Will We Even Try to Keep Students and Teachers Safe from Gun Violence? Or Just Keep Preparing for the Worst?

October 22, 2022October 22, 2022 stevenmsinger Accountability, Allegheny County, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, Data, Democrat, Education, Gun Control, Guns, history, Labor, Local Control, Mass Shooting, Parents, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Schools, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Police, Politics, Prejudice, protest, Republican, school violence, Schools, Shooting, Special Education, student teacher relationship, Students, teacher autonomy, Teachers, Uncategorized education, firearms, Gun Control, gun sense, Gun Violence, Guns in Schools, Mass Shooting, Politics, school shootings, schools, teachers, violence, violence against children

“Teachers, we are operating on a lockdown. Please keep your doors locked until we tell you it has been lifted.”

Before me a sea of wide eyes and scared faces.

I slowly walked toward the door continuing the lesson I had been giving before the announcement. The door was already shut and secured but I nonchalantly turned the extra deadbolt.

“Click!” it sounded like a gunshot across the suddenly silent room.

I continued talking while making my way back to the blackboard pretending that nothing out of the ordinary was happening.

That’s just life in the classroom these days.

According to Eduction Week, there have been 38 school shootings in the US this year resulting in injuries or deaths. That’s up from 34 last year and the highest it’s been since the media source began tracking such things in 2018.

During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, there were only 10 such shootings in 2020, and 24 each in 2019 and 2018.

That comes to a total of 130 school shootings in the last five years.

“Mr. Singer, can I go to the bathroom?” DeVon asked.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “We’re still under lockdown. I’ll write you a pass as soon as it’s lifted.”

It seems like nowhere is safe.

Three of this year’s shootings were in my home state of Pennsylvania.

The first was on January 19 at Pittsburgh’s Oliver Citywide Academy, a special education school.

A 15-year-old boy waiting in a van to go home was shot and killed after at least one person opened fire outside the school.

The second was on April 5 at Erie High School. A 16-year-old student was shot and injured at the school.

The third was on Sept 27 at Roxborough High School in Philadelphia.

A 14-year-old student was killed and four others wounded (ages 17, 15, 14, and 14) in a shooting near the high school athletic field after a football scrimmage.

“Mr. Singer, what’s happening?” Olivia asked.

I turned to her confused at first then I realized what she meant.

“The lockdown? Let me check my laptop. No…. Nothing. I really don’t know, Honey. But I’m sure whatever it is, it will be over soon. Why don’t you get back to the assignment?”

“Okay.”

Such violence isn’t limited to schools.

On Sept 24 three people were shot in Kennywood Park, a popular amusement park in West Mifflin.

Two years ago in September a 15-year-old boy was killed and another was wounded in a shooting at the Haunted Hills Hayride in North Versailles.

In 2020 a man was shot and killed at Monroeville Mall. In 2015, a 17-year-old entered the men’s department on the lower level of Macy’s department store in the evening and shot his intended target and two bystanders, leaving two with critical injuries.

Is there anywhere safe anymore?

You can’t go to the mall. You can’t go on a haunted hayride. You can’t go to an amusement park.

I had students who were hiding in the mall during the 2015 shooting. My daughter wasn’t involved in any shootings but she went to Kennywood this summer.

Where does it stop?

Why are we doing so little?

A few weeks ago my school had another active shooter training for teachers while the students, thankfully, had a day off.

Every few years we do this. Teachers huddle in classrooms and try to react to a shooting scenario. We either barricade ourselves in our classrooms or try to find an escape route. We help train police and local medical personnel.

At this years training, teachers were given a talk by a law enforcement “expert” who regaled us with his time working as a Blackwater mercenary in Afghanistan. He told us how difficult it was to make decisions under fire but that sometimes you had to make the hard decisions.

“Some of you teachers have kids in wheelchairs in your classrooms. You think you’re going to get your whole class out of the building and to safety!? You have to ask yourself, how are you going to get that kid in the wheelchair out? What are you going to do if a child flips out or is too scared to move? I know it’s not nice to think about, but sometimes you have to make decisions that will save the most people – not necessarily everyone.”

It made me want to vomit. But he wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know.

I like to believe I’d pick the child up out of his wheelchair, throw him over my shoulder and carry him to safety. I hope I could calm down a child having a panic attack and whisk her out of the building.

But could I really? Alone?

We do everything we can to prepare ourselves in case something like this happens – but as a society we do nothing – NOTHING – to prevent shootings from happening in the first place.

Where’s increased gun regulations to make sure these weapons aren’t getting into the hands of criminals or the mentally unstable?

Where are bans on assault weapons and other weapons of mass destruction and war?

Where is increased liability for those recklessly selling firearms?

Where is anything we could be doing to make our schools, malls and places of entertainment safer?

“Mr. Singer, I really have to go to the bathroom.”

“You can’t hold it just a little longer, DeVon?”

“No,” he said hoping from foot to foot.

“Number 1 or number 2?”

He giggled and held up one finger.

I reluctantly pointed to the trash can.

“Take it over there to the corner. I’ll stand in front of you so…”

“Attention teachers! The lockdown has now been lifted. You may continue as normal.”

I sighed, unlocked the door and wrote DeVon a bathroom pass.

We never did find out what triggered the lockdown. One time it was a gunshot in the surrounding neighborhood. Another time it was an unauthorized adult seeking access to the building.

It could be much worse. And it will happen again.

The chances of it being a school shooter are low.

The chances of myself or my students being hurt or killed is even lower.

But it’s still too high.

Living under the constant shadow of this threat is creating a trauma that we’ve given up trying to solve and just call normal.

It is unacceptable.

We need to do more.

Not just on the days when one of these tragedies strike – but every day.

It is not safe for students and teachers – it will NEVER be completely safe, but it can be safer.

That’s the point – how safe can we make it?

And why aren’t we doing anything to reach that goal other than preparing for the worst?

