one Tumbler Ridge teacher kept his students safe

Mechanical shop teacher Jarbas Noronha told his students to barricade the door and prepare to flee out of the garage, if the shooter made it inside. He kept them calm while they got frightening messages about the attack unfolding outside their classroom.

When Jarbas Noronha learned that a shooting was unfolding outside his classroom at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School on Tuesday, the mechanical shop teacher sprang into action.

After ushering his students to a corner of the shop and barricading the door, he says he began to develop an escape plan, all while urging his students to remain calm. 

“My whole focus was I wanted to get these 15 students out of [there] safe,” said Noronha, who has been teaching at the Tumbler Ridge, B.C., school for a year and a half.

“[I told them] ‘Look, we cannot do anything about what’s happening in the rest of the school’ — because they were receiving messages from other students from other rooms. ‘We cannot be worried about anybody else right now but us.'”

By the time the violence ended, eight people were dead, including five students, an educator and the shooter’s mother and half-brother. Jesse Van Rootselaar, identified by RCMP as the shooter, also killed herself.

Noronha spoke with The Current’s guest host Rebecca Zandbergen about those terrifying hours and how he managed to keep his students calm. 

Here’s part of that conversation:

When did you all realize that something was amiss?

One of my other students asked to go out to fetch his car because my students are allowed to work on their cars during the class. And as he was driving back, he told us that he heard some gunshots. While we were having this conversation, our alarm went off and the principal in the hallway told one other student that there was a lockdown. We locked our doors, I asked all of the students to go to one corner off the shop. And we started debating what would be our next step. The shop has some very heavy metal tables. We used these tables to barricade the doors just to buy some time if somebody decided to go through the doors, and we made an escape plan in the case of somebody breaks in, we would go out through one of the two garage doors to the shop.

How were you able to come up with this plan when this real threat was around you? Were you leading the group at that point?

I am a little bit on the logical side. And yes, I have quite a few experiences from my past. So at that moment, I knew I had 15 students under my watch and my whole focus was I wanted to get these 15 students out of [there] safe. We had a discussion with them. [I told them] ‘Look, we cannot do anything about what’s happening in the rest of the school’ — because they were receiving messages from other students from other rooms. ‘We cannot be worried about anybody else right now, but about us.’… My whole goal was to have these students very calm, to be able to move them if we needed to.

WATCH | What it was like inside this teacher’s classroom during the Tumbler Ridge, B.C., shooting :

How this Tumbler Ridge teacher kept his students safe during the shooting

Jarbas Noronha, a mechanics shop teacher in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., told his Grade 11 and 12 students to barricade the door and prepare to flee out of the garage if the shooter made it inside their classroom. He spoke with CBC Radio’s The Current.

So they were learning what was happening because they were receiving texts from other kids inside the school?

Yes, they were contacting their family members and they were contacting their other brothers and sisters that were hiding in other spots in the school…. So we were receiving a lot, through unknown information, different cellphones. So, I really wanted them not to panic…I wanted to make sure they were calm enough to follow instructions to get out of that spot if they had to.

Were you able to keep them calm?

Honestly, for the hardness of this situation, yes. They were very nervous, but they were able to act, if they needed to. They behaved excellently. I was amazed by them.

You mentioned that you are a very logical person, and that you’ve had instances in your past that allow you to be this way. What is it about you that you were able to react in this manner?

Well, I’m a science teacher, OK. I always like math and science. That’s one side of it. And second, I have [travelled] a whole lot. And there [are] many things I have seen like guerrilla warfare…any kind of crazy situation… traveling to Central America countries in the ’80s and ’90s. I have been through that. I think that helps build up a little bit of a confidence, a little bit of like, staying calm, when things are really bad.

You know, those kids, it sounds like were lucky to have you.

Well, we were all lucky to be in the right spot. The mechanical shop was the furthest point from everything that was happening and we had two exit doors if we needed to, so that means we weren’t trapped in a corner. 

You are inside of that room for two hours. How did you manage? That’s a long time. Two hours. How did you get through it? 

We managed to go through it by talking often. Every time I saw a little group of students, two or three… just sitting around the cellphone, I tried to get them to talk, to share between us what was our plan, what was next for us to do. I really did not want any panic to build up.

What was it like when you were finally able to leave? How did that happen?

The cops knocked at our door and they identified themselves. I told them, ‘Yes, here, Mr. Noronha, 15 students with me. We are all safe.’ And they directed us through the hallway towards outside of the school. By the time we were walking through the hallway, I could see armed personnel all over the place. Heavy guns… in every direction, swat teams, everything you can imagine. We walk out of the emergency door and lots and lots of blue and red lights flickering all over the place. And then we walked all the way to the rec centre that was around 300 to 400 metres from our spot.

I know you lost a colleague. Five students, just 12 and 13 years old, died in this attack.

Just one hour prior [to the attack], I was with my seventh grade students — that’s where all the victims came from, the seventh grade class. They had been with me just 45 minutes prior.

Have you been talking with their parents? What kind of connections are you making now in the wake of all of this?

Overall we are having our overwhelming support, psychological support, you name it. The city, the communities …The things are still settling and there’s a lot of a lot of things to be decided still. Now, only time will tell what will happen.