I have just started a new job teaching for an online high school. The school has over 18,000 students from around the world. From the comfort of my home, surrounded by my pets, I am able to contribute to the education of young people and, I hope, help them on their path to success.
Yesterday's massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is a grim reminder of how much we online teachers have to be thankful for. We don't have to conduct lockdown drills with our students. We don't have to dread the sound of gunfire interrupting our lessons. We don't have to witness the spectacle of our students being mowed down while we rush to protect them by putting our own bodies between theirs and flying bullets. But all of these things occur with sickening regularity in brick-and-mortar schools. At my last school, teachers often talked about being nervous whenever they were in certain areas of the building that had little direct access to viable escape routes, such as remote hallways or stairwells. When we had lockdown drills, the kids would huddle on the floor in a far corner of the room, in the dark, while administrators would simulate breaching our doors to make sure they were secured properly. Every time we conducted this drill, my stomach hurt. Under such conditions, is it any wonder our educational system strains so hard to meet students' needs?
I have taught in rural schools surrounded by cornfields in Indiana, in suburban schools near bedroom communities in New Jersey, in inner city schools in New York City. Every day I taught at any school, anywhere, I walked into that building prepared to give my life for my students. Today, teaching online, I give my life to my students. For that, I am profoundly grateful. Yet I will never stop working in every way I can to make all schools safe for all students and teachers.
I have yet to see Wayne LaPierre's "good guy with a gun" step in and stop a mass shooting. The only thing that will stop it is the rule of law--not the current laws, but laws that have teeth. I have come to believe that the best way to stop the loss of life from gun violence is the repeal of the Second Amendment. Though my position is not popular or even particularly viable, it seems to me to be the only way to create the cultural and legal climate necessary to ensure that all Americans are safe and free from the threat of death by shooting.