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Doug Mastriano’s Rootin’ Tootin’ School Shootin’ Prevention Plan in PA

June 19, 2022June 19, 2022 stevenmsinger Accountability, Budget, Charter Schools, Child Predators, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, Donald Trump, Education, Election, Gun Control, Guns, Harrisburg, history, Labor, Mass Shooting, Pennsylvania, Politics, Prejudice, privatization, Propaganda, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, Schools, Shooting, Students, Teachers, Uncategorized, Unions, video games, Violence Against Children, voting Doug Mastriano, dumb, education, governor, Gun Control, gun sense, Gun Violence, Guns in Schools, Pennsylvania, Politics, Republicans, schools, state legislature, Students, teachers

A teenage boy in a black trench coat walks down a school hallway.

A young girl abruptly turns a corner and is about to walk past when she stops and notices an oblong shape in his coat.

He pulls out an AR-15 and points it at her head.

She gasps. He smiles.

“Hold it right there, Patrick.” Says a voice behind him.

“Mr. Callahan?” The boy says starting to bring the barrel around.

‘Uh-uh. Stop right there,” says the voice shoving something in the boy’s back.

“I know what you’re thinking,” the teacher continues. “My homeroom teacher, Mr. Callahan, has a gun in his desk. Did he remember to bring it with him to hall duty? Well to tell you the truth in all this excitement I kinda lost track myself. But being it’s a 500 S&W Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you’ve gotta ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk?”

Apparently this is how Doug Mastriano thinks school shootings can best be prevented.

The Pennsylvania State Senator and Republican candidate for governor plans to introduce a bill allowing school employees to arm themselves while on school property if they have a concealed carry permit and pass a firearms course.

Not gun control. Not stopping teens from buying assault weapons. Not keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.

Instead, arm the teachers. Arm the principals. Put a piece in the hands of Lunch Lady Doris. Maybe even the custodians will be packing heat with a bucket and mop.

This is not the kind of serious proposal Commonwealth residents deserve from a representative of the legislature or executive branch. It’s not the kind of serious proposal you’d expect from a grown adult. Heck. It’s not what you’d expect from a small child still unable to tie his own shoes.

School shootings are not action movie scenarios. They’re not run-and-gun video games. They’re not cops and robbers. They’re real life.

They’re the cause of elementary kids being decapitated by assault weapons fire.

They’re the cause of fifth grade bodies so unrecognizable they have to be identified by their green Converse sneakers.

They’re the cause of child sized coffins adorned with cartoon doggies and kitties – brightly colored friends to accompany little kids to their final resting places.

Mastriano’s suggestion would be pathetic if it weren’t so dangerous.

He thinks school shooters are attracted to places where they know people aren’t armed.

However, history proves him wrong.

The overwhelming majority of school shootings either involved armed police stationed at the school or police responding quickly thereafter.

Lest we forget, there were police officers on both the campuses of Robb Elementary School in Texas and Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where shootings cumulatively took the lives of more than 30 students.

According to a 2021 JAMA Network study that looked at 133 school shootings from 1980 to 2019, armed guards did not significantly reduce injuries or deaths during school mass shootings.

In fact, when researchers controlled for location and school characteristic factors, “the rate of deaths was 2.83 times greater in schools with an armed guard present.”

Put simply, school shootings are not rational activities subject to cost benefit analysis from the people contemplating doing them. Would-be shooters do not expect to come out alive. They don’t care if there is armed resistance or not. In fact, the presence of armed resistance only encourages them to bring deadlier weaponry – especially semi-automatic guns.

That’s why police in Uvalde, Texas, were too scared to go into Robb Elementary School and stop the perpetrator armed with an AR-15 – perhaps the most common weapon used in school shootings.

And when trained police are afraid, Mastriano expects better from school staff – teachers, secretaries, aides, and nurses!!!?

A similar proposal permitting the arming of school employees passed the state Senate in June 2017 but it died in a House committee. In the district where I work as a middle school teacher, we talked about the issue at a staff meeting.

The few people who thought it was a good idea and said they would gladly bring a gun with them to school are nice people – but they’re the last ones you’d want armed.

Moreover, we have a school resource officer who said he was not in favor of the measure because it would make things tougher for law enforcement responding to a shooting. It would make it that much more unclear who the shooter was and increase the chances of friendly fire.

It’s hardly surprising Mastriano is making such boneheaded proposals.

If elected governor, he also promises to cut public school funding IN HALF and make it harder for educators to collectively bargain for better salaries, benefits, and working conditions.

He is an extremist who wants to destroy public education in favor or charter and voucher schools, take away people’s freedom to choose what to do with their own bodies, discriminate against anyone with a different sexuality or religious belief and give away as much tax money as possible to private businesses.

Mastriano is either a fool who does not understand the issues or a patsy of the lunatic fringe of his party or both.

He wouldn’t arm teachers with books, funding or resources to teach – just guns.

He is an embarrassment to the people of Franklin County who elected him to the legislature and the Republican base who chose him to represent them in the governor’s race.

I know it’s trendy for the GOP to pick the candidate most likely to piss off the people across the aisle, but this isn’t a game.

Fools like Mastriano are going to get innocent people and their children killed – not to mention the suffering thousands will have to endure if his policies ever see the light of day.

He thinks the answer to school shootings is to turn the school librarian into Yosemite Sam.

If you vote for him in the general election, you will reap what you sow – misery and death.

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Pennsylvania Law Meant to Forbid Arming Teachers May Have Done Just the Opposite

August 8, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Budget, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Democrat, Education, Gun Control, Guns, Harissburg, Labor, Local Control, Mass Shooting, Parents, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Police, Politics, Republican, school violence, Schools, Shooting, Students, Teachers, Tom Wolf, Unions, Violence Against Children child safety, education, Gun Control, gun sense, Gun Violence, Guns, Guns in Schools, Harrisburg, law enforcement, legislature, Mass Shooting, Pennsylvania, police, Politics, public schools, safe schools, school shootings, schools, security guards, teachers, Tom Wolf

Pennsylvania teachers, don’t forget to pack your Glock when returning to school this year.

A new law meant to close the door on arming teachers may have cracked it open.

Despite warnings from gun safety activists, the bill, SB 621, was approved by the legislature and signed into law by Gov. Tom Wolf this summer.

The legislation explicitly allows security guards – independent contractors who are not members of law enforcement – to carry guns in schools if they go through special training.

