Note: To protect the privacy of our members, e-mail addresses have been removed from the archived messages. As a result, some links may be broken.

Lesson Plans


Re: frightening

From: Buerkle, Jennifer (buerklej.fl.us)
Date: Thu Jun 01 2000 - 12:43:17 PDT

  • Next message: Sages7: "sad last day"

    This post struck a chord with me. I was in a school that had a cafeteria murder
    and subsequent gunfire around the building until the shooter was apprehended a
    few hours of terror later.

    At first, the parents were all very mindful of the faculty's (all women but one)
    trauma. Then, slowly, things began to change. Somehow we began to sense a
    growing parental attitude that teachers should be trained to disarm, negotiate,
    protect the children with our bodies, etc. There was talk about special judo,
    etc. It got pretty crazy, and granted, everyone, parents included, had been
    traumatized by this event. But the only male faculty member stood up in a very
    large PTO gathering and said, "Listen, if I wanted to learn to disarm and
    negotiate I would have gone into law enforcement. I am here to teach. I enjoy
    teaching your children, but don't try training me to take a bullet for them. You
    want that, you need to either pay me three times what you are paying me, or get a
    bodyguard." There was absolute silence. This was a very masculine man (who in
    reality had been very, very affected by the murder, feeling deeply he should have
    been able to protect everyone). One by one the teachers began to clap and stand
    up. There was no more talk of karate' moves. This teacher, actually, in his
    heart, would have "taken a bullet" for any of his kids, I have no doubt. But his
    words set things straight.

    Jen 

    ---

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 02 2000 - 12:06:23 PDT