Story number 1:
In the Spring of 1994, I was a student at a graduate school of religion, in my next to last year of a 90 hour MDiv. I worked in the school library, where I heard a frightening tale. A former librarian at the graduate school had taken a job at a local public school. A former student had come onto her campus with a gun. The police came and caught him, but the gun had disappeared. My librarian friend had to go out to the police car and ID the suspect. Since he saw her, she insisted on an immediate transfer. That may have saved her life because, in October of the same year, the same former student was angrily arguing with another person at a gas station around the corner from the school. Another person from the neighborhood tried to deescalate the argument. The former student pulled out a gun and shot him point blank, killing him.
Story number 2:
In August 1995, I started teaching at the same school, though at the time I did not realize it was the same school. I had a niece of the man who had been killed in one of my classes. I had some behavioral issues from her. Talking to her one on one (looking back, I'm not even sure there was a functioning school counselor at the school), I discovered that she was still traumatized by the death of her uncle. Her usual belligerence disappeared and she cried as she told me what had happened.
Story number 3:
That same fall, one of my homeroom students (he had already acquired a parole officer who was the point of contact for behavioral issues) evidently tried to get initiated into a gang (not sure if it was the same as the Gangster Disciples Cell led by one of my other homeroom students). As his initiation assignment, he was told to kill another student. He brought the gun to school but was unable to kill the other student, who realized what was happening and ran away fast enough to escape.
The episode ended with the assistant principle bearhugging my student from behind (the gun had been discarded) and holding him while a car, evidently driven by gang members, circled the block over and over, providing a getaway car if he could escape. They finally left when the police showed up about 30 minutes later.
Story number 4:
In January of 1996, at the end of the last class period of the day, I had allowed students to come to my desk to turn in their textbooks, which were to be kept in the classroom. Two students started throwing books at me over the heads of the other students. One hit me in the side of the head and I moved to block the door so they could not get out. The one who had hit me crawled out a window in the back of the room. I pressed charges against him and later had to testify in court. Only after this happened did I learn that he had hit another teacher with his fist the year before and had to have a teacher bring his lessons to his home for a while.
The orbital socket of my eye was bruised badly by the book, but the physician who I had to go to for insurance purposes refused to give me any comp time. (I had already used up my sick days. Besides the stress of the job, I also had severe sleep apnea, which had not been diagnosed yet.)
I appealed to the teachers union, which was very strong at the time. When the union got involved, the school system gave me two options. Option one was to stay home the rest of the school year and draw pay. Option two was to stay home the rest of that year and the whole next year with pay. I chose option one and found another teaching job.
Not long after I started staying home, a friend from the school informed me that someone with a rifle and a mask had stood looking into my old classroom, but had gone away without shooting anyone. I cannot help but believe I was the intended target, especially after I saw how angry the family of the boy was when I testified against him in court.
Lessons:
I'm not sure what lessons there are to be learned. One thing I know is that lots of school shootings and attempted school shootings go relatively unnoticed. Look at the graphic at the beginning of the diary to get a better sense of that maybe.
Another thing I learned is that the psychological aftermath of gun violence often goes untreated and even ignored.
A third thing I learned is that there are all kinds of contributing factors to gun violence. Drugs, mental illness, possible diminished capacity, anger and revenge all seemed part of these stories. And the one student trying to get into a gang symbolizes the desperation many inner city kids have to deal with. With real incomes declining over the last four decades, that seems even worse to me than it was in the 1990s.
A fourth thing I noticed is that inner city schools can have long police response times. I'm not sure that has changed. The Parkland response time seemed pretty quick.
A fifth lesson, school systems were not well-equipped to protect students or teachers or staff. I'm not sure that has changed much either. But at least attention is being focused on it now.