And that’s bad enough.

Why you’d want glorified rent-a-cops with guns strapped to their hips running around schools full of children is beyond me.

That’s not going to make anyone safer. It’s going to do just the opposite.

But that’s not even the worst of it.

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?

Some say yes.

But others go even farther.

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.

This isn’t just theoretical.

Several school administrators have already taken advantage of it.

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.

Meanwhile, a district in the eastern part of the state between Hershey and Allentown has already passed a policy to arm teachers and staff.

Tamaqua Area School District in Schuylkill County, approved the policy last year but suspended it following litigation from the teachers association and a parent group.

Since Harrisburg passed this new measure, school board members and administration have been going back and forth about how it pertains to their policy and whether they can legally reinstate it even with pending litigation.

SB 621 was supposed to fix the ambiguity of previous statutes on the matter.

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.”

That’s what originally prompted Tamaqua school directors to pass their policy to arm teachers – the first of its kind in the state.

The Republican majority in the legislature has been trying to pass a law explicitly allowing teachers to be armed for years.

In June of 2017, the state Senate even passed just such a bill but it got nowhere in the House. Moreover, Gov. Wolf threatened to veto it.

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.”

Ceasefire Pennsylvania, a statewide gun safety organization, saw the danger and warned against it. The organization urged the legislature not to pass the bill and the governor not to sign it.

In a letter sent to lawmakers, the group wrote:

“…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.

The instruction outlined in the law required before guards can be armed costs less than $500 per person.

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.

However, putting guns in their hands doesn’t make me feel any safer.

A few years ago, a security guard at my school lost his job because he slammed one of my students into a lunch table.

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.

Arming security guards is just plain dumb. Heck! So is arming teachers and administrators!

This isn’t the wild west. It’s a classroom.

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.

The four high-profile school shootings in 2018 — including the one in Parkland, Florida and Santa Fe, Texas — had armed guards. All failed to stop the gunmen.

But research consistently shows that increasing the number of guns in schools increases the likelihood that students will get hold of them.

What we need are sensible gun regulations to limit the number of people who have access to firearms. We need mandatory background checks and a ban on assault weapons – the murder instrument of choice for mass shooters. We need buy back programs to reduce the ridiculous numbers of guns available.

This new law does none of that. It was a Faustian bargain at best – and like always happens when you try to best the Devil, you end up losing.

Only this time, the losers are our teachers and school children.

Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

Teaching Through Lockdown

January 27, 2019January 28, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Local Control, Mass Shooting, nonviolence, Parents, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, school violence, Schools, Shooting, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Violence Against Children education, firearms, Gun Control, gun sense, Gun Violence, Guns, Guns in Schools, lockdown, public schools, schools, teachers, teaching

“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.

None of that matters.

If you have students and aren’t in immediate danger, you’re expected to teach them.

And that’s what I did. Even then.

I teach mostly poor and minority students in a western Pennsylvania school near Pittsburgh.

My 8^th grade language arts class was in the middle of taking a final exam on The Outsiders by 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.

I pressed refresh a few times. Nothing.

I asked the students to hush and just listened.

It was extremely quiet. Even the hallway was silent and it’s never that silent except during standardized testing.

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.

For the millionth time I pondered the wisdom of grouping kids into classes based on test scores. All you end up doing is sorting them by poverty, race, trauma and behavior problems.

But they were soon done.

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.

We hadn’t finished watching the movie version of “The Outsiders” so I quickly put that on.

We only had about 15 minutes to go. And watching Dally get shot down by police probably wasn’t the best choice under the circumstances.

Still, the kids were focused on the film and not the lockdown.

We discussed how the movie and the book differed for a few moments.

But inevitably there was a lull.

We all got quiet and just listened. Nothing.

No. Down the hall we could hear something. Maybe a scuffle. Voices. It was hard to tell.

I started thinking of options, what to do if someone tried to enter the room. But it got quiet again.

Still no email. No message. Nothing.

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.

And so life goes on.

The threat of violence always hangs over our heads.

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.

But when you live in a society so broken that it can’t even begin to address its own problems, this is what you get.

Still can’t get enough Gadfly? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

Children of the Gun: How Lax Firearm Legislation Affects My Students

January 22, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, capitalism, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Democrat, Education, Gun Control, Guns, Learning, Local Control, Mass Shooting, nonviolence, Pennsylvania, Politics, Republican, Schools, Social Justice, standards, Students, Teachers, Violence Against Children ALICE Training, Childhood Trauma, discipline, education, firearms, Gun Control, gun sense, Gun Violence, Guns, Guns in Schools, law enforcement, lockdown drill, police, Politics, public schools, schools, teachers, teaching

Tanisha was just 6-years-old the first time she was in a shooting.

She was home in the kitchen looking for a cookie when she heard a “pop pop pop” sound.

Her mother rushed into the room and told her to get down.

Tanisha didn’t know what was happening.

“Hush, Baby,” her mom said wrapping the child in her arms and pulling her to the floor. “Someone’s out there shooting up the neighborhood.”

That was a story one of my 8^th grade students told me today.

And it was far from the only one.

For the first time, my urban school district in Western Pennsylvania had an ALICE training for the students.

The program helps prepare schools, businesses and churches in case of an active shooter. Its name is an acronym for its suggested courses of action – Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate.

In a district like mine where three separate gunmen went on sprees within 5 miles of each other during the last few years, this sort of training is becoming more frequent.

We’ve had numerous seminars for the teachers – even active shooter drills. With the students, we’ve had lockdown drills were the kids were basically instructed to duck and cover under their desks or in corners or closets.

But this was the first time the danger was made explicit in an assembly by grade level.

Our school resource officer and middle school principal stood side-by-side before the 8^th grade going over in detail how someone might come into the building with the express purpose to kill as many of them as possible.

And then they told these 12 and 13-year-olds that it was up to them to do something about it.

That hiding wasn’t good enough. They needed to try to escape or incapacitate the attacker.

It still shocks me that we’ve gotten to this point.

We no longer expect society to keep us safe – to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people.

It’s up to the children to watch out for themselves.

