I try to write this blog three times. I try to be light-hearted, but considering
what happened in Connecticut at that school, I just can't do it. Then I start spouting my political credo and
stand on a soap box, but that doesn't work, either. Here's what I think I want to tell you. No. Here's
what I need to tell you.
I came to teaching late in my career. My grandmother was a teacher, and I loved
playing school. Problem was when I got
to high school, I didn't actually like
going to school anymore. My family was
falling apart, my parents were hard-core alcoholics who often used their
children (mostly me) as punching bags, and school just wasn't important to me
as anything but a safe-haven for a few hours.
I couldn't do homework; I couldn't even be home. It was horrifying to be there.
I tried several different careers: nurse's aide, retail
management, factory work, print shop work, restaurant work, hotel housekeeper,
nanny, office cleaner, supermarket check-out… So many damn jobs and careers
that I cannot even remember them all. I
volunteered in the schools a lot.
Finally someone said to me, "You know, you should sign up to
substitute teach. You can actually get
paid to do what you're doing for free."
And so I ended up back in the schools. Back in my old junior highs and high school,
even, with some of the teachers I had decades before. God, they seemed old when I was there, and now
here I was … "old," too. I
earned my MEd in 1999 and never looked back.
I'm not a career teacher; I'm not a lifer. I will never be able to retire because my
pension won't be enough to keep me in a trailer. My retirement plan is to buy an old conversion
van and live in Wal-Mart parking lots. It's
not the safest plan, but it's the only one I've got at the moment. What little self-defense I know is some judo I
took in my thirties while my kids were involved in the program. I might not be able to take someone out, but I
might be lucky enough to choke them, and I'll put up one helluva spastic fight
on my way down.
Here is the one thing I can promise: I will protect your
children like my own. If some whack-job
enters my school, I will hide your children or shield them as best as I can. If that animal enters my classroom, I will
defