I wonder if the parents of the two adults killed in the shooting gave a thought to their grown children during what may have seemed like just another busy day at the end of the academic year.
We’re all so preoccupied. We tend to forget that every goodbye could be our last.
After all, they aren’t unpredictable. They aren’t inevitable. They’re man-made.
There have been 119 school shootings since 2018, according to Education Week, a publication that has been tracking such events for the last four years.
This only includes incidents that happen on K-12 school property or on a school bus or during a school sponsored event when classes are in session.
If we broaden our definition, there is much more gun violence in our communities every day.
According to The Gun Violence Archive, an independent data collection organization, there have been 212 mass shootings so far this year.
There were 693 mass shootings last year, 611 the year before and 417 the year before that.
In Australia, following a 1996 mass shooting in which 35 people were killed in Tasmania, Australian states and territories banned several types of firearms and bought back hundreds of thousands of banned weapons from their owners. Gun homicides, suicides, and mass shootings are now much less common in the country.
There have been 2,032 school shootings in the US since 1970, and these incidents are increasing. We’ve had 948 school shootings since the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.
We’re told that gun control is useless because new laws will just be pieces of paper that criminals will ignore. However, by the same logic, why have any laws at all? Congress should just pack it in, the courts should close up. Criminals will do what they please.
We may never be able to stop all gun violence, but we can take steps to make it more unlikely. We can at least make it more difficult for people to die by firearm. And this doesn’t have to mean getting rid of all guns. Just regulate them.
According to the Pew Research Center, when you ask people about specific firearm regulations, the majority is in favor of most of them – both Republicans and Democrats.
We don’t want the mentally ill to be able to buy guns. We don’t want suspected terrorists to be able to purchase guns. We don’t want convicted criminals to be able to buy guns. We want mandatory background checks for private sales at gun shows.
Yet our lawmakers stand by helpless whenever these tragedies occur because they are at the mercy of their donors. The gun industry owns too many elected officials.
In short, we need lawmakers willing to make laws. We need legislators who will represent the overwhelming majority of the public and take sensible action to protect the people of this country.
What we need is real gun control legislation. We need an assault weapons ban. We need to close the gun show loophole. We need buyback programs to get the mountains of firearms off the streets and out of the arsenals of a handful of paranoid “survivalists”.
We don’t need anyone’s thoughts and prayers.
We need action.
And we need it yesterday.
At this point there is simply no excuse.
If you don’t support gun control, you support school shootings.
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There are black kids and white kids, Muslim kids and Christian kids, Latinos and Lithuanians, Italians and Iranians, girls, boys and all genders in between.
There are tall kids and short kids. Fat kids and thin kids. And, yes, some kids who like other kids in ways which all adults might not approve.
However, some people are too juvenile to deal with it – they can’t even say the word or can’t even endure someone else saying it!
That’s not so bad when you’re 13 and terrified of your own sexuality, anxious that anyone might question your cis privilege.
You still have time to grow out of such sophomoric hijinks.
Silencing the grown-ups in school won’t change who the kids are. It will just forbid us from mentioning reality. It will permit us to recognize only the tiniest fraction of who our students are and leave a de facto shroud over the rest.
I refuse to turn my classroom into a closet.
It might make the most bigoted adults feel better. It might relieve grown-up fears that just talking about other ways to live is enough to mold someone into something against their nature.
As if such a thing were possible.
But it won’t help the kids.
People don’t become their sexuality. They discover who they were all along – and ultimately no piece of legislation can stop that. It can make that search more difficult, painful and riddled with guilt. But you are who you are.
It’s regressive shame-based norms like these that encourage little boys to bash those who are different.
That make them feel the only safety lies in violence against the other so no one questions who they are, themselves.
That scares them enough to giggle at a three-letter word embedded in a poem.
And speaking of my giggle goose, eventually he got himself under control.
Before the end of the period he came back to the table.
Silently, swiftly, and soberly, he sat down with the rest of us ready to continue discussing “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Goodnight.”
Not a titter or laugh.
It wasn’t until a week later that he turned to me with a smile and asked:
“Mr. Singer, did you have a gay weekend?”
I did, Buddy. I did.
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Players from Steel Valley School District contend that during a November playoff game at their home field, rivals South Side Area School District called them the N-word and “monkeys” as well as purposefully incapacitated their star player.
WPIAL Executive Director Amy Scheuneman said her organization is refusing to take sides and students, coaches and administrators for both districts will have to undergo racial sensitivity training.
It is absurd. Imagine making a gunman and the person he shot go through firearms training.
Talk about false equivalency!
“We don’t want to walk away saying you’re right and you’re wrong, but we need to learn from this,” Scheuneman said. “We need to all work together to make that happen.”
Calls for unity are great but justice needs to come first. It’s nearly impossible for everyone to just get along when you don’t hold wrongdoers accountable for their actions – especially when the victims are mostly black and the perpetrators are mostly white.
Though Steel Valley went on to win the game, their star senior running back and linebacker Nijhay Burt suffered a season ending ankle injury which his family alleges was caused by South Side Players on purpose.
Burt’s mother Shunta Parms says, “…The two players that tackled him, they were pushing off his ankle. They were twisting it as they got up. After they got up they cheered in his face and said ‘Yeah! We got you now!’”
