Last week I was asked several times if I might step between a gun and my students. In three different classes, as we discussed what had happened on Valentine’s Day, I was asked some form of that question. Then I got an email from my wife, including a link to a story about one of the teachers dying protecting his students with his body, accompanied by her worry that she knew what I would do.
And now I glanced at the web page of the New York Times and see this just-posted story:
School Shootings Put Teachers in New Role as Human Shields.
Perhaps there is nothing to add to this except tell you to read this.
I read, noting the names of several teachers whom I have encountered at various times, one of whom I can truly call a friend.
I listen to what they share, including a woman who taught the shooter in Florida English while he was an 11th grader at Marjory Stoneman Douglas before he was expelled.
I too have dealt with students about whom I had — and have — real concerns.
Here are the 2nd through 4th paragraphs of this powerful article:
“Last night I told my wife I would take a bullet for the kids,” said Robert Parish, a teacher at an elementary school just miles from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, where a former student killed 17 people, including three faculty members who found themselves in the line of fire.
Since the attack last week, said Mr. Parish, “I think about it all the time.”
Across the country, teachers are grappling with how their roles have expanded, from educator and counselor to bodyguard and protector. They wonder if their classrooms are properly equipped, if they would recognize the signs of a dangerous student, and most of all, if they are prepared to jump in front of a bullet.
Teachers dying in school shootings is certainly not something new.
At Columbine, Dave Sanders was trying to get students to safety when the shooters encountered him and a student. The shooters fired and fatally wounded Sanders, although the student was not hit.
In Virginia Tech, Holocaust survivor Liviu Librescu held the door so his students could get out the window, in the process getting fatally shot through the door.
At Sandy Hook the principal and other staff went towards the shooter and/or protected their students. Six of them died:
- Rachel D'Avino, 29, teacher's aide
- Dawn Hochsprung, 47, principal
- Anne Marie Murphy, 52, teacher's aide
- Lauren Rousseau, 30, teacher
- Mary Sherlach, 56, school psychologist
- Victoria Leigh Soto, 27, teacher
I know that after Sandy Hook many of us who were teachers talked about and thought about what we do.
I know I had thought about it previously, and had talked with students about it when in the school in which I taught for most of my career we had a lockdown — the code for such an emergency was broadcast, and as I reacted the students in the class figured out what was going on. I wrote about that in a post here I titled "Teachers, check your roll books. I repeat, Teachers, check your roll books." Let me repeat the latter part of that post, including the original typo:
We have now experienced reacting to a possible crisis.
Next time we will hopefully react even better. If there is a next time. Which we of course hope there never will be.
Because there are certain things which can immediately create stress, raise one's blood pressure.
"Teachers, check your roll books. I repeat, Teachers, check your roll books."
Yesterday, we heard that coded message, we reacted. Fortunately we were never in more than potential danger. But when we hear those words, we can never know. And after Virginia Tech, and all the school shootings, we have to take it seriously.
And I as a teacher have to not only lock my door, but be prepared to do all I can to keep my students safe. Including using whatever force I can, even if it is only pencil.
"Teachers, check your roll books. I repeat, Teachers, check your roll books."
I hope I never have to hear those words again. But if I do, I know I am prepare.
Peace.
I am prepared.
I hope I never have to act as did the teachers in the other schools.
But consider these words from a union meeting of teachers in Broward County on Saturday:
Inside the crowded union building on Saturday, educators held hands and shouted “Union strong!” before getting down to business.
How, they asked, were they going to stop the next one?
For hours they spoke of the golf clubs and baseball bats they would like to keep in their classrooms, of the bulletproof vests they wish they had, of the challenges of removing mass killers from their midst.
“I’m curious to know, out of the people here, how many Nikolases they have at their school?” said Elizabeth Sundin, 48, a teacher’s assistant. “Because I have one at our school.”
I have taught students who are that disturbed and/or troubled, including this year. I have to ask myself do I keep trying to reach a student who is disruptive of the learning of others? Do I impose the requisite discipline and risk the student going off? Do I give up on student and ask for removal from my room? Is the last just passing on the problem?
Or consider these words from that meeting on Saturday:
… Mr. Parish, 51, of Broadview Elementary, was wrestling with the question of the class door. When an armed attacker begins to prowl, and a student is left in the hall, “Do I let the kid in, and maybe the gunman behind her?” he said. “Or do I not let them in and save the whole class? That’s a decision I can’t make.”
Or consider these words from one who teaches the Holocaust who told his students about a man who refused to abandon his students and walked into the gas chamber with them:
… after this happened my kids are sitting outside saying, ‘Mr. K, would you give your life for me?’”
Mr. Klasner said he would — of course. “I said, ‘Did you even have to ask?’”
Yet despite that, despite some of them having lived through the shooting, what these teachers want to do is get back to their students.
Remember that.
Remember what they, what all of us, have to think about.