The tragedy last week in Florida has sat heavily in my heart, and in my mind, for many days now. In late 2012, I remember writing a blog about the tragedy in Newtown. My thoughts remain much the same. Automatic guns aren’t necessary. You can’t try to persuade me as to how they are acceptable in a democratic society, or how American teachers should be asked to get trained and then carry them into their classrooms, ostensibly to defend their students. That is, to be completely honest, just pure and simple bullshit. And here is why.
If you ask a teacher why they came to the profession, most will tell you it’s because they love to learn, enjoy being with young people, and want to share their love of learning and knowledge with their students. William Butler Yeats’s quote about gathering knowledge is one of my favourites. He wrote: “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” Yes. Now, some who don’t teach will always say that teachers join the profession because of long summer holidays, or health benefits, or they will say, as some have said in my range of hearing, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” It’s actually a quotation taken from a work by George Bernard Shaw, but it’s been bastardized over time. Now, it’s often used in an insulting way, if you teach, and it’s a mindless way of trying to devalue the good and hard work that educators undertake each day. My blood boils when I hear that quote used in flippant conversation, usually by someone who thinks teachers aren’t worth their salaries.
In the length of time I’ve been teaching, about sixteen years or so, the profession has changed a great deal here in Ontario. (I can’t speak to America, but I have American teacher friends, so I’ve heard different stories.) When I began, parents seemed to value the work that teachers did. Now, it is not always so. There have been times, in the last five years, when I’ve opened my work email account, or picked up telephone messages, or had parent-teacher meetings, only to be berated by someone who won’t let me respond to their accusations while their voice(s) increase in venom and volume. Some phone calls can leave you physically and emotionally shaken, and then you think to yourself. “Why? You haven’t even met me…” It seems now that this kind of treatment of teachers is acceptable. I’m not sure how, but it seems to be rooted in the poor health of our current society. I see it reflected even in local businesses where owners need to post notes about how their staff should not be verbally abused by patrons and customers. In the school system, we struggle with bullying, but it seems to me that the entire society within which we live now is saturated with it, in one way, shape or form.
Having said that, I want to say that I love teaching my students. They show me that there is great potential in the world, if it is encouraged and supported by family and by educators. Here is the thing, too, that has altered in the last sixteen years. Family structures have morphed into more diverse forms. This is neither good nor bad, but it does change the way a person teaches. In a semester, I will watch kids struggle with emotional issues. They are more anxious, but yet less likely to be able to cope. Helicopter parents have swooped in once too often and now kids aren’t sure how to deal with failure. You can’t learn how to deal with a failure, to turn it into a success or strength, if someone else older than you has erased it from your field of vision and experience. So, we see kids dealing with mental health issues like anxiety and depression. They aren’t “made up” and it doesn’t help (as some people seem to think) if you just ignore it and think it will go away. And, contrary to popular belief, mental health issues don’t “spread” if you talk about them in public spaces and places. Being open with kids is the best way to encourage adaptability and mental health that will serve them well now and throughout their lives.
Last week’s shooting in Parkland chilled me to the bone. Whenever we have a lock down drill at my school, my heart rate speeds up. We never know when it will happen because our administrators want us to take it seriously, want us to feel fearful, helping us to learn how best to cope if such a horror were to take place. We tell our kids to go to the back of the classroom, to group together tightly and quietly, and we ask them to silence their cell phones in case a shooter were to hear a ping or ring. Then, as they go to the back of the classroom, we rush across to our open classroom doors and lock and shut them. I always check twice. I’m on leave from work this semester, to write a novel, but the last lockdown we did, I saw two frantic girls running towards my open door. The other teachers down my hall had already locked and shut their doors. I can say to you that I felt like a mother bird, pulling them in and slamming the door shut behind them. Their faces told me they were afraid, as I’m sure my face did for them. It isn’t ‘fun’ to do a lockdown drill. It’s not a fire drill.
When I heard stories about Trump saying American teachers should be trained in firearms use, and that they could deal with ‘taking out’ any shooter, I shook my head. What we do as educators isn’t about killing anyone. We have come to education, we have come to kids, to help them grow and learn and flourish. We are all about life, and nothing about destruction. That someone can think it wise to arm teachers astounds me. It would go against every fibre of my being. You can tell this when you hear the stories of the brave teachers who sacrificed themselves for those kids in Parkland last week, or the kids in Newtown, or the kids in Columbine. Scott Beigel, 35, was a geography teacher. He unlocked his door after it was locked, pulling kids into his classroom so he could save them, and he was shot. Aaron Feis, 37, was an assistant football coach. He was shot when he threw himself in front of the shooter, to protect his kids. Chris Hixon, 49, was the athletic director and a wrestling coach. He died, too, trying to help kids who were wounded.
What’s the common theme here? These are teachers who tried to save their students, against all odds. They loved those kids. They gave their lives for those kids. Guns wouldn’t have saved those teachers, or those kids. They wouldn’t have. What would need to happen first, and who knows what will happen because it is America, which is so very different than Canada in terms of gun laws and acceptance of openly carrying weapons, is anti-gun legislation. The National Rifle Association would have to agree to stop courting and funding political campaigns, and politicians would need to say no to NRA funding. That would be a start.
And then, well, then there are the kids who were lost. I can’t imagine losing a student in such a way. I’ve lost two prior students to tragic incidents, one in the depths of the mines here in Sudbury, and another in a snowmobile accident. I think of them both very often. I can’t imagine the trauma that the students and teachers of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are dealing with right now. I can only tell them, and their families, that my heart breaks for them. When we gather in our kids during lock down drills, and when we hush them while our hearts speed up, we can only just imagine a fragment of what they all felt that day last week. Their losses, their grief…there just aren’t words.
What education systems need now, in Canada and America, are influxes of funding for other underlying issues. Not guns and firearms training. Teachers need support in their classrooms. We see troubled kids all the time, and we watch them, and we report them to Student Success teams, Guidance counsellors, and administrators. We watch for poor attendance patterns, or poor hygiene, of a pulling in of spirit and personality. We watch for kids who seem to be anxious without reason, or who can’t cope with simple challenges, or who might even have suicidal ideation. We watch for these things every day because we are teachers. We are, while our kids are with us, “in loco parentis,” or “in place of a parent.” We watch them, we stay awake at night worrying for them if they struggle academically or emotionally, and we try really, really hard to save them. But sometimes we can’t. We need help there. We aren’t social workers. We aren’t trained psychologists or psychiatrists, but we are more and more often called to do this deep work on top of our underlying ‘original’ work.
But, at the end of the day, we’ll still rush to the classroom door to look outside into the longest of hallways, and we’ll hear the terrifying thud of doors slamming shut and echoing hollowly. And we’ll see school bags abandoned by open lockers like ghosts, while we lock our doors and try to keep our kids calm. That’s what teachers do. That’s what teaching is about.
I’m sending my thoughts out to the staff and students, and the families, down in Parkland. Teachers around the world are thinking of you…I hope you know that.
peace, friends.
k.
Taking a tour with artist Mark Raynes Roberts and my friend, Judi Symes. (Photo credit: Adrianna Prosser)
The Republic of Poetry 