WPIAL board of directors and Diversity and Inclusion Council heard testimony for more than four hours on Wednesday.
The meeting was closed to the public at the request of the South Side District from Beaver County, and WPIAL officials have refused to give specific details of what was said behind closed doors.
However, Scheuneman was adamant that the board did not find any evidence the official used racial taunts.
“…The board did not find that to be accurate,” Scheuneman said.
I would love to know what evidence there was to so unequivocally clear the referee.
Especially since she noted the other allegations came down to a matter of he said-she said.
There were “conflicting reports” about what happened and “direct testimony against” the claims of Burt and the Steel Valley School District, Scheuneman said.
“Based on what we heard, I would say that, while there may be tendencies to lean one way or another, it was inconclusive, specifically, one way, as opposed to another.”
Ma’am, isn’t it your job to lean one way or another?
You need to be impartial at first but then you listen to the evidence and decide who was at fault.
Either South Side Beaver players used hate speech against Steel Valley players or not. Either they intentionally injured Steel Valley’s star player or not.
And if they did not, that means Steel Valley players made the whole thing up.
Do you really find that possibility credible?
“There was testimony on both sides, and there were missed opportunities by adults from both schools, so we do feel that it’s important for everybody to learn from the events that happened and take something positive from it,” Scheuneman said.
And Steel Valley’s coach did not report his player’s accusations to the head referee.
Therefore, they’re both to blame!?
What the heck are you smoking!?
Steel Valley Superintendent Ed Wehrer issued a statement that shed some light on the previous incident at South Side Beaver:
“The testimony by South Side Area confirmed that a month prior to the playoff game at issue a member of their team had behaved the same way in a game against Carlynton High School, as witnessed by the Athletic Director at Carlynton. Combined with our statements, that admission established a pattern of racist behavior by our opponent, which should have reinforced the trustworthiness of our complaint.”
The only specific mention of wrongdoing on Steel Valley’s part is neglecting to alert the head referee. But the district’s actions make perfect sense in context. Why would the district go to the referees after allegations that one of them was also guilty of making racial taunts!? Isn’t it logical that Steel Valley and Burt waited to file a report against the Beaver County District!?
South Side Beaver district is 96% white. There are so few black students, 2019 Census data puts the number at 0%.
Meanwhile, Steel Valley is 72% white and 23% black with a higher percentage of children of color on the football team than in the district as a whole.
Are you telling me it’s likely that a mostly black team who is already crushing their rivals (they won 20-12) would make up being the target of racism? Are you saying Burt would make up how his leg was manhandled by the opposing team?
And then we have the issue of socioeconomics.
South Side Beaver is a wealthier district than Steel Valley.
Median household income at the South Side district is $69,905. At Steel Valley it’s $42,661.
At the South Side, 7.7% of residents live below the poverty line. At Steel Valley it’s 17.4%.
These make a difference.
More privileged students are way more likely to think they deserve to win just because of who they are. Underprivileged kids have to work for everything they have.
And officials are way more likely to ignore poorer black kids in favor of richer white ones.
Scheuneman said, “Regardless if one side was more wrong than the other, it takes both parties to mend that bridge and get through anything. So we want those schools to work together in moving forward in cultural competency.”
This is a bad idea.
It won’t do anything to stem the increasing tide of racism from whiter, wealthier districts directed at poorer blacker ones.
These sorts of trainings are not in themselves enough to stop hate speech.
It’s true that having South Side Beaver and Steel Valley go through racial sensitivity training won’t hurt anyone.
Steel Valley students won’t suffer being forced to undergo this measure.
But the fact that they HAVE TO do this will underscore the injustice of the systems they have to live under.
They were the victims, and they got the same punishment as the oppressor.
And at South Side Beaver we can HOPE the training will do some good.
But let’s be honest – this sort of thing is only effective when those attending the training are receptive to its message.
The fact that South Side got away with this will poison everything being taught.
WPIAL is supposed to be about fair play.
They got it really wrong here.
If anyone needs this training, it’s them.
Steel Valley’s Statement:
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Even Canada follows this practice with hockey. Young athletes don’t play for their high schools; they play for one of three national hockey leagues – the Ontario Hockey League, the Western Hockey League or the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.
The way we do things in the US – combining athletics and academics under one roof – ends up making each undertaking enemies.
Kids are unnecessarily injured in the games and indoctrinated in an ethic of dominance. In addition, sports programs gobble up limited resources meant for the classroom, and incentivize bad decisions that prize athletics over everything else.
Let’s look at each in turn:
1) Injuries
School sports began as a way to keep kids safe.
About 120 years ago, schools were not involved in organized athletics.
Perhaps the most dangerous are concussions. These are especially frequent in contact sports like football where athletes bump or smash their heads or bodies into each other. Even with protective equipment like helmets and pads, such collisions can cause traumatic brain injuries that can alter the way brains function for a lifetime.
During the 2005-06 season, high school football players sustained more than half a million injuries nationally, according to the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Columbus Children’s Hospital. While football easily incurs the highest risk, even sports like soccer and baseball are responsible for thousands of injuries to adolescents between the ages of 10 to 14 every year.
And that’s only the most obvious danger. It doesn’t even include increased steroid use, fighting during games, hazing violence, excessive training, verbal abuse, and failure to provide proper care during important matches.
Competitive extracurricular sports can be dangerous to young people’s health. It is certainly valid to question whether schools should be involved in such practices incurring liability and potentially harming their own students.
2) Warrior Mindset
And then there’s the question of whether school sports are healthy for our minds as well as our bodies.
At the turn of the 20th Century, schools started organizing their own teams because they wanted to not just keep kids physically safe, but provide a healthy alternative to the kinds of activities they might be lured into on the streets. Based on the Victorian ideal of “Muscular Christianity,” sports was considered something wholesome that would district American children (especially boys) from social ills like gambling and prostitution.
However, even then it was a manifestation of the period’s xenophobia.
In the early 1900s, the US had just admitted a surge of European immigrants. Some people were worried that immigrant children would overrun the kids already here. Physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. described this class of American-born kids as “stiff-jointed, soft-muscled, paste-complexioned youth.” It was suggested that organized sports would help them become as brawny as those just coming to our shores.
So the driving motives behind the creation of school sports were bigotry and fear.
Sadly, not much has changed in the intervening years.
Sports culture creates understandings of the world and self that are not entirely healthy in a democratic society.
For instance, an emphasis on competition instills the ethic that it is the outcome – winning or losing – that is most important. As kids become adults, this informs the way they frame ethical choices. Moreover, it dampens empathy. You’re discouraged from caring about members of the other team and encouraged to be hostile to anyone considered an other. Even teammates are only worthy of care in so much as they help you win. There is always latent competition because there is a constant danger that one of your teammates could take your place.
Moreover, sports do not value critical thinking or individuality. You listen to your coach or team captain or whoever in the hierarchy is above you. Questioning authority is discouraged. Instead, you’re impressed with the duty to follow and accept the decisions of those in charge.
These values would be more helpful in the development of warriors or soldiers – not democratic citizens. We need people who value tolerance, discussion, justice, caring, and diversity of ideals – exactly the opposite of what organized sports instills.
The world view promoted by organized athletic competition is not healthy for our students.
3) Expense
However, even if school sports didn’t hurt kids physically and mentally, they cost a ridiculous amount of money!
However, this is actually a minority of students, only about 42%. That’s because it often costs parents an additional fee for their kids to play on school teams – between $670 – $1,000 a year. This includes sporting registration fees, uniforms, coaching, and lessons.
Costs to districts are hard to quantify but significant.
Football is easily the most expensive high school sport. Consider that many football teams have half a dozen or more coaches, all of whom usually receive a stipend. And some schools go even further hiring professional coaches at full salaries or designate a teacher as the full-time athletic director. The cost of new bleachers can top half a million dollars – about the same as artificial turf. Even maintaining a grass field can cost more than $20,000 a year. Not to mention annual expenses like reconditioning helmets, which can cost more than $1,500 for a large team. To help offset these costs, some communities collect private donations or levy a special tax for initiatives like new gyms or sports facilities.
There are so many costs people rarely consider. For example, when teachers who also serve as coaches travel for game days, schools need to hire substitute teachers. They also need to pay for buses for the team, the band, and the cheerleaders. And that’s before you even take into account meals and hotels during away games. Even when events are at home, schools typically cover the cost of hiring officials, providing security, painting the lines on the field, and cleaning up afterward.
They often end up spending more per student athlete than they do per pupil in the classroom.
Marguerite Roza, the author of Educational Economics, analyzed the finances of one public high school in the Pacific Northwest. She and her colleagues found that the school was spending $328 a student for math instruction and more than four times that much for cheerleading—$1,348 a cheerleader.
One wonders – can we afford school athletics? Wouldn’t it be better to spend school budgets on learning – something all students participate in – rather than something that only benefits a fraction of the student body?
4) Decision Making
The cost of school sports isn’t measured just in dollars and cents but in the kinds of decisions administrators and school board members make for the sake of athletics – regardless of how it impacts academics.
People are often hired for important school positions based on their sports credentials even when their jobs are supposed to be mainly focused on improving student learning.
This is especially true where I live in Western Pennsylvania.
In my home district of McKeesport, when our superintendent, Dr. Mark Holtzman, was hired, he did not have any proven track record of scholastic success but had been a football star when he was a student here.
Likewise, the district where I work as a teacher, Steel Valley, hired Eddie Wehrer as superintendent without any degree in education but experience as a football coach.
The same goes for principals recommending new staff.
Sometimes administrators will lower their standards and recommend a less qualified applicant if he or she has experience as an athletic coach.
Whether they’ll admit it or not, the prospect of a winning season for the football team is often prioritized over new textbooks, smaller class sizes or other improvements.
The act of running for school board is often seen as a way to have greater control over district athletics. Go to most local school board meetings and you’ll hear much more discussion of various teams and extracurricular activities than academic programs.
National organizations like the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball recruit most of their players from colleges who recruit most of their players from K-12 schools. It’s a lucrative system with billions of dollars in profit on the line.
If students get an excellent education, that’s seen as a personal benefit to them, alone. But if a student athlete gets signed to a sports contract, that enriches the team and the corporation orders of magnitude more than the athlete.
Schools bask in the reflected glory of successful athletes, teams and programs. Grown adults who are too old to participate, themselves, take vicarious pleasure in these successes.
