PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Gunfire rang out as Fatima Bibi squeezed off three shots, hitting her target every time. Then she lowered her Glock pistol, turned to her fellow academics and smiled.
Her instructor was smiling, too.
“These ladies are better shots than some of our men,” said Abdul Latif, a police firearms instructor. “They learned to handle a gun in just two days. Their confidence level is remarkable.”
Dangerous times call for unusual measures in northwestern Pakistan, where the police are offering firearms instruction to schoolteachers and university lecturers since the Taliban massacred 150 people at a Peshawar school in December.
Ms. Bibi was one of eight lecturers from the Frontier College for Women, a postgraduate college, who attended a two-day firearms course at the provincial police firing range last week.
They learned to load, aim and fire weapons ranging from pistols to assault rifles; they also discussed self-defense techniques, and how to defend their students if the Taliban stormed in during class.
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“There are 4,700 schools in this province that do not have boundary walls,” he said. “So let’s build walls first and think of toilets and drinking water later.”
The provision for armed teachers comes with safeguards, officials say. Only teachers who are nominated by their principal and pass the normal gun licensing process will be allowed to carry a firearm in class.
The program is entirely voluntary, and teachers will not be allowed to display their guns openly.
Teachers themselves say they are conflicted — uncomfortable at the prospect of carrying a firearm, yet haunted by memories of the bloodshed at the Army Public School in December, when seven heavily armed militants strode the corridors, flinging grenades and shooting down students.
“As I gripped the gun and opened fire I started to sweat, thinking I should have a pen in my hand and not a gun,” said Akhtar Nagina, a physics lecturer at the Frontier College for Women. “But then I remembered what the terrorists had done. And I figured I should at least have a gun in my purse, for my own protection.”
A version of this article appears in print on February 2, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Training Teachers to Take Aim Against Taliban. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