I can tell you as a teacher with more than 15 years experience in the classroom, I have never seen kids so quiet as they were in that auditorium.

It makes me sick.

When I was their age I was playing with Luke Skywalker action figures and building space ships out of Legos. I wasn’t discussing with police how to avoid a bullet to the brain. I wasn’t advised to wear my backpack on my chest to help protect against being gut shot.

I wasn’t then going back to class and talking over with my teacher how we can best barricade the room against any would-be bad guys.

But that’s what we did today.

I tried to reassure my kids that they were safe, that we could secure the door and if worst came to worst I wouldn’t let anything happen to them.

But these children aren’t like I was at their age.

They were shocked by the directness of the assembly. But they were no strangers to violence.

Later in the day, so many of them came back to me to talk about their relationship to guns and how firearms impacted their lives.

“I know you can’t get an automatic rifle unless…”

“I have a friend whose brother…”

“You don’t know what it’s like to lose your best friend to a gun.”

One of them had been friends with Antwon Rose in East Pittsburgh friends with Antwon Rose in East Pittsburgh. They knew all the details about how he ran from police and was shot down.

Someone coming into the school with a gun? Heck! They experience that everyday with the police.

For many of my kids, law enforcement isn’t automatically a comforting thought. They don’t trust the uniform. Often with good reason.

And now they were being told that safety was just another one of their responsibilities – like doing their homework and picking up after themselves in the cafeteria.

I can’t shake the feeling that these kids are being cheated – that the world we’ve built isn’t worthy of them.

What point is a society that can’t keep its own children safe?

What point police and firefighters and lawmakers and courts and laws and even a system of justice if we can’t use them to protect our own kids?

Isn’t that our job?

Isn’t that what adults are supposed to do?

Keep the danger out there so that the little ones can grow up and inherit a better world?

But we don’t even try to do that anymore.

We’ve given up trying.

No more pushing for better laws and safer regulations.

Just look the kids straight in the eye and tell them that death may be coming and there’s nothing we can do about it.

It’s up to them.

If that’s the best we can do, then shame on us.

The Pittsburgh Community is Stronger Than the Synagogue Shooter’s Hate

October 27, 2018 stevenmsinger antisemitism, Civil Rights, Compassion, Education, Feminism, Gun Control, Guns, Hate Crimes, immigration, Mass Shooting, Media, nonviolence, Pennsylvania, Philosophy, Police, Politics, Prejudice, Racism, segregation, Sexism, Shooting, Social Justice anti-semitism, Civil Rights, Gun Control, gun sense, Gun Violence, Guns, hate crimes, jewish, Mass Shooting, Nazi, nonviolence, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, racism, Squirrel Hill, synagogue, white supremacist

There’s a popular yard sign in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh.

In bands of green and blue and yellow, it projects the same message in Spanish, English and Arabic:

“No matter where you are from, we’re glad you’re our neighbor.”

If the community had a motto, I think that might be it.

Though known for its high concentration of Jewish residents, the Pennsylvania locale is a multicultural crossroads.

That may have made it a target today when a shooter entered the Tree of Life Synagogue.

Though the alleged culprit has been captured, details are still being uncovered. The death toll has yet to be tallied.

Unconfirmed reports state that he shouted “All Jews must die,” before opening fire.

But I don’t believe that the Jewish community was his only target.

Or more precisely – it wasn’t just the Jewish part – it was the community that had grown up around it.

I know Squirrel Hill well.

I live close by. I grew up on those streets. I’ve been to services at that synagogue. I have family who are members.

Thankfully it seems that no one related to me was there this morning. But when victims names are released, I probably will know who they are.

I know this community.

I am an extended part of it.

And that’s something of which I am proud.

Just walk along Murray Avenue and you’ll see Indian, Italian, Jewish, African, Chinese – every nationality imaginable – offering the fruits of their culture for friendly commerce.

You’ll see Hasidic Jews in dark hats and flowing tzitzit walking next to women in colorful saris next to trans and lesbians, kids with every color skin playing together in harmony.

Whenever I want a good corned beef sandwich or a quality lox and bagel, I go there. Whenever I want a spicy curry or the freshest sushi or an authentic macaroon, that’s the place. If I want to hear a string quartet or a lecture from a visiting dignitary or even if I want to swim in a public pool, membership to the Jewish Community Center is open to all.

It’s like a few blocks of cosmopolitan life tucked away in a city more known for segregation. We have many ethnic neighborhoods but few where one culture flows so easily into another.

Heck. Even the Tree of Life Synagogue, itself, doesn’t serve one congregation. It serves three who all had services going on at different parts of the building this morning.

There’s just something very special about this place.

It’s where you can go to be yourself – in fact, you’re encouraged to be who you are and not conform to any particular norm. Yet in doing so, you’re somehow demonstrating unity.

Paradoxically, being you makes you one of us.

It’s weird.

I think it may have been that sense of community that made Squirrel Hill, in general, and the Tree of Life Synagogue, in particular, a target.

The hate-filled person who attacked us today was terrified of that unity.

He was so frightened of disillusion, of losing his sense of self, that he had to end the lives of those who could do what he couldn’t.

It’s pathetic, really.

If your sense of self is only a negative, only opposition to someone else’s otherness, you really don’t have much self to lose.

If you define yourself by your hate, what are you?

Do you even really exist?

Most of us are very different.

We are complex assortments of personality – a family identity, a cultural heritage, a work persona, a spirituality, a sense of justice.

Communities like Squirrel Hill nurture this multifarious nature.

They welcome and celebrate difference.

I wish America was more like Squirrel Hill and not the other way around.

If this community’s normal was our national ideal, think of the country we would be living in!

Being different wouldn’t be an obstacle, it would be cherished.

When meeting someone with an unfamiliar name, a heritage of which you were ignorant, a sexuality or gender identity of which you had little knowledge – your response wouldn’t be fear or discomfort. It would be a thrill of excitement that you are lucky enough to broaden your understanding of the many ways there are to be human.

It would be a country where no one grew up so stunted and afraid that the only solution they could imagine would be the death of others.

That’s the America I want to live in.

Squirrel Hill is stronger than this synagogue shooters hate.

I hope our country is, too.

