"I start school tomorrow with 150 new students. Although I don’t know them yet, I’ll protect them with my life if/when a shooter decides we’re the target.I decided to be an English teacher when I was in seventh grade. I’ve never really wavered in my vocation. I started volunteering in schools as a seventeen-year-old college freshman. I student-taught at twenty-one, the same semester in which I graduated Phi Beta Kappa from my elite liberal arts college. (There were only four of us teachers in my class at Macalester, and the school has since stopped offering teacher training because no one wants to do this job anymore.)In my career, I’ve switched positions more than teachers usually do, I think because I keep hoping that there’s a utopian school community that embodies what I feel is possible in K-12 education. Maybe I can find the right grade level, I tell myself, the right school policies, the right leaders, that will make me feel at home. A parent of a student once told me I was born to be a teacher. It was a compliment — I’d done well for her kids. I do think I’m born for it, but I don’t really want to do it this year.It’s my twenty-fourth year. Because I’ve taken three years off along the way, the math works out like this:The Columbine shooting happened while I was student teaching at Tartan High School in 1999. The school had been designed in the 1960s progressive era, and the classrooms were situated in circles with a common space in the middle of each loop. The classrooms didn’t have doors.The teachers sat in the auditorium on the afternoon of the first school massacre. Was it even safe to go to the auditorium, all together like sitting ducks? We teachers wondered this that day. We discussed how shooters in our school could just stand in the middle of our department areas and hit people in each room around the circle without even moving their feet.The very next year, or soon after that, I started practicing active shooter drills with students. In the beginning, we all did the same things — turn off the lights, pull the shades, hide in the corner. At one school, they wouldn’t tell us if the drill was a drill because they didn’t think we’d try hard enough to enact the protocols if we knew we weren’t actually going to get shot. Kids would always ask, “Is this real?”“Probably not,” I told them. “Listen for the sirens. If we don’t hear them, it’s not real.” And then, we’d go back to talking about characters or commas, or whatever we were doing before the alarm sounded.There was a big kerfuffle the year I was teaching third grade (I had decided maybe elementary was the utopia I sought) because the school moved to a run-hide-fight model where you trained children to throw scissors and staplers at the shooters who came to their classroom doors. Some of us thought that it was inappropriate to teach them to expect to be shot.At my next school, we started table-top drills during which we discussed shooting scenarios. It was a Catholic high school (also not the utopia I imagined), and the kids were empowered to make their own decisions during attacks. I imagine this is because of liability? Like, if I, the teacher, decided to go out the window, and we all got obliterated that way, then at least the girls had had the choice to run down the hallway instead?Anyway, you get the idea. My new school does the I Love U Guys model. We teach with our doors locked and closed all the time. We stay and barricade. We practice the system a bunch of times per year and assure the children that we’ll protect them with our lives if necessary.Last week, my brother’s and my sister’s kids’ school was the latest site of a school shooting. My brother was there, as was my sister’s husband. They all saw it. They were all there at Mass, not a location we normally practice in, by the way. We don’t practice escaping shooters at lunch or recess or in the auditorium because it’s super logistically hard to do. I think today’s shooters know that. All of today’s madmen and women have been through the same drills I just described for the last twenty-six years themselves.So… in addition to being in a job where, despite my talents and qualifications and dedication to the craft, my earnings are capped in the five figures…… in addition to being in a job where all/most/some parents think they know more than I do about how to teach……in addition to being in a job that suffers the whims of public opinion about our lack of quality and suitability as professionals……in addition to being in a job where successfully writing and publishing four novels makes me LESS employable (thanks to the snobbery of high school English departments??)…I also have to be ready to die at work.I already thought about it a lot, and now that six of my family members have actually been shot at in school, I’ll think about it more. I’ll go back tomorrow because I have to (I need a full-time income, I have a life and family), and also because it’s my vocation. I’ve always wanted to be a teacher.But I don’t want to do it tomorrow."
The author is Kathleen West, a daughter-in-law of one of my high school classmates; she is currently teaching at a public middle school in northeast Minneapolis. The essay has been published in her Substack.
As a fellow teacher, I know exactly how she feels. 😔
ReplyDeleteMy son teaches 6th through 8th grade to a small class of autistic students in a 90% Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago. I worry all the time about an incident with a shooter, and now masked and heavily armed ICE thugs because I know what kind of man my son is and how he would do anything to protect his kids.
