About guns and classrooms

Introduction

Columbine, in 1999, wasn't the first school shooting, but its 15 dead and 24 injured, and the drama surrounding it, certainly caught everyone's attention.

Sandy Hook, in 2012, wasn't the first elementary  school shooting, but its 27 dead, an unnecessary and altogether preventable number, also caught everyone's attention.

Virginia Tech, in 2007, doesn't register in many people's memories, maybe because it was at a university, and all of the victims were legally adults, even if they were students. But its 33 dead should catch everyone's attention.

And now in 2022, Ross Elementary School, in Uvalde, Texas, adds its 19 dead and 2 injured to the list.

These are only the landmark school shootings. Many more, while still horrifying, and memorable to some, are largely ignored or forgotten by everybody else.

My Chuck Norris moment

I was a schoolteacher for two years, starting in 2006. It was only seven years after Columbine, and it was seven years before "Run-Hide-Fight". Active-shooter drills were a regular part of school life, and we had several of them throughout the school year. That is to say, while we didn't have "Run-Hide-Fight", we had the "Hide" part down pretty well.

Columbine showed us, and other incidents confirmed, that adults in the school -- teachers -- were likely to get killed early in an assault. One would think that, with the adults out of the way, it would be easier for the shooter to pick off the kids.

Every time we had an active-shooter drill, I would hide all 30 kids in a corner of the classroom. I would turn off the lights, and I would lock and barricade the door. Then I would position myself between the silent students and the door, as close to the door as I could get without being seen.

I am, emphatically, not a macho he-man type. But this, I figured out on my own: if a shooter were to crash his way through my locked and barricaded classroom door, I would go Chuck Norris all over him. If I was going to die anyway, I would go down fighting. Forget trying to talk him down -- it hadn't worked for anybody else. If I could do anything about it, the shooter would die before I did.

I never told anybody about that. But at the end of my second year, I was chatting with some of  the boys in my class. I found out that these 12-year-olds had already guessed that I would do something like that, and they had agreed among themselves that they would back me up with chairs, desks, and anything else that they could use as weapons. They knew that their lives were on the line as well. If they were going to die, they would make the gunman pay for it.

Arming teachers: Guns in the classroom

After every one of these incidents, someone again proposes arming the teachers -- having the teachers carry a gun, presumably in a holster on their person, in the classroom. While I was a teacher, I thought long and hard about this. Let me give you my thoughts about a teacher packing heat. I will speak as if I were still a teacher in a public school.

First of all, I'm not against it. I am not against guns. I am not against authorizing teachers to be armed. And I am not against allowing teachers to carry a gun in the classroom. 

BUT.

I am against requiring teachers to be armed.

Furthermore, if you want me to teach with a gun on my hip, then you had better pay me both a teacher's salary and a deputy sheriff's salary. If I'm going to do the deputy sheriff's job, in addition to my own, then I want to be paid for it.

Not only that, but if you require me to carry a gun, then you'd better pay for the gun. And the ammo.  And the holster. And the paperwork. That money is not coming out of my pocket.

Moreover, you'd better pay for my training, and for the hours I spend at the shooting range, practicing so that I can be as proficient with the weapon as I am with my standards-based curriculum. The training must include basic firearms training, specific training in the firearm I am carrying, and how-to-shoot-an-armed-attacker-in-a-realistic-situation training. 

You -- meaning my principal, my school district administration and board, my state board of education and legislators, the voters of this state, and the parents of my students -- had better take that gun and my shooting abilities as seriously as you take my teaching abilities.

And based on what teacher salaries are in this state, you don't take my teaching abilities very seriously. That had better change as well.

I signed up to be a teacher, not an armed guard.

An alternative to arming our teachers: fortify the schools

If you're not willing to pay for all of that, then spend the money to make our schools more secure. 

Give us more on-site armed guards, who constantly patrol the buildings and the grounds, and don't just spend all day in their office, eating donuts and watching the monitors.

Require each teacher, staffer, and student to have a smart-chip photo ID card with them at all times. Don't let anybody into the building without one.

The efficacy of metal detectors has been debated, but still, have metal detectors and X-ray machines for bags and packages at every entrance. If we have them at airports and courthouses, why not have them at schools as well?

Make sure outside-access doors are always locked.

Put effective crash barriers in strategic locations, so an attacker can't ram a vehicle into the building to gain access.

Surround the schools with a security fence, with locked gates or active barriers, just like we have on military bases.

Turn our schools into fortresses. Ignore the fact that, from the inside, they will look like prisons.

Do you object to fortifying the schools? Really?

If you don't want to fortify the schools, then you must turn to a political solution. More than twenty years of ongoing school violence have demonstrated that our governments have neither the courage nor the integrity to do anything about it. We have been asking for a political solution since Columbine, and even before then. It will never happen.

Fortifying the schools is a bandaid. It doesn't fix the cause of the problem. To fix the cause requires more courage and integrity than our current crop of politicians possesses. To fix the cause, two things must be done.

1. Eliminate easy access to guns. I know that most school attacks in China use knives, not guns. But this isn't China.
2. Fix whatever it is that causes people to mount these kinds of attacks. Get rid of the bullying, the shunning, the family dysfunction, the radicalization, the loneliness, the hopelessness, the frustration, the rage, and all of the other contributing factors.