The Best Way to Prepare for School Shootings is to Reduce the Chances They’ll Happen at All

September 28, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Budget, capitalism, Child Predators, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, Congress, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Gun Control, Guns, Mass Shooting, nonviolence, Parents, Pennsylvania, Police, Politics, Poverty, protest, Republican, School Funding, School to Prison Pipeline, school violence, Schools, Shooting, Students, Teachers active shooter drill, education, Gun Control, gun sense, Gun Violence, Guns, Guns in Schools, NRA, public schools, school shootings, schools, teachers, teaching

I participated in yet another active shooter drill at my school this week.

“Death to the infidels!” shouted Mr. O’Grady, one of my fellow teachers, as he stormed the classroom with a Nerf blaster rifle.

I had stuffed myself under a table in another teacher’s reading nook.

But it did no good.

One of the soft yellow balls came sproinging out of the gun and bounced off the carpet into my groin.

Then someone blew a whistle and the scenario was over.

The classroom full of teachers collected ourselves from behind overturned tables and under desks before uncertainly getting to our feet.

“Who got hit?” asked the principal as he poked his head into the room.

A flurry of hands went up including mine.

The students had been dismissed about an hour earlier. The body count was made up entirely of faculty and staff – teachers, administrators, security guards, substitutes, lunch ladies, etc.

The lesson we were supposed to take away from the activity was that hiding was a losing strategy.

“Do something,” one of the police officers conducting the drill said.

They wanted us to swarm the shooter, throw things at him (Nerf balls in our scenario) or make a run for it. Anything but simply staying put and being sitting ducks.

It made me wonder why our lawmakers don’t heed the same advice.

Do something?

Yeah. Why doesn’t Harrisburg do something? Why doesn’t Washington?

That’s where you can make a real difference to keep our schools safe.

Instead of making the world safer for our kids, we’re trying to lock them up in a castle and keep the violence out.

But it’s impossible. You can’t keep out human nature.

The same things that cause shooters to enter the school and go on a killing spree are already in our classrooms.

O’Grady may have imagined he was a member of Al-Qaeda as he pretended to blow his co-workers away, but if a shooter ever enters our building, he’s more likely to be a co-worker, parent or student.

We don’t need more ways to keep them out. We CAN’T keep them out and still do our jobs!

All we can do is try to alleviate the pressure, to counsel mental distress, heal physical trauma, guard against societal hurts.

And if that doesn’t work, we can lower the stakes and limit the amount of damage done.

Turning the school into a prison will not help. Turning teachers into guards (armed or otherwise) will not solve anything.

Back in 1999 in the wake of the Columbine school shooting, the Secret Service and U.S. Department of Education warned against all the things we’re doing now – police officers in the schools, metal detectors, cameras, etc.

Instead, they advised us as follows:

“Specifically, Initiative findings suggest that [school] officials may wish to consider focusing their efforts to formulate strategies for preventing these attacks in two principal areas:

developing the capacity to pick up on and evaluate available or knowable information that might indicate that there is a risk of a targeted school attack; and,

employing the results of these risk evaluations or “threat assessments” in developing strategies to prevent potential school attacks from occurring.”

That means prevention over disaster prepping. Homeland Security and education officials wanted us to pay close attention to our students, their needs and their struggles.

We keep our schools safe by looking to the humans in them and not new ways to barricade the building or watch the whole disaster unfold on closed circuit TV.

The fact is that our schools are actually much safer than the communities that support them. Numerous studies have concluded that students are more secure in school than on the streets or even in their own homes.

If we want to make the schools safer, we need to make the communities safer.

And, no, I’m not just talking about high poverty neighborhoods populated mostly by people of color. I mean everywhere – in our society, itself.

There are too many guns out there. We have more firearms than people!

According to the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Americans now own 40 per cent of all guns in the world – more than the next 25 countries combined. And with every mass shooting and the hysteria trumped up by gun manufacturers with each surge in profits, that number continues to climb.

You can do whatever you want to the schools, but you’ll never increase safety until you deal with THAT problem.

The fact is countries with more guns have more gun deaths. States and Countries with more rigorous gun control have fewer gun deaths.

(If you doubt it, see Florida’s “The Geography of Gun Deaths,” and a 2016 review of 130 studies in 10 countries, published in Epidemiologic Reviews.)

We need sane, sensible gun regulations. We need government buyback programs. And we need to smash the NRA’s stranglehold on our political process.

These ridiculous safety drills are simply whistling in the dark.

They’re not harmless. They’re HARMFUL.

They actually make our schools less safe.

Metal detectors, surveillance cameras, and resource officers do not create safer schools. According to a study released by the National Association of School Psychologists :

“There is no clear research evidence that the use of metal detectors, security cameras, or guards in schools is effective in preventing school violence (Addington, 2009; Borum, Cornell, Modzeleski, & Jimerson, 2010; Casella, 2006; Garcia, 2003). In fact, research has shown that their presence negatively impacts students’ perceptions of safety and even increases fear among some students (Bachman, Randolph, & Brown, 2011; Schreck & Miller, 2003). In addition, studies suggest that restrictive school security measures have the potential to harm school learning environments (Beger, 2003; Phaneuf, 2009).”

At this week’s active shooter drill in my school, one of the student aides asked the principal when he thought the state would be arming teachers.

For him, it wasn’t a matter of if. It was a matter of when.

And if you listen to the cowardly garbage spewing out of our lawmakers mouths, you can certainly understand why he believes that.

However, arming teachers or even adding more armed police to the school will not make our classrooms more secure.

There is overwhelming evidence that it will do just the opposite.

As Melinda Wenner Moyer reports in Scientific American, “guns are associated with an increased risk for violence and homicide”—but not with greater safety.

Just look at the facts.

Security cameras were present at Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech. They didn’t stop anything from happening.

Armed resource officers were present at Columbine and Parkland. That didn’t stop anything from happening.

All these measures do is criminalize our students. It turns them from prospective learners into would-be prison inmates – and as we know, our prisons are not exactly the safest places to be.

“How’d I do?” asked Mr. O’Grady, my co-worker who had posed as the shooter during the last scenario.