I understand that this is a very controversial topic.
There is a small minority of students who benefits from school athletics and even come to school primarily just to participate in sports.
However, the negatives far outweigh the benefits.
I think it’s time we begin considering separating sports and schools.
Students who want to participate in such activities can do so through private athletic clubs just like kids all over the world.
And before I’m criticized as being anti-sports, consider that such a separation would benefit both endeavors. Students would have more time and resources to focus on learning, while athletes could concentrate more on their chosen sport and train all year long instead of just during a certain season.
I have no illusions that anyone will take my advice. Sports are way too entrenched in American schools and our elected officials can’t even seem to find the courage to enact obvious reforms like gun control, repealing charter schools, ending standardized testing and funding schools equitably.
However, if we really want the best for US children, we should give them what kids the world over already have – schools separate from organized sports.
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We can’t offer you equitable resources. We can’t stop judging you with biased standardized tests. We can’t desegregate your schools. We can’t protect you from gun violence. We can’t even give you in-person classes because of a global pandemic the government has given up even trying to control!
And now I’m supposed to say that even the semblance of our democracy is up for grabs?
I started clicking on their names.
I only had a few moments before I had to speak.
I cleared my throat and began welcoming them, one-by-one as always.
And then it was time.
I stared at all these empty black boxes, and began.
“We’ve got to talk about yesterday,” I said.
“Not yesterday in class. That was fine. Everyone did an outstanding job on yesterday’s assignment.
“We have to talk about what happened yesterday in Washington, DC. Does anyone know what that was?”
And I waited.
Eventually I saw a few messages that individuals had their hands raised.
A few kids said that people had charged the Capitol. But that they didn’t know why.
So I explained it to them.
I told them how Trump was refusing to accept the results of the election. That he had lost, but continued to challenge it in the courts. Both Republican and Democratic judges had turned him down saying that he had no proof. So Trump spoke outside of the White House yesterday telling his followers to march on the Capitol, which they did.
At this point I noticed something strange on my screen.
The rows of empty boxes had turned into windows. No more memes or messages or generic names. Most of my kids had turned on their cameras and were meeting my eyes – in some cases – for the first time.
So that’s what Kelsey looks like, I thought. Wow! Marquis is really built. Is that little kid in the grey hoodie really Caulin?
I got flustered and stopped talking, but the students took up the narrative for me.
Some of them mentioned watching videos on-line of the riot. They saw a guy with horns in the President’s chair?
“No, I said. “That was the Vice-President’s chair in the Senate.”
“Wasn’t there someone at someone’s desk?”
“Yes, that was Nancy Pelosi’s desk,” I said. “A rioter broke into her office and put his feet up. She’s the Speaker of the House.”
And so it went on for a few minutes. They brought up things they had seen and I either clarified or supported them.
As a whole, they were wealthy in details but poor in meaning.
Most of the white kids seemed to be taking it ironically. The black and brown kids were more quiet and subdued.
A white boy wrote in the chat that it was “Civil War 2: electric bugaloo.”
I said, “Yes, you’ve hit on an important point. Some of these folks may have been trying to start a new Civil War.”
I tried to put the event in historical context.
I told them how nothing like this had ever happened in my lifetime. That the last time people broke into the Capitol Building like this was during the War of 1812 when the British tried to force the US to become a colony again. However, that was a foreign power invading our country. Wednesday was our own citizens seeking to overturn the results of an election, trying to overwrite the will of the people.
That’s when the first black student spoke up.
“Mr. Singer, why were they waving Confederate flags?”
“Yes! That’s true, Jamal. Many of them DID have Confederate flags and that’s really important.”
Before I could say more I got a series of rapid-fire questions from the same group who had been silent up to this point.
“Why didn’t the police stop them?”
“Why’d they steal stuff? I saw some guy walking away with a podium.”
“Why they so mad?”
I smiled and said that these were all excellent questions.
I asked if any of them knew who George Floyd was.
No one responded.
I told them he was a black guy who was murdered by police when an officer knelt on his neck.
After that happened, there were protests by Black Lives Matter activists and others in several cities including Pittsburgh. The police showed up in riot gear. As these protestors demonstrated almost entirely peacefully – certainly more peacefully than what we saw in DC yesterday – more than 14,000 people were arrested.
“How many people do you think were arrested yesterday?” I asked.
“Didn’t someone die?”
“Yes, a woman was shot in the Capitol and three others died of medical emergencies. How many people were arrested?”
“None,” said a student of color who hadn’t participated before.
“Why none?” I asked.
“Because they was white.”
I told him that he right and wrong. Out of thousands of rioters who broke into the Capitol, thirteen people were arrested. And the reason there were only 13 was because they were white.
I told them that this whole affair needed to be investigated. That we needed to know how and why the police responded the way they did. That we needed to hold the rioters accountable. That we needed to make sure those who instigated this violence were made to pay for it, too.
“Is Trump still President?” Someone asked.
“Yes,” I said. “For about two more weeks. But there are a lot of people who think he should have to step down sooner.”
So we talked about how he could be removed from office. We talked about impeachment and the 25th Amendment. We even talked about how Trump was banned from Twitter and Facebook – how he couldn’t post or tweet but still could send a nuclear missile anywhere he wanted.