ReplyDeleteA close friend has begun another school year. "Shooters" are the least of his concerns. He too would love to quit, because he's dealing with societal breakdown evidenced in way too many emotionally disturbed students and way too many sociopathic parents--not to mention way too many colleagues that are more or less off the rails.
ReplyDeleteWhy are we seeing societal collapse? That's the question we ought to be addressing. But I think the answers are way too threatening. Our way of life is producing disturbed human beings. That's the lesson in Columbine; too bad this and other teachers were focused on the shooter friendly architecture of their school. Reminds me of trench coat bans after Columbine. Superficial thinking on steroids.
Say what you will about the WW2 generation that raised my generation, but the fathers I knew as a kid, those horrible sexists and racists, would never have put up with the bullshit my friend endures on a daily basis, working in a school managed by not-very-bright, politically correct...well, feminists. WW2 generation mothers actually raised us, without dumping us in daycare at six weeks old. What now passes for relationships in the American household is far more transactional and far less honest and intimate--and the results are in. (See Jonathan Haidt.)
Thich Nhat Hanh: “When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well."
I bet Alfalfa, He-Man Woman Haters Club President, would approve of your message.
Delete@ Anonymous: I think daycare is bad for kids, therefore I hate women? Half of those kids are girls.
DeleteA few more thoughts:
When looking at this shooter subject, it’s a good idea to revisit the stats on “active shooters.” According to the FBI, 23 people died in active shooter incidents in 2024–to include schools, but not only schools. There are about 50 million students, K-12, in the US. About 140,000 schools. Any way we work the math, the chance of being killed by a shooter in a school, or any public setting, is very small.
I might be shot while shopping. I might be shot at a movie theater. I might be shot at a concert. But how many of us go about our daily activities thinking about “drills” in all these settings? None. Why? Because the chance of being killed in such a setting is so small as to be ignored. The same applies to schools, but not the same logic.
So, why doesn’t the same logic apply? I think we can immediately see that educators have an interest in protecting students. They are, in essence, surrogate parents. But then why would those actual parents ever take a child to a theater, given shootings happen in such places? Or a mall? Or a grocery store? Or a theme park? Or…? All places where no “drills” occur. Are educators hyper-reactive to the shooter threat? I think they are.
I think the hyper-reaction has to do with what I’ll call “educator culture”--which is something we’ve all had many years to observe, unless we’ve been home schooled throughout. There’s a heroic dimension to teaching, no doubt. (Not more so than a roofer, but heroic.) But in my experience, educators are also control freaks and most have a persecution complex, along with a dose of narcissism. Earned or not, “Woe is me!” could be a nearly universally adopted slogan in the teaching profession.
My dad taught high school science and math. He raised a family of ten kids on one income, had the usual 30 year mortgage, two cars (albeit clunkers), etc. I don’t remember him complaining about his salary except when the subject ever came up with his colleagues, where it was seemingly mandatory for them to all complain. I don’t think it’s possible to get a credential without agreeing to complain about compensation. (Teachers will often say they’d do much better in the private sector. I really doubt this, given the teachers I’ve known, including my dad.)
As with “first responders,” a public image is cultivated that has little to do with reality. For example, first responders are not doing the most dangerous jobs in America. Last I looked, firefighters were about 20th on the list, well behind construction workers, loggers, farmers, etc. Are teachers in danger? No. Teaching is an extremely safe job; but do teachers acknowledge this fact? Or, like the author, Kathleen West, are they more likely to imagine they’re in harm's way? The latter, and that’s because of the persecution complex. So, the shooter threat is never going to be in proportion.
Also, If we’re going to look at who is in danger at school, we need to look at its impact on students–and I’m not talking about those few killed by shooters. I’m talking about the roughly 2,000 teen suicides per year–roughly 1,600 of them boys. The 10% of students who attempt suicide. The 40% who contemplate suicide.
DeleteObviously we can’t put all this on schools, but they are toxic environments for many students. Particularly those who lose in the game: the less beautiful, less intelligent, less athletic, less affluent, etc. Some school shooters actually return to a school they attended; these are not the “winners” in our great gauntlet of systematized, relentless competition. This is noteworthy.
I once worked in a residential care setting for emotionally disturbed teens, boys and girls. I noticed that the longer they were out of school, say on a summer break, the more emotionally stable they became. I think John Taylor Gatto had it right: schools are not generally humane places. The function they serve is plain enough: it’s about, as the Prussians had it, “producing a governable mass of people.” People who will follow directions. Comply. Conform.
