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.

Apotropaic marks and whiteboards

Before I became a 7th-grade math teacher, I had an opportunity to test the waters of public education, by helping to teach an oversized 9th-grade math class. It was a great experience.

If I recall correctly, this class had three girls, not related to each other, named Aylee, Hailey, and Kaylee. I performed additional duties by tutoring one of them after hours. It might have been Aylee, but I can't remember any more.

This girl had a touch of either ADD or OCD, which made it hard for her to concentrate if there were any distractions. That's why she needed one-on-one tutoring. During our tutoring sessions, I would often stand at a whiteboard, marker in hand, explaining mathematical concepts. I had to erase the whiteboard regularly.

The first few times I erased the board, I would commence teaching the next concept, to be interrupted by the sounds of distressed grunting, almost squealing, from Aylee.

I would stop, look at her, and ask, "What?"

She would point to the board and splutter, "That mark! That mark!"

I would look at the board, see a tiny spot that I'd missed, and ask, "What about it?"

"Erase it! Make it go away!"

She could not do anything until the board was completely, perfectly, erased and clean.

So I learned to wipe the board and make it perfectly clean, because naturally I wanted to create an environment in which she could learn better. That's the kind of teacher I am. Was. Whatever.

But after a few sessions, I would wipe the board and make it perfectly clean, then pick up a marker and make a little, tiny, tick mark on the board, before saying "Now, then, ..." just to needle her. It worked every time.

I'm such a meany.

Yep. Just like this.

Why would you want to be a teacher in today's system?

How many more teachers' careers will be ruined before the states realize that standardized testing, as it is currently administered, is ineffective and counterproductive? And when the states finally discontinue standardized testing, who is going to apologize to those teachers and make amends for ruining their careers and taking away their dignity?

Standardized testing today has nothing to do with education. It is nothing but a well-intentioned but tragically misguided fad. It is a myth that the educational establishment has bought into - everyone except teachers, that is. It has turned our schools into factories, our administrators into frightened cowards, unwilling and unable to act for themselves, and our teachers into disposable assets, to be used up and then thrown away when they break or wear out.

Why doesn't anybody listen to the teachers? Why, instead, do they "discipline" the teachers? Why would anybody want to be a professional teacher in today's hostile environment?

On the Heroics of Schoolteachers

When I was a teacher, I (and many other teachers) determined that, if an armed intruder tried to get into my classroom, I would go Chuck Norris on him. I wouldn't do it to be heroic. Want to know why I would do it? First, my kids were that important to me (yes, every one of them) and I would do whatever I could to protect them. Second, as has been demonstrated from Columbine to Sandy Hook, the bad guy was probably gonna shoot at me anyway, so I had nothing to lose.

But all of the Sandy Hook teachers were heroes, both the ones who survived and the ones who died protecting their kids. They should be honored and rewarded the way heroes are honored and rewarded.

And I know I should call my kids "my students," but they were, and always will be, "my kids."

Teachers vs. idiots: The teachers finally win one!

This blog obviously has a soft spot for good teachers who have been unjustly treated by their employers. Most stories of this genre do not have happy endings. Here's one that does. Sort of. At least, the good guy wins.

In April 2006, Jeffrey Leardini was teaching sixth grade at Community House Middle School in the Charlotte-Mecklenberg (North Carolina) School District. One of his students, a girl, wasn't doing very well in his class. After she received one poor grade too many from him, she decided to do something about it. So she reported that he had been "inappropriately touching" her - that is, touching her in "sexually suggestive ways." And she got four of her friends to report that he had touched them, too.

This was Leardini's eighth year of teaching. According to everything I've read about the case, he was an "excellent" teacher, who got "glowing reviews". He acknowledged, in response to questions from a reporter in the Charlotte Observer, "that he squeezed shoulders, patted arms and touched students' heads as part of his teaching style."

Teachers used to be able to do that. Female teachers can still do that. But in this enlightened century, male teachers would be wise not to touch anyone, no matter how innocent or accidental the touch may be. It's a lesson that a few male teachers are still learning the hard way. It's not fair, and it's definitely not justice, but it's reality.

But this isn't a story about who Leardini did touch. It's a story about who he didn't touch.