And then it quieted down.
I asked them if there was anything more they wanted to know or if there was anything else they wanted to say.
They were still.
A few cameras clicked off.
I told them that I was there if anyone needed anything, that their teachers were here if they were feeling anything and wanted someone to talk to.
And then that was it.
I made one of the most abrupt and inelegant transitions in my career and we returned to our normally scheduled lesson.
Did it help any?
I don’t know, but I told them what I could. I told them the truth as I saw it.
There was a time when I would have been more reticent about it.
But the day after domestic terrorists try to steal our system of government isn’t the time to hold back.
As a teacher, sometimes I feel so helpless.
There’s so much I’d like to do for my students.
I want them to get the resources they need. I want to stop the unfair testing, integrate their schools, keep them safe from gun violence and control Covid-19 so we can return to the classroom.
I want to live in a country where majority rule is cherished and protected, where no one thinks the collective will should be trumped by white privilege.
But when all those things are out of reach, I still have one thing left to give.
The truth.
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Your parents dress you in your best new outfit – maybe a nice pink jumper with a unicorn on it.
They help you tie your new sneakers – that’s right, two loops and a knot.
Then they put a surgical mask snugly over your mouth and nose, adhere a clear plastic face shield from your forehead down and snap some latex gloves on your hands.
“Off to school, Honey!”
“Don’t forget your antibacterial soap and Clorox wipes!”
What do you suppose would be going through your mind?
Would you feel safe? Would you feel loved? Would you feel valued?
Or maybe they do care enough but have no other choice. They’re “essential workers” and have to go to a series of minimum wage jobs to keep you fed, clothed and sheltered.
How would you feel about the people who own those jobs? The society that prioritizes keeping those jobs going instead of paying your parents to stay home with you?
Isn’t it just a big game of Monopoly? Players keep rolling the dice and landing on each others’ properties and having to pay rent. Hoping this turn you’ll make it past GO and collect $200.
With the exception of food, there’s nothing you really need outside of your home. If your parents didn’t have to worry about rent or utilities, they wouldn’t have to work. Yes, they’d need to go out to get food but the government could pay them to do that, too.
After all, it’s just Monopoly money. It’s just decorated pieces of paper. It has no inherent value… not like human lives.
I mean we’re living through a pandemic here. Leaving the house means exposure to the virus, and the longer you have to go out, the more people you’re exposed to, the greater the chances that you’ll get sick and/or bring the thing back home with you.
How would you feel about the school board members who compromise and say you only have to be put at risk for half the day or just so many days a week? Would that make it all better?
How would you feel when time-after-time the grown ups show you exactly how they feel about you, how little you actually matter, how much everything else is worth and how little they really care about you?
How would you feel if you were a little school kid getting ready for her first day of class this morning?
Would you feel safe, valued, loved?
What lesson would you take from everything happening all around you?
Some people are very worried that you won’t learn anything much this school year.
I’m afraid you’ll learn far too much.
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“When an individual commits an act of gross recklessness without regard to the probability that death to another is likely to result, that individual exhibits the state of mind required to uphold a conviction of manslaughter even if the individual did not intend for death to ensue.”
Lawmakers and school administrators better pay heed to this and similar nationwide decisions.
Along with fellow Republican Senator John Cornyn, McConnell proposed new liability laws protecting schools and businesses from Coronavirus-related lawsuits.
“Can you image the nightmare that could unfold this fall when K-12 kids are still at home, when colleges and universities are still not open? That is a scenario that would only be further aggravated in the absence of some kind of liability protection that reassures school administrators that they can actually open up again… Without it, frankly that’s just not going to happen as soon as it should have.”
The Kentucky Senator went on Fox News in late April saying that such legal protections would be necessary for Republicans to even consider any new Coronavirus relief bills.
According to those who were either on the call or were knowledgeable about the conversation, the college presidents said they needed to know their institutions would not get sued if people got sick – which they thought was almost a certainty.
One way the federal government can help “is to have some kind of liability protection,” said University of Texas at El Paso president Heather Wilson, who was on the call. Wilson is a former Republican congresswoman from New Mexico.
Big business is also calling for liability protection. Groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have been asking to be freed during the pandemic from being held liable if workers, customers or others get sick on their property. Notably, a lawyer for Texas Christian University told senators such a situation is “foreseeable, perhaps inevitable.”
Is it our responsibility to make sure customers, workers, students and teachers are safe from the virus? Or is it our responsibility to make sure businesses and schools aren’t sued for taking chances with our lives?
But that requires a vast expansion of our testing ability through coordinated federal action.
The problem is our lawmakers don’t care enough to do this.
Nor are they willing to provide us with federal relief checks, personal protective equipment (PPE), protection from evictions, and universal healthcare so that were can weather the storm.
Children, in particular, are less susceptible to COVID-19 than older people.
And while it’s true that young people have shown fewer symptoms and include the lowest numbers of deaths, this virus has been around barely more than a year. We simply don’t know much about it and its long term effects.
Researchers found few children 5-9 (the youngest included in the study) who had contracted the disease but those ages 10-19 were as likely to contract it as people ages 20-49 – and more likely than adults older than that.
And anyone who gambles with our lives needs to be held liable.