“You shot me in the dick,” I said.

He laughed. And I laughed.

But it was the kind of laugh that dies in your throat and leaves a taste of ashes.

School safety is a joke in 2018. Not because of what teachers and districts are doing.

When society fails to meet its obligations – as it does time-and-again – it’s our schools that continually step up to take the slack.

The problem is that we can’t even pretend to do this one on our own.

We can’t keep the schools safe if you won’t do anything about the community – if you won’t reduce poverty, violence and trauma.

We can’t keep the schools safe, if you won’t do something about the river of guns that flow through our nation like a high caliber Mississippi.

Do something?

Take your own advice, America.

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Wannabe Terrorist Attempts to Flood Our Schools & Public Spaces With 3D Printed Guns to Make Common Sense Restrictions Moot

August 3, 2018August 3, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, capitalism, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Gun Control, Guns, Hillary Clinton, immigration, Mass Shooting, Media, nonviolence, Obama, Politics, Propaganda, Republican, school violence, Schools, Shooting, White Privilege 3D Printed Firearms, 3D Printers, Cody Wilson, courts, Donald Trump, Gun Control, gun sense, Gun Violence, Guns, Guns in Schools, Politics, technology

In the United States, we literally have more guns than people.

Yet we’re trying really hard to make even more available with the touch of a button.

It’s not enough that our right to kill is better protected than our right to live, we need to make it EASIER to commit murder. In the land of the drive-by shooting, slaughter needs to be as convenient as ordering a pizza.

Cody Wilson, a wannabe terrorist who apparently believes John Wayne westerns are documentaries, claims to have invented the first gun that can be made almost completely on a 3D printer. And he wants to post the plans on-line so anyone with access to the device can make one.

He was stopped by a U.S. District judge in Seattle who temporarily banned the plans from publication on the Internet this week following a last-minute lawsuit filed by seven state attorneys general.

They argued that 3D-printed firearms would be invisible to metal detectors and could bypass gun restrictions recently adopted after a string of school shootings in some states.

The issue will go back to court on August 10, when the sides will discuss whether a preliminary injunction is needed.

The whole matter was almost settled in 2013 when the Obama administration originally stopped Wilson from putting his plans online with a lawsuit. After years of back and forth, the federal case against the virtual arms merchant seemed like a slam dunk. Then Donald Trump came into office and not only stopped the suit but paid Wilson $40,000 in damages.

So the question remains – why would any sane human being want to post a do-it-yourself gun kit on the Internet where any criminal, psychotic or violent fanatic could easily access it?

Wilson says he’s not in it for financial gain. He wants to make a political point – to flood the world with so many cheap, untraceable guns that the idea of passing any kind of regulations on them would be impossible.

No, really.

As he told Wired:

“All this Parkland stuff, the students, all these dreams of ‘common sense gun reforms’? No. The Internet will serve guns, the gun is downloadable. No amount of petitions or die-ins or anything else can change that.”

Not only that, but the owner and founder of Defense Distributed, an Austin, Texas, based start up that pretends to be a nonprofit organization, says he is prepared to kill police and federal agents if the courts don’t continue seeing things his way.

In the same Wired interview, he says he wasn’t expecting support from the Trump administration. He expected Hillary Clinton would win the White House in 2016 and that she would continue to oppose his 3D printed firearms.

As Wired reported:

“If that happened, as Wilson tells it, he was ready to launch his [3D printed gun] repository, regardless of the outcome of his lawsuit, and then defend it in an armed standoff. “I’d call a militia out to defend the server, Bundy-style,” Wilson says calmly, in the first overt mention of planned armed violence I’ve ever heard him make. “Our only option was to build an infrastructure where we had one final suicidal mission, where we dumped everything into the Internet,” Wilson says.”

So let’s be clear about one thing – the guy pushing for 3D printed firearms is literally a terrorist imitator.

He is an American extremist. He is to us as Osama bin Laden is to mainstream Muslims.

Or at least he wants to be that.

While we’re rounding up brown people and separating them from their children without any workable plan to reunite them on this or that side of the border, we have a US citizen making terroristic threats with the means to carry them out and he’s walking around free.

Oh, but he’s a privileged white dude, so no harm no foul.

If Wilson’s little plastic death dealers do become widely available on-line, they won’t immediately make a huge difference.

It’s hard to make a 3D-printed gun. You need an expensive, top-of-the-line 3D printer and some knowledge of how to work it. And even then the result is a shoddy firearm at best. It may only fire a few bullets before falling apart.

A shooter would have to work extra hard to accomplish his goal with Wilson’s design. It would be much easier to use one of the billions of firearms already available – and much more deadly.

But it wouldn’t take much to make a 3D-printed gun more dangerous.

To comply with federal law, Wilson’s design requires a metal firing pin, which he claims would set off a metal detector. However, it may be relatively easy to bypass that metal part to make his design truly concealable from such devices.

Moreover, technology is always advancing – 3D printers will probably be able to create stronger and more deadly firearms in time. With these sorts of designs readily available, it is easy to imagine a school shooter accessing a device in a tech or computer lab and creating a weapon of mass destruction. He wouldn’t set off any alarms because he wouldn’t have the gun when he entered the building. He’d make it in school.

Some shrug at these dangers saying that they’re inevitable.

Even if we stop Wilson, these sorts of designs will eventually be available in some form on-line. That’s the double-edged sword of mass media – all information is available including easy ways to kill a large number of people.

However, I think this is a cop-out.

For instance, the Internet and computer technology make it fairly easy to mass produce currency as well as firearms. In fact, it’s theoretically much easier.

Yet we don’t see a major influx of counterfeit bills. The reason? Business and industry have collaborated with government to make sure this doesn’t happen.

Programs like Adobe Photoshop include software that restrict the printing of your own money. We could do the same with future 3D printers. We could recall those already in service and retrofit them with such code.

Oh, sure not everyone will comply. There will always be someone who breaks through the safety net. But if all we can do is greatly reduce the spread of 3D-printed firearms, that doesn’t make it futile.

There is a mountain of research proving that the more firearms you have in a country, the greater the number of firearm deaths.

We should be working to restrict guns to responsible people.

But the Wilson’s of the world don’t want to allow us that choice.

They want to force us all to live in a world where guns are even more pernicious than they are today.

Will we let them?

Human beings have such potential, but we seem determined to kill ourselves.

If intelligent aliens came to Earth today and landed in the USA, what would they think of us?

Would they see what we might become or would they only see a pitiful animal struggling to put itself out of its own misery?

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Don’t Let School Lockdown Drills Become the New Normal

April 6, 2018April 6, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Education, Gun Control, Guns, Mass Shooting, Parents, Politics, Propaganda, protest, school violence, Schools, Shooting, student action, Students, Teachers, Violence Against Children child safety, duck and cover, Gun Control, gun sense, Gun Violence, Guns, Guns in Schools, lockdown drill, normalization, NRA, safe schools, school shootings

I got an interesting phone call the other day from my daughter’s elementary school.

The counselor warned me that my little one’s class would conduct a lockdown drill – the first the kids had ever experienced.

With everything in the news about school shootings and the gun debate, the superintendent and principals thought they should prepare for the worst, even though they doubted anything like that would actually happen here.

The counselor just wanted me to be aware what was happening and to prepare my daughter for it so she wouldn’t be scared.

I thanked her for the call, and went in the other room to speak to my 9-year-old sweetie.

She was hunkered on the floor drawing pictures of her toys.

Mario and Luigi were chasing a purple Yoshi. Captain America was playing soccer with Wonder Woman. That kind of thing.

I opened my mouth — and my throat closed up.

I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to do it.

What would I say? —-Hey, Honeybunches. You’re going to have a lockdown drill at school tomorrow. Your class is going to prepare in case a gunman breaks in and tries to murder you.

She was staring at me now, Mario’s hat half colored in.

So I put on my teacher’s cap and explained everything that would happen, but not why.

She was completely unfazed.

“That’s all? Can I go back to coloring now?” she asked.

I nodded.

I didn’t want to make a big deal of it, but I wondered how she’d react. This was a girl who in kindergarten had cried at the violence of a fire alarm.

So the next day came and went – no mention from her about what had happened at school.

She wasn’t traumatized. She was her usual self – frustrated at her homework, bargaining for a snack, writing an autobiography of her soccer career that would start next fall when she signs up.

I waited a week and then asked her about what had happened.

In the most matter of fact voice, she told me how her third grade class had stood away from the door, clustered in one corner of the room holding books.

“Why books?” I asked, thinking that maybe the drill had gone on too long so they had something to read.

She said they were to throw at a bad guy if he sneaked into the room.

I imagined a gunman in my daughter’s classroom trying to spray the children with bullets only to be met by a hail of tossed books – Dr. Seuss vs. Smith & Wesson.

Then I envisioned her teacher pulling out a revolver and returning fire through the swarm of terrified elementary school bodies darting back and forth.

The shock must have shown on my face.

“Don’t worry, Daddy,” she said. “No one broke in.”

As usual, children do better with this stuff than adults.

But the reason why is exceedingly troubling.

They are still forming their concept of normality.

When I went to school, we never had lockdown drills. We had monthly fire drills and the occasional severe weather drill. But we never prepared for crazed murderers and terrorists. That just wasn’t in our routine or even our conception of what a school should do.

Yet it is now routine for my daughter. It is typical for most children these days.

As a teacher in a neighboring district, I had to preside over my own first lockdown drill with my 7^th graders a few weeks earlier.

We clustered in a corner on the floor – the door locked, the lights off.

My class of rambunctious teens who rarely seem able to do anything without a constant stream of words was nearly silent.

The worst part was how I felt trying to downplay what we were doing.

Nothing to see here, kids. Just an ordinary day pretending to hide in a corner so a killer would pass us by.

And now after the drill, I keep my classroom door locked at all times.

It’s a huge inconvenience having to stop what you’re doing and physically open the door anytime someone wants to come in. But it’s what we have to do to bolster our sense of security.

It’s our new normal.

And I don’t like it.

It just seems to me like another way my generation has failed our children.

We’ve always known our gun laws are insane. We knew there should be SOME sensible regulations on who can buy a gun and where and why. We knew there was no good reason to allow civilians to own automatic weapons.

But we did nothing.

Okay, a few of us spoke up now and again. It did no good. Our lawmakers just waited out our outrage and kept pocketing the money from the NRA and the gun lobby.

And now we’ve accepted that school shootings are just another part of getting an education.

It’s just something else to prepare for – like a grease fire in the cafeteria or a flooded gymnasium.

I’m sorry, but this is not normal.

I refuse to let this be just another possible disaster we feel compelled to add to our list of Might Happens.

Thankfully, protestors are still out there demanding action from our politicians. Thankfully, demonstrations and town halls are still in the works like the April 20th National School Walkout.

But our leaders still think they can wait us out. And these lockdown drills feel too much like an admission that they’re right.

What sense of urgency do we have if we’ve already incorporated shootings into the calendar?

I’ll accept that these drills are necessary. But I won’t accept them as permanent.

These are temporary measures at best.

However, that’s something that must be made explicit. Lockdown drills cannot become a tradition, common, conventional.

It shouldn’t be – “Time for the occasional lockdown drill.”

It should be – “Look what our cowardly politicians are forcing us to do because they haven’t enough spine to stand up to the NRA!”

We mustn’t lose our sense of outrage over this cultural shift. Because if we do, the necessary political change will not come.

We need sensible gun regulations – not another B.S. duck and cover exercise to engender a false sense of security and pop our civic resolve.

Respecting Student Free Speech Was Hard for Adults During Today’s School Walkout

March 14, 2018 stevenmsinger Child Safety, Civil Rights, Education, Gun Control, Guns, Mass Shooting, nonviolence, Parents, Politics, protest, school violence, Schools, Shooting, student action, Students, Teachers, Violence Against Children adults, control, Gun Control, gun sense, Gun Violence, Guns, Guns in Schools, Pennsylvania, School Walkout, schools, Students, teachers

The kids are all right. It’s the adults you have to watch.

The walkout planned nationwide to protest gun violence today on the one-month anniversary of the Parkland shooting came to my western Pennsylvania school – and we weren’t ready for it.