Leardini was immediately pulled from the classroom. In a meeting with Kay Cunningham, of the district HR office, he was told that the district had a "no-touch" policy, and he was advised that "he had no choice but to resign immediately or be terminated." She assured him, however, that if he resigned, there would not be an investigation and she would note on his record that he had "resigned voluntarily."

For a teacher who has been trying hard to do all the right things, who has been trying to make the classroom a safe and comfortable place where students can concentrate on learning, and whose mind has never even considered this kind of behavior, accusations like this can be devastating. I can imagine that he was so shocked as to be at a complete loss for words. He wouldn't be able to come up with anything in his defense because he had never considered having to defend himself from anything like this. And when Ms. Cunningham was so belligerent and threatening, of course he felt like he had no choice but to resign.

So he did. He resigned. His personnel record, in addition to a copy of the complaints against him, noted that he had "resigned in lieu of dismissal" and that he was "not eligible for rehire" — which was the kiss of death to his teaching career. Nobody would hire him with that kind of black mark on his record.

Then Cunningham faxed an "urgent" case summary to the police, and eventually criminal charges were filed against Leardini. I don't know for sure, but I would guess that that's about the time he decided to hire a real lawyer. Either Leardini got a really good lawyer, or Leardini has a really good brain between his ears. You see, he knew he was innocent. And that counts for a lot. And eventually, he and his lawyers found out a few important things:

• The girls' lies were exposed, and their conspiracy was uncovered.
• The district did not have a "no-touch" policy, at least not before April 2006.
• The district didn't even follow the policies it did have in place.
• He was entitled to a full investigation of the allegations before the district could take any action, but nobody had told him that. Remember, Cunningham had told him he had "no choice" but to resign or be terminated. She lied to him.
• He had been bullied and misled into resigning.
• He had been denied his right to due process.

So in June 2009, he filed a lawsuit against the school district. All he wanted, he said, was to have his name cleared, to have his teaching job back, and to have that "resigned in lieu of dismissal" notation changed to "resigned voluntarily." The school district, like all of the other school districts that have been featured on Zyzmog Galactic HQ, had some idiots on the payroll that thought they could win the lawsuit. So they refused his terms.

So the suit went to trial. In February 2012, nearly six years after he had been falsely accused and wrongfully terminated, a jury awarded him $1.1 million from the school district, and  $52,000 from Cunningham.

The idiots at the district, when they realized their own misbehavior been exposed and that they had lost the trial, went pale and immediately filed an appeal. By the laws of the state of North Carolina, the appeal went automatically to mediation. Eventually the two sides worked out a deal whereby the district would pay Leardini, not $1.1 million, but $680,000. That's still cheap, compared to the cost of an unjustly tarnished reputation and a ruined career.

As part of the settlement, the district had to remove the complaints from Leardini's file and replace them with a copy of the mediated settlement. They had to remove the "resigned in lieu of dismissal" and any other mention of "disciplinary action" or "termination." But these were only symbolic moves. They couldn't replace the six lost years, or his shattered future.

Leardini's lawyer, Luke Largess, says he hopes that the school district has learned a lesson. The words of a  district spokesman, however, reveal that the district hasn't learned a thing. You can read their exact words in the sources listed below.

In the years between 2006 and 2012, Leardini moved as far away from North Carolina as he could get. He's now a manager at a Petco in San Diego, California.

According to news reports, Cunningham no longer works for the district, so good luck collecting on the $52,000 she owes. It doesn't say whether she quit or was fired, or where she is, but she has had six good years to move elsewhere and cover her tracks. For all we know, she's bullying naïve teachers at another school district somewhere in the U.S.

His accusers got away with no punishment at all. Being minors, their names were never revealed, so they haven't had their reputations dragged through the mud like Leardini has. Today, they're probably freshmen at UNC Charlotte, or at Duke University. They should feel right at home at Duke.

Sources:
NBC News
Charlotte Observer
WBTV
Triangle News14
And here's a Washington Post article from 2000 about a similar incident. The school mishandled it at first, but they quickly set about to make things right.

Update:
Here's an article that appeared in Charlotte Magazine, written in December 2006. At that time, things were looking pretty bleak for Leardini. This is an extremely well-written article about the incident, and it's still relevant today.