Anyone who demands we place our heads against the barrel of a loaded gun as a prerequisite to jump start the economy, needs to be held responsible for that decision.
In effect, we don’t know how many chambers are loaded, but we know there are bullets in the gun.
There are too many hidden factors to be able to say for sure what our chances are exactly. And in the presence of such ignorance, we should assume the worst.
That’s exactly what decision makers are doing by trying to protect themselves from responsibility.
We should take that as seriously as a loaded gun put to our temples.
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When I was just a new teacher, I remember my doctor asking me if I had a high stress job.
I said that I taught middle school, as if that answered his question. But he took it to mean that I had it easy. After all – as he put it – I just played with children all day.
Now after 16 years in the classroom and a series of chronic medical conditions including heart disease, Crohn’s Disease and a recent battle with shingles though I’m only in my 40s, he knows better.
You don’t put your life on the line in the same way the police or a soldier does. You don’t risk having a finger chopped off like someone working in a machine shop. You don’t even have to worry like a truck driver about falling asleep and drifting off the road.
Educators and school staff find their work “always” or “often” stressful 61 percent of the time. Workers in similar professions say that their job is “always” or “often” stressful only 30 percent of the time.
“This job is stressful, overwhelming and hard. I am overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, questioned and blamed for things that are out of my control.”
WORK LOAD
The most obvious cause of teacher stress is the workload.
Though the details vary slightly from study to study, the vast majority highlight this as the number one factor.
The NFER study concluded that teachers work longer hours than people in other professions though a less number of official days. This is because of the school year – classes meet for about 9-10 months but require far more than 40 hours a week to get everything done. In fact, teachers are putting in a full years work or more in those limited days.
For instance, an average American puts in about 260 days at work a year. Teachers average 70 less days but do the same (or more) hours that other employees put in during the full 260 days. But teachers are only paid for 190 days. So they do roughly the same amount of work in a shorter time span and are paid less for it. The result is a poor work-life balance and higher stress levels.
But exactly how many hours do teachers routinely work? It depends on who you ask.
According to NFER, teachers work an average of 47 hours a week, with a quarter working 60 hours a week or more and one in 10 working more than 65 hours a week.
Four in 10 teachers said they usually worked in the evenings, and one in 10 work on weekends.
Both of these studies refer to British teachers but estimates are similar for teachers in the United States.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reports that teachers in both countries are among those who work the most hours annually. The average secondary teacher in England teaches 1,225 hours a year. The average secondary teacher in the United States teaches 1,080 hours a year. Across the OECD, the average for most countries is 709 hours.
Finally, a study focusing just on US teachers by Scholastic, found that educators usually work 53 hours a week. That comes out to 7.5 hours a day in the classroom teaching. In addition, teachers spend 90 minutes before and/or after school mentoring, tutoring, attending staff meetings and collaborating with peers. Plus 95 additional minutes at home grading papers, preparing classroom activities and other job-related tasks.
And teachers who oversee extracurricular clubs put in an additional 11-20 hours a week.
No matter how you slice it, that’s a lot of extra hours.
According to the NFER study, two out of five teachers (41%) are dissatisfied with their amount of leisure time, compared to 32% of people in similar professionals.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, teachers in the United States make 14 percent less than people from professions that require similar levels of education.
They can’t buy a home or even rent an apartment in most metropolitan areas. They can’t afford to marry, raise children, or eke out a middle class existence.
That’s how you cut class size down from the 20, 30, even 40 students packed into a room that you can routinely find in some districts today.
The fact that we refuse to invest in our schools only increases the workload of the teachers who are still there. They look around and see students in desperate need and have to choose between what’s good for them, personally, and what’s good for their students.
THAT’S why teachers are working so many unpaid hours. They’re giving all they have to help their students despite a society that refuses to provide the necessary time and resources.
And make no mistake, one of those resources is having enough teachers to get the job done.
RESPECT
For a lot of teachers, the issue boils down to respect – lack of it.
Estimates vary somewhat from study to study, but the basic structure holds. The vast majority of impact on learning comes from the home and out-of-school factors. Teachers are a small part of the picture. They are the largest single factor in the school building, but the school, itself, is only one of many components.
The people who know teachers the best—parents, co-workers and students—show much more respect for teachers than elected officials and media pundits, many of whom rarely set foot in a classroom, according to the 2017 BATs and AFT Quality of Work Life Survey.
While educators feel most respected by their colleagues, they also indicated that their direct supervisors showed them much more respect than their school boards, the media, elected officials and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. A total of 86 percent of respondents did not feel respected by DeVos.
“This lack of voice over important instructional decisions is a tangible example of the limited respect policymakers have for educators,” the report concluded.
Sometimes this lack of respect leads to outright bullying.
A total of 43 percent of respondents in the public survey group reported having been bullied, harassed or threatened at work in the last year. Of these reports, 35% included claims of having been bullied by administrators, principals or supervisors, 23% by co-workers, 50% by students, 31% by students’ parents. Many claimed to have been bullied by multiple sources.
This is a much higher rate of bullying, harassment and threats than workers in the general population.
I, myself, have experienced this even to the point of being physically injured by students multiple times – nothing so serious that it put me in the hospital, but enough to require a doctor’s visit.
And to make matters worse, one-third of respondents said that teachers and faculty at their schools did not felt safe bringing up problems and addressing issues.