In fact, up until today no one had mentioned a thing about it.

I had asked teachers if they wanted to do something and was told it was up to the students to lead.

I had asked the high school student council if they were interested in participating, but there wasn’t much of a response.

Then this morning in the middle school where I teach, there was an impromptu two minute meeting where we were told some kids might walk out and that we should just let them go.

Their right to free speech would be respected and there wouldn’t be any penalty for participating.

However, as a teacher, I was instructed not to bring up the subject, not to allow discussion and only to attend if all of my students decided to go.

That’s a hard position to be in.

It’s like being put in a metaphorical straight jacket.

But I tried.

When my 7^th grade kids came in, they were all a buzz about something and I couldn’t really ask why.

The suspense was broken with a sledge hammer during second period when one of my most rambunctious students asked if he could use the restroom at 10 am. That was over an hour away.

I told him he couldn’t reserve an appointment for a bathroom break but he could go now if he wanted.

Then he explained himself. At 10 am he was walking out.

The room exploded.

They had heard about the nationwide walkout at 10 – the time of the Parkland shooting. They knew kids all across the land were leaving class for 17 minutes – 60 seconds for each life lost in the shooting.

But that was pretty much it.

They didn’t know what it was that kids were protesting. They didn’t know why they were protesting. They just knew it was something being done and they wanted to do it.

It was at this point I took off my metaphorical straight jacket.

I couldn’t simply suppress the talk and try to move on with the lesson – on propaganda, wouldn’t you believe!

We talked about the limits of gun laws – how some people wanted background checks for people wishing to purchase guns. We talked about regulating guns for people with severe mental illnesses, criminal backgrounds or suspected terrorists. We talked about how there used to be a ban on assault weapons sales and how that was the gun of choice for school shooters.

We even talked about what students might do once they walked out of the building.

They couldn’t just mill around for all that time.

Since we were in the middle of a unit on poetry, someone suggested reading poems about guns and gun violence.

Students quickly went on-line and found a site stocked with student-written poetry on the issue – many by students who had survived school shootings.

I admit I should have checked the site better – but we had literally minutes before the walkout was scheduled to take place.

Some of the poems contained inappropriate language and swear words. But they were generally well written and honest. And the kids liked them.

I let them print a few that they wanted to read aloud at the demonstration.

They were actually huddled around their desks reading poetry and practicing.

They were really excited about the prospect of standing up and being counted – of letting the world know how they felt.

One student even wrote her own poem.

She said I could publish it anonymously, so here it is:

“Pop! Pop! Pop!

Everyone crying, calling their parents, saying their last goodbyes.

Screams echo throughout the building.

Blood painting the white tiles.

Bodies laying limp on the ground

Screams of pain

Bullets piercing our skin.

Yelling and sobbing increase.

We are escorted out.

‘Is this what you wanted?’”

I barely had time to read it before the time came.

Students stood up and were confused by the lack of an announcement.

But this was not a sanctioned school event. If they took part, they were on their own.

It was my smallest class and several kids were already absent.

They all left and were immediately met by the principal and security. To their credit, the adults didn’t stop them, but they told them not to put their coats on until they were outside and to otherwise quiet down.

I made sure to emphasize that anyone who wanted was welcome to stay in class. But no one did.

After the last child left, I grabbed my coat and followed.

When I got to the front of the building I was surprised by the lack of high school students. There were only a handful. But there were maybe 50 middle school kids.

When the principal saw all my students had decided to participate, he asked me to stay in the lobby. He said it wasn’t necessary for me to attend.

That was hard.

I wanted to be there, but I didn’t want to be insubordinate, either.

My students were expecting me to be there. They were expecting me to help guide them.

So I stood in the doorway and watched.

Students did as I feared; they pretty much milled around.

A few of my students held their poems in hand and read them quietly together but there were no leaders, no organization.

After about 5 minutes, the adults pounced.

The resource officer criticized them since their safety was more at risk outside the building than in class. Administrators chastised the collective group for having no plan, for only wishing to get out of class, for not knowing why they were there and for not doing anything together to recognize the tragedy or the issue. They said that if the students had really wanted to show respect to those killed in Florida they would have a moment of silence.

The kids immediately got quiet, but you can’t have a 17-minute moment of silence. Not in middle school.

I saw some of my kids wanting to read their poems aloud but too afraid to call the group’s attention to themselves.

And then it was over.

The whole thing had taken about 10 minutes.

Administration herded the kids back into the building early and back through the metal detectors.

I can’t help feeling this was a missed opportunity.

I get it, being an administrator is tough. A situation like today is hard to stomach. Kids taking matters into their own hands and holding a demonstration!?

We, adults, don’t like that. We like our children to be seen and not heard.

We want them to do only things that will show us in a better light. We don’t like them taking action to fix problems that we couldn’t be bothered to fix, ourselves.

But what right do we have to curate their demonstration?

If they wanted to mill around for 17 minutes, we should have let them.

Better yet, we could have helped them organize themselves and express what many of them truly were thinking and feeling.

If I had been allowed out of the building, I could have called the assembly to order and had my kids read their poems.

But doing so would have been exceedingly dangerous for me, personally.

I can’t actively defy my boss in that way. It just didn’t seem worth it.

If we had had warning that this might happen and planned better how to handle it, that also might have been an improvement.

Imagine if the school had sanctioned it. We could have held an assembly or sent a letter home.

The teachers could have been encouraged to plan something with their students.

Obviously if the students wanted to go in another direction, they should have been allowed to do so.

But these are middle school kids. They don’t know how to organize. They barely know how to effectively express themselves.

Regardless of how we, adults, feel about the issue, isn’t it our responsibility to help our student self actualize?

Isn’t it our responsibility to help them achieve their goals?

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just a crazy hippie.

Maybe I’m some radical anarchist.

But I’m proud of my students for taking a stand.

It was unorganized and a mess.

Yet they stood up and did something we, the adults, really weren’t that keen on them doing.

Their message was a muddle.

But they had something to say.

They just haven’t figure out how to say it yet.

gadflyonthewallblog

"To sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth."

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