And it's not about immigrants

I'm speaking to the anti-immigrant faction in this section: It's got nothing to do with immigrants. 

Klebold and Harris were white, upper-middle-class kids, and all of their victims were likewise white, upper-middle-class. Same with Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, and Springfield. In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the perpetrator was white, and the victims were Amish, whose ancestors first immigrated to North America in 1715 -- long before your ancestors got here.

Save your immigration-related talking points for some other time. They don't apply here.

Conclusion: final thoughts

Simply put, as a teacher, I will defend my students to the death. I will do my part. But I expect society to do their part.

And remember, I got hired to teach, not to kill -- to build up, not to break down. That's all I want to do.

How to Fix the Teacher Shortage

America has a teacher shortage, and it's rapidly getting worse. Here's what we can do about it.

In these post-pandemic days, teachers are no longer hailed as the heroes that, in March 2020, overnight and on their own, transformed their classrooms into online classrooms and saved the American educational system.

(No, that's not an exaggeration. They really did that. It certainly wasn't the politicians or the buttheaded administrators that saved public education during the pandemic.)

Today, teachers are disrespected by their students and the students' parents, mistreated and abused by their school and district administrators, and exploited as pawns by politicians, ideologues, local activists, and greedy pirates masquerading as "private school corporations" and "charter school corporations."

After going to college or university for four years to earn a degree and a professional certification, they are paid less than babysitters and waiters, and held accountable for things beyond their control.

It's no wonder that teachers are quitting.

They're quitting in growing numbers, and they're not even waiting for the end of the school year. The Reddit group r/Teachers is full of stories of teachers quitting, and telling why they're quitting. It's heartbreaking.

And the rate at which teachers are permanently leaving the teaching profession is accelerating. Leaders are finally recognizing it, and they are starting to panic. The teacher shortage will soon become a genuine crisis, and it will affect every one of you, young and old, in profound ways.

What's to be done about it? I have some suggestions for the leaders who can do something about it.

Treat teachers like the professionals they are. 

Let the teachers design and execute the curriculum -- or give them the freedom to choose their curriculum from the many curricula offered by the textbook companies. Stop telling them how to do their jobs. And give them the budget and the tools they need to do their jobs.

It makes me furiously angry to see other people, non-teachers, trying to tell teachers how and what they should teach. Do you treat lawyers and doctors like this? How about computer engineers? Teachers are trained professionals. Leave them alone and let them do what they are trained to do.

Treat them with respect, and enforce that respectful treatment.

I could write an entire essay about this. 

Many teachers are leaving now because of the disrespect, the humiliation, the danger, that manifests itself daily, in many ways. Teachers deserve to be treated with respect -- from students, from parents, and especially from administrators.

And until they get that respect, they will keep marching out the door. Nobody pays them enough to treat them like this.

Also, protect and defend them. Wait a minute, I need to say that louder.

Protect and defend them!

Teachers are constantly threatened with physical violence, and they're not allowed to fight back. 

Likewise, teachers are harassed, both online and in person, by students and their parents -- and sometimes by members of the community -- and the administrators take no action to stop it.

In addition, teachers are falsely accused of all kinds of misconduct, usually by vindictive students and parents, and their cowardly administrators do not back them up.

For God's sake, keep politicians and ideologues out of the schools.

I really mean "for God's sake."

Here's one example of what happens when you let politicians and ideologues in the door.

Have you heard of Critical Race Theory (CRT)? Do you know a single school in your area where CRT is being taught? No, seriously: can you name a school near you, where CRT is part of the curriculum? Look as hard as you want. You won't find one.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) was developed in the 1970s and 1980s, and is an eye-opening way to view western history. The theory is debated at length at the university level, and some of its underlying ideas have been present in public schools since the 1970s. But the idea that CRT is taught in K-12 classrooms is a straw man, set up by politicians and ideologues just so they could knock it down, and so they could take control of the schoolhouse. Politicians, ideologues, and activists keep trying to force themselves into the educational process. No teaching will happen while we allow this. 

After the battle over CRT goes away, there will be something else to take its place.

Learning will happen, oh yes, but it will not be the kind of learning you want or expect. The unintended consequences of letting politicians and ideologues drive the educational process will haunt you, society, for at least an entire generation. 

Knock it off, already.

Get rid of standardized testing.

I could argue with you about this for hours. It's demeaning, it's misguided, it's a colossal waste of time and money, and it will go down in history as one of the biggest mistakes of this generation.

Standardized testing is a bullshit idea, promoted and administered by bullshitters. (Please excuse the profanity.)

PAY THEM PROFESSIONAL WAGES. 

I have written about this before.

Good grief, how can we expect a college-educated professional to stay motivated, when we pay them less than we pay our waiters and babysitters?! 

Teachers shouldn't have to go out and get second jobs, just to support their teaching habit.

Don't just give "more money" to the schools, or to "education". Make sure that money goes directly into the teachers' pockets.

Remember the old adage, "You get what you pay for."

Fix the family.

Teachers and public schools are not the cause of poor academic performance. Nor are they the cause of the problems with violence, disrespect, and dysfunction among the student body. Studies have testified to this, over and over again, and yet we keep laying the blame on the teachers and trying to fix things in the classroom. It's not the teachers' fault, and the fix isn't in the classroom.

The root cause of these problems lies with the family that each student comes from. Put the blame where it belongs, and fix the problem at the root cause: the family.