CONCLUSIONS
Teacher stress is a real problem in our schools.
If we want to provide our children with a world class education, we need to look out for the educators who do the actual work.
We need to drastically reduce the workload expected of them. We need to hire more teachers so the burden can be more adequately sustained. We need to increase teacher salary to retain those already on the job and to attract the most qualified applicants in the future. We need to stop blaming teachers for every problem in society and give them the respect and autonomy they deserve for having volunteered to do one of the most important jobs in any society. And we have to stop bullying and harassing them.
As a nation, our children are our most valuable resource. If we want to do what’s best for the generations to come, we need to stop stressing out those brave people who step up to guide our kids into a brighter tomorrow.
Commonwealth law already allowed for armed police and school resource officers in school buildings.
The new bill just adds security guards to the accepted list – so long as they go through special training.
So some observers are asking what happens if teachers and administrators go through the same training? Wouldn’t they then qualify as “security personnel” and thus be eligible to be armed as part of their jobs?
The bill only says who may be armed in schools. It doesn’t say anything about who may not be armed.
So if a district were to arm teachers – even without that special security guard training – it wouldn’t be specifically breaking the law. It would be operating in a huge loophole left open by the legislature and Gov. Wolf.
In fact, the original version of the bill would have covered just such an ambiguity. It included language saying that ONLY the people specifically mentioned in the law (police, resource officers and security guards) were allowed to be armed. However, Wolf could not get legislators to agree on it, so this language was stripped from the bill that was eventually passed.
A handful of superintendents in rural parts of the state have already gotten permission from country law enforcement officials and are now carrying guns to school, according to a lawyer representing 50 Commonwealth districts.
Attorney Ronald Repak, of Altoona-based Beard Legal Group, gave a presentation at a school safety conference saying that his firm had secured permission from local district attorneys for administrators to carry firearms as part of their jobs. They cited ambiguity in the law that allowed for different interpretations.
Repak said that fewer than six superintendents had been approved, but he would not say which ones or which districts employed them.
Title 18, Section 912 of the Pa. Crimes Code says that no one except recognized security personnel may bring a weapon onto school grounds, unless it is for a supervised school activity or “other lawful purpose.”
But again that leaves a huge loophole.
Secretary of Education Pedro Rivera wrote in 2016 that the Pennsylvania Department of Education considers “the scope of ‘lawful purpose’…unclear and unsettled.”
And that has been the pattern in Harrisburg on most matters – a gerrymandered GOP-controlled legislature narrowly passing far right legislation checked by a popularly elected Democratic governor.
However, Republicans may have gotten one passed the goal with SB 621.
Wolf had hoped the bill would end the matter once and for all. When he signed it into law, he released a statement saying:
“The students, parents, and educators in this commonwealth can now be secure in the knowledge that teachers can dedicate themselves to teaching our children, and that the security of school facilities rests in the hands of trained, professional security personnel.”
“…adding security personnel who do not have the same law enforcement background, training and experience of those personnel already authorized to serve as school security in the School Code is misguided.
[In addition] …although we understand that the legislation initially was intended only to address security personnel, we believe SB 621 could be manipulated by school districts intent on arming teachers as a ‘security’ measure… We hope you will Vote No on SB 621.”
The matter is bound to wind up in the courts where it will ultimately be decided.
Concerned citizens should probably go to their local school board and let directors know they don’t want school personnel – security guards or others – packing heat.
To be clear, the new bill doesn’t require security guards to be armed, but it does allow districts to arm them if they go through the necessary training.
It includes lessons on developing relationships with diverse students, understanding special needs students, how to deal with violence, victimization, threat response and the prevention of violence in schools. It also includes Act 235 lethal weapons training on specifically how to carry and use lethal weapons.
Some legislators wanted security guards to have to go through the same training as police officers – a 900-hour municipal course. However, since this would include instruction school security officers would not need such as lessons on traffic laws and the vehicle code – not to mention its hefty cost of $9,000 per person – it was scrapped.
Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against security guards. There are several good ones at my district.
The child in question was certainly difficult and could be defiant. But he was a middle school age child. He didn’t deserve to have his head slammed into a table – nor would I want someone with so little impulse control to have to police his trigger finger during tense confrontations with students.
In real-world shootings, police officers miss their targets about 4-in-5 shots, according to Dr. Peter Langman, a psychologist who’s studied school shootings. Do you really expect rent-a-cops and teachers to be more accurate?
Even armed police don’t do much to stop school shootings.
“Excuse the interruption. We are under a lockdown.”
That was it.
Not an explanation of what caused it.
Not any idea of how much danger we were in.
Not any idea of how long it would last.
Just a vague warning that teachers knew meant to keep all their students in class until further notice.
As an educator, you’re expected to teach.
It doesn’t matter what’s happening around you. There can be yelling or screaming. There can be a scuffle in the next room. The lights may flicker off and on.
I teach mostly poor and minority students in a western Pennsylvania school near Pittsburgh.
My 8th grade language arts class was in the middle of taking a final exam on The Outsidersby S. E. Hinton.
Most of my students were finished, but it was still quiet as two or three students struggled through their last responses.
Then the announcement came over the PA.
“…lockdown.”
