Growing up in the 1950s I had been through the atomic bomb drills.
As a teacher I had gone through fire drills, earthquake drills, and tornado drills depending on the location. Other than the threat of “Godless Communism”, these drills were regional and in response to acts of nature.
After the shooting at Columbine active shooter drills began.
Nothing was done to prevent such occurrences in the future, just a lot of practice for the kids to learn how to handle it. However, the reality of an actual shooting is quite different than the exercise in a clean classroom setting after which kids just go back to routine.
In the actual event of a shooting along with the noise of the guns and the sudden appearance of an angry, yelling shooter entering the classsroom, the reactions of the children, regardless of sanitized practice, is an additional aspect to contend with especially when the children see what is happening to their friends before it happeens to them.
People, other than teachers, are coming up with all manner of solutions from the almost reasonable to the absolutely not reasonable when it comes to school shootings, but they are viewing it from the outside looking in. This limited view misses two points that make their favorite solutions, arming teachers and militarizing schools, the worst solutions with reasonable gun control being the better.
In response to school shootings, according to John Cohen, a former Department of Homeland Security official,
“As law enforcement has studied the individuals who have committed school shootings and other mass casualty attacks, one of the common characteristics they’ve observed is these individuals tend to study past mass shootings.”
This might be true on the surface, but teachers are aware of another aspect that shows studying past events of others is not necessarily what makes school shootings seemingly easy and efficient to a point.
While Mr. Cohen and others see the profiles of the shooters with their names, addresses, type of weapon used, personal histories and see the obvious, what stands out to teachers are these numbers:
Columbine involved two current students.
Virginia Tech, a 23-year-old shooter.
Sandy Hook Elementary School – 20-year-old shooter
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School – 19-years-old shooter
Santa Fe High School – 17-years-old shooter
Robb Elementary School -18-year-old shooter.
Marysville Pilchuck High School –15-year-old,
For whole or in part these shooters, with the exception of the Columbine shooters, spent the better part of twelve years in school practicing live shooter drills and know the hiding places, all the safety measures that have been repeatedly explained along with modifications and why, the best doors to sneak in because students often prop doors open, flaws in video security and standard measures, that there is no real after school faculty meeting in the blue hall, the best places to find people because they are familiar with the daily schedule so are aware of population divisions, and know where all the Hidey-Holes are and where the most number of victims will be assembled at any given time.
They do not need to study past shootings because we refuse to deal realistically with gun control, preferring, instead, to train future shooters.
Preventing the wrong people from getting military style weapons would help end the need for the school shooting boot camps.
While cutting funds for mental health care, politicians like to claim that the problem with the shooters is not the weapon of choice and the ease in obtaining it, but mental health.
The manifestations of a mental health issue are not some spontaneous event but are layered like a rolling snowball as it grows heading downhill before taking out the Alpine A-frame cottage in the mountains that I always wanted.
The signs are there in childhood, and teachers are committed to do what they can so that all students have well-adjusted and successful futures and work closely with troubled students. Sometimes over the years there is success as problems are overcome or at least ways are found to deal with them. Sadly, on the other hand, there are those cases where, in spite of anyone’s best efforts, even the student’s, events might conspire that aggravate the condition resulting in acting out from mild actions like tantrums to those that are devastating.
Teachers work with these kids, and regardless how odd they may seem or how oddly they deal with problems, slight or traumatic, the school shooters were once students and, judging by ages and some connections between the shooters and the school, teachers have had them in class as students, troubled or otherwise.
I knew a student with a very troubled home life that often influenced school behavior. He wanted to be a better person and teachers wanted to help him be that person. He was into sports and involved in school activities where he would shine. Unfortunately, after graduation that support system was lost and so, eventually, his home life led him into the wrong crowd and he is now in jail.
The man in Jail is the kid that was in school with a raw hand and string of bad luck in a poker game he had not chosen to be part of.
Some states do not allow teachers to serve on juries because they have seen multiple waves of children grow into adults (My first class of students has grandchildren), and they have seen what life can do to some vulnerable kids and, so, inadvertantly might let that empathy cloud their impartial judgement.
Teachers rarely ask a student what they did, after all they saw them do it
They ask, “Why did you do it?”
What those who advocate for arming teachers are not aware of, perhaps, or conveniently ignore, is that this puts the teachers in the position of potentially having to shoot and kill someone who had been a student in their classroom and might still be, and whose rough life is known to the teacher. Worse, when handing the teacher the gun, the understanding is that along with educating the students, potentially shooting the kid you have known while the students in your class are being slaughtered all around you is also part of the job.
It is one thing to shoot some strange rabid dog. When Atticus Finch did it, we all thought Gregory Peck was the Man, but we cried when Tommy Kirk had to shoot Old yeller. The former only knew the rabid dog; Tommy had raised a puppy.
That is an unconscionable position into which to put a teacher.
But it certainly is more comfortable for lawmakers than losing the extra lobby money from the military-industrial-NRA Complex.
Imagine being told you need to be ready at a moment’s notice to shoot and kill a former, or even present student who could have been prevented from getting a gun especially if you and other teachers had not been continually ignored when pointing out the signs.
The pound of cure to prevent the shooting was in the ounce of prevention the teachers offered.
It happens way too often.
These are school realities and must be considered when creating solutions that will be incomplete and inefficient if this reality is ignored and not dealt with.
The solutions should not include training students in how best to shoot up a school or telling teachers that everyone of the kids sitting in the classroom can be someone they will someday shoot to kill because it is part of their job.
To be honest, throughout my teaching career I hated that many of the students I had educated so they could have a great future would join the military and go off to some war to have that future erased for somone else’s benefit. I saw bright kids with talent never get to be who they might have been because some stranger in the same position they were in shot them dead.
I cannot imagine being a teacher who by job requirement does that in a school hallway to someone they might have had hopes for.
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