Terrorism is back in the news again--as if it has ever really left us since 9/11. But
a report Monday that details how little progress we've made in making America safer and the air-marshal shoot out on a domestic airplane two days ago has the soccer mom crowd buzzing again about bombs and guns and dark men with beards and headwraps at the local McDonalds looking suspicious as they order their Big Mac and fries.
And yesterday members of the House and Senate reached a deal to extend provisions in the Patriot Act.
As a high school English teacher, I've dealt with a few suspicious characters of my own.
In the first year of my teaching career I signed up to teach summer school to avoid the "enforced summer layoff" from a paycheck. I was still in my new-teacher strict mode --you know, no bathroom passes, no talking, lots of detentions and consequences given out for the slightest misbehavior.
I was still more concerned about my own role as a strict authoritarian than I was about my students' needs.
It was summer school after all--hadn't these kids just failed? Wasn't this a kind of punishment? I wasn't supposed to make it fun. Besides, a part of me still resented the fact that they could screw up all year, then waltz in for six weeks and make it all up.
I'd suffered through kids just like that in my classroom during the regular school calendar year--smartasses who told me it didn't matter if they did the work or passed the test--they'd just go to summer school and make it up then. And here they were, in front of me now.
In my regular classroom, I had been engaging as an instructor--- thorough, interesting, and dedicated. I`d been a great hit as a 1st year teacher, young and fresh and popular. But summer school was different. I wasn't even in my own building. Older veteran teachers warned me to start tough--and stay tough.
So, I'm ashamed to say, it wasn't with the best attitude that I entered the room that summer session. I made `em sit in rows. I was strict. I was humorless. In short--I was a bitch, but then--pay attention here--I thought I had the right to be. I thought I knew what was best, and these little ones deserved everything they got. Sound like anyone you know in Homeland Security?
So it's probably no surprise when the first spit wad hit the board on about the third day of class. I whirled around--"Who threw that?" I asked, most unwisely. Of course, no one answered. This was followed by a second spitwad, then a pencil stub, and I became increasingly paranoid about turning my back.
What I had was a bona fide little terrorist.
What could I do? Put the classroom on lockdown? Frisk each kid each day? Remove all paper products from the room? Feed `em chemicals to dry up the spit?
In short, change my teaching practices so much that the very thing I was trying to accomplish became lost?
And even if I could have enforced any of the above measures, guess what? A spitwad--or a thumbtack, or fart noises, or something--would still have gotten through. I was not going to be able to terror-proof my classroom, not through enforcement techniques.
Saddened, and a bit ashamed at how my temper had gotten a hold of me that day, I went home to re-think my "strategery." And I started over.
I talked to the kids, gathering information about how they'd learned best in the past. I put them in groups that highlighted different students' strengths so they could help each other. And most importantly, I set up individual times to conference and meet with each kid, so I could start to build a relationship--one on one. And even if I didn't get through to every kid, at least the climate in the room became so supportive that the kids themselves developed zero tolerance when someone decided it would be fun to spit paper.
There are obviously some USA parallels here. Liberals take a lot of flak for wanting to be tolerant, wanting to "hug the terrorists." I'm not saying we should do that.
But at the same time, if we don't build that sort of community web, we're doomed to never catch the fly.
Let's face it--we're not safe. We can scan, check, fingerprint, wiretap, censor--etc, etc, etc, and still something, someone, is going to get through, somewhere. Do we abandon all security measures? Of course not. But security measures alone are not enough to make us safe. And to quote one of my heroes, Ben Franklin, "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."
All we need is one suicide bomber in a suburban McDonald's and life as we know it is over. We will spend all our efforts on curtailing liberties and still, one guy is going to slip through as long as this administration remains where I was on that first day of summer school, still turning around furiously yelling, "Who did that!" and looking over my shoulder each moment from that day on--unable to teach, unable to accomplish the very purpose for which I had entered that room, for fear of what direction the next one would come flying.