As I said about my poor, dear friend who recently returned to the classroom: this is about our families, our communities and our toxic schools–places teachers hate to go. Active shooter hysteria is a distraction made possible by an educator culture that feeds reactivity to toxicity, on a symptomatic basis, while not very adept at calling-out causes.
My wife and I are both educators. She teaches 5th grade around the corner from my home, I teach in a community college. She practices active shooter drills. We don't really have such activities on our campus, but there active shooter trainings that happen in coordination with campus security and the local police department.
ReplyDeleteIt might be odd, but I don't really worry about school shootings. We've lived with the specter our entire careers, and every time it happens it's sad, but generally, I understand that it's a rare event and I should really worry more about my commute to work than my wife or I being shot on our respective campuses.
But this doesn't mean I'm not frustrated by our lack of action in our country. I remember clear as day, giving a final in my ethics class, as I watched the news on my laptop while Sandy Hook was happening. The fact that we could let twenty.... TWENTY children get shot and killed and do NOTHING in response to it is enraging.
But that's our country for you: It's one that doesn't care what educators are facing. It doesn't care that AI is infiltrating the world and making it impossible for us to teach our children anymore, because they can generate their homework in an instant. It doesn't care that we're paid a pittance, and as inflation goes up, our job security has gone down. I've worked as an educator for 23 years, and never had a raise, only cost of living adjustments that have never been sufficient to account for actual inflation.
I honestly looked into retiring early, and unfortunately that isn't in the cards because the amount of money I'd be leaving on the table would mean that I wouldn't actually be able to stop working. So I spend close to 10 hours a day, every day grading work (thanks online education!) or preparing material now with another 17 years to look forward to, and for people to snicker, "Those who can't do, teach."
"I also have to be ready to die at work."
ReplyDeleteThere are jobs where that is a given, something that goes with the career. At least one of those jobs has figured out that having a strong union, cops, lets you trade that for political power. Maybe teachers should do the same. Lol. I jest, obviously. The states that don't want it would rather see their kids educated in front of a video than give teachers any agency.
I do wonder why teachers still work in those states.
Teacher unions have quite enough [too much] political power. And I say this as a retired teacher who spent 32 years teaching in public schools.
DeleteMy wife and I are both retired teachers with 65 years of classroom teaching. Our son is in his 14th year. I can't imagine for a moment what teaching jobs and work conditions would have evolved to at this point if our representative organizations hadn't been fighting for us.
DeleteI should clarify my statement. The NEA and AFT have too much political power. IMO, public sector unions should not be contributing to/endorsing political candidates who will be making decisions regarding financing and employment, among other things. Local bargaining units certainly have an important place in working for adequate pay (including pensions) and working conditions.
DeleteDuring COVID, unions in many areas had the power to keep public schools closed while non-public schools were welcoming students back to the classroom caused almost irreparable damage to hundreds of thousands of younger students. Shameful.
All of these school shootings, but it's never been the teacher doing the shooting. Given the amount of frustration I hear from teachers, that's maybe a little surprising.
ReplyDeleteAt least they are underpaid and disrespected. /s
ReplyDeleteFor anyone interested in the current fall of the western empire I would recommend Professor Jiang Xueqin in Canada. Unfortunately we in the west are on the decline and there is nothing we can do about it. Canadians especially should watch the video Secret History #3: Death by Gerontocracy.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/@PredictiveHistory/videos
I have drills in my head every single day... multiple times each day. And often I'm my dreams.
ReplyDeleteI only have a few years until I can retire. I've purchased extra tourniquets because they only gave each of us one; I don't want to have to choose who to save.
Anyway. I feel for and commiserate with the author.
Chance of dying in a school shooting: 1 in 87,000. Chance of dying in a car crash: 1 in 95. What if we spent less time on trauma-inducing active shooting drills and we spent more time on driver's ed? Shootings are dramatic and it's hard to not get sucked in and scared, but we're not actually focusing on what saves children's lives.
ReplyDeleteWhat a totally garbage use of statistics
DeleteThe number is much lower. 23 killed in all active shooter incidents in 2024--and not only schools. About 50 million students, K-12. In any given year, the number is far less than one in a million.
Delete"Whataboutism," a/k/a when you're losing the argument, change the subject.
DeleteThis composition amazes. It's the tone: that resignation, that acceptance. Devastating.
ReplyDeleteOff to buy her books now, my only way to support her.