The voice was the high school secretary. Since the middle and high school are connected, she rarely makes announcements in my building – only when something is important happening for both buildings.
The kids looked up at me with worried faces.
“What’s going on, Mr. Singer?” one of them asked.
I told them the truth – I really had no idea. There were no drills planned for today. In fact, it would have been a really poor time for one. We had just had ALICE training the day before where the resource officer and the principal had met with students to go over what to do in case of an active shooter. The program is named for the courses of actions it recommends – Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate.
So we were apparently in the L.
During the assembly, the resource officer had said quite bluntly that there would be no coded messages. If a school shooter entered the building, officials would tell us in plain language what was happening so we could make an informed decision what to do.
But there was no additional message over the PA. That was it.
I went over to my computer to see if there was an email. Nope. Nothing.
My room has no windows to the outside. It’s a brick box with one wooden door containing a sliver of window.
The door was already closed and locked. We’re told to keep it that way just in case. But there’s an additional deadbolt you can click to make it even harder to gain access to the room.
“It’s probably nothing,” I said as I walked over to the door and surreptitiously clicked the deadbolt.
I asked student to finish their tests.
It seemed the best course of action. We could either worry about an unknown that was extremely unlikely or else just take care of our business.
It was hard getting the students to calm down. They were scared, and, frankly, so was I.
But this seemed the best thing we could do – Seek normalcy but stay vigilant in case things changed.
“Mr. Singer, may I use the bathroom?” asked one child.
“I’m sorry, but no.” I said. “Not until the lockdown is over.”
Somehow I quieted them down and the remaining students finished their tests.
It seemed to take them forever.
I stood by those who were finalizing answers in the hope that my physical presence would get them to concentrate.
So they handed in the tests and we went over the answers.
“May I use the bathroom?”
“No. Not yet. Sorry.”
For about five minutes things went as they would on any other day.
But as soon as there was a lull in the activity, the fear and worry returned.
Students wanted to take out their cell phones and call or text home.
I told them not to.
“Why?” asked a boy in the front.
I knew the answer. We had nothing we could tell parents other than that there was a lockdown. We didn’t know what caused it or what was happening. If there was something bad going on, having parents come to the school would only make things worse.
But I just told him to put it away. I didn’t want to debate the situation. I didn’t want them (or me) to think about what might be happening.
I could call the office on my school phone, but that just might make things worse.
“Mr. Singer, I’ve GOT to use the bathroom!”
I looked around. I wasn’t sure what to do. I couldn’t let him out there. It would literally be better if he peed his pants.
He must have seen my confusion. “Can I just pee in a bottle or something?”
“Do you have a bottle?”
“No.”
I was about to tell him to take the garbage can into the corner and pee into it but there was no empty corner in the room.
Before I could remark any further, he said, “It’s okay. I’ll just hold it.”
That’s when I noticed the time. We had already spent more than the 40 minutes in the allotted period. The bell should have rung to get students to move to another room. That meant the bells were off.
The students noticed, too.
I kept telling them that everything was probably fine and that I wouldn’t let anything happen to them.
Then we noticed something weird out of the window in the door.
One of the school custodians was standing right outside the room.
He didn’t seem alarmed. He appeared to be looking for something.
Then another custodian walked up to him and they conferred in the hall.
We heard talking. Perhaps the principal in the distance.
Whatever was happening they seemed to have it under control and didn’t appear worried.
I had nothing planned for my students to do. We were well off book here. I couldn’t just start a new unit. I had no idea how long we’d be here.
So I asked them to take out their self-selected books and read.
They groaned.
“How are we going to concentrate on that?” someone asked.
I didn’t really have an answer but it was better to try than to worry needlessly.
So after some cajoling, they dutifully took their books out. Most just stared around the room listening to every nonexistent sound. But some at least appeared to be reading.
“Mr. Singer…”
“NO YOU CAN’T USE THE BATHROOM!”
Then not long after, the announcement came that the lockdown was over and students could move to their next class.
There was no explanation. Kids just breathed a collective sigh and went to their classes.
I let anyone use the restroom who asked. And I tried to teach through another class.
I truly expected a printed letter from the superintendent to be hand delivered to the room so the kids could take it home. But no. Perhaps there hadn’t been enough time to write, print and disperse one.
After the students were dismissed, I expected administrators to announce a staff meeting to let the teachers know, at least, what had happened. But there was nothing.
I went into another teacher’s room and saw a group talking. THAT was when I found out about what had happened.
A group of students in the high school had been fighting.
Apparently it was pretty bad – almost a riot. One child had been knocked cold and taken out of the building on a stretcher. The others had been removed by police.
When teachers had broken it up, some of the kids had run and were hiding in the building. That’s why the lockdown.
There was more on the 11 O’clock News. Some of the kids had filmed the fight with their phones and put it up on Snapchat.
We eventually got a letter from the superintendent and an email from another administrator saying that it had just been a minor fight.
Parents were on the news saying that administration hadn’t handled it properly, but no one showed up at the next school board meeting to complain.
It probably won’t ever come down to the worst case scenario. Yet the fact that it might and that no one really seems to be doing much of anything to stop it from getting to that point – that changes what it means to be in school.
We live with this reality everyday now.
It’s not fair to students. It’s not fair to teachers or parents.
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