I’m looking at stories today about how there were plenty of warning signs about the student charged with the shootings at Oxford High School in Michigan. These incidents always bring out some difficult memories for me personally because I was a teacher at a school where a student came in armed and took hostages back in 1990 (South Forsyth High School/Middle School, Cumming GA). It was my second week of teaching in a public school. We were, as I realize now, almost insanely lucky in that incident because no one was killed or injured, and the subsequent massacres (Columbine, Sandy Hook, and dozens more) have shown just how bad it really could have been. Our ordeal was one of the earliest modern ones of this type, and it angers me no end to think that this sort of thing keeps happening with absolutely no end in sight and apparently no will to make it stop.
Each time this news breaks I get the same kind of flashback memories: taking up math homework first thing and having the other male teacher in our grade burst in the door and tell us “Get everyone away from the windows and down on the floor.” That was all I heard about what was going on for two hours. My students all gathered around me at the back of the classroom and we read stories, but they were hugging each other in fear. We couldn’t go to the bathroom for hours, then when we finally got the chance the gunman started moving and we had to run back to our classroom. I think the most vivid image was when we were finally able to get the kids out of the building and we walked around front to see an ocean of police, emergency response personnel, parents, and news trucks filling the road and hillside across from the school (lots of helicopters, too). I honestly didn’t realize anybody but us and maybe the sheriff knew what was going on. I’m fairly proud of how I took care of my students that that day, but once I got home I lay on the floor and shook.
The student who took the hostages had a whole constellation of problems at home and at school, but I don’t remember anybody saying then or later that he showed signs of violence. We never had any sort of “active shooter” training or drills prior (we did afterward, for sure). I hear that the drills and training the students and teachers at Oxford may have saved lives. They’re not going to be over it, though, for a long time, if ever. I ran into a former student about 20 years later who I had also coached in football back then and who was in the classroom with me that day as a kid. This young man went on to become a very famous Grammy-winning musician in the ensuing years, but the very first thing he said to me when we met again was, “I was in your classroom the day (that student) took hostages!” It doesn’t fade.
Today’s news brings back one of the most irritating aspects of life after the incident. A new student came in during the following year and immediately seemed to have some sort of charismatic hold over some of the other students. After a couple of weeks, one of them told us the new guy had been expelled from a nearby school system for bringing a firearm to school. We didn’t believe it at first, but when we asked the school counselor (who wasn’t there during the hostage incident) about it point blank, she told us it was true, but teachers had deliberately not been informed because they didn’t want us to be prejudiced against him. I really never trusted the administration after that.
So what do we do? I’m deeply grateful that the drills and training at Oxford were useful and mitigated the tragedy somewhat. But this kid was showing all kinds of warning signs. And every year more kids get killed, injured, or psychologically scarred by shooting incidents. It’s long past time to take away the single factor that keeps this happening: unrestricted access to firearms. Don’t tell me it’s too soon to talk about that, it’s 30 years too late. Don’t tell me about “responsible gun owners,” there is no shortage of irresponsible ones everywhere. I’m sick of these memories getting dredged up multiple times every school year. We’re all sick of hearing about kids going to school and getting shot. But I think more of us need to be sick of the moral defectives who say we can’t do anything about it because of their idiot ideas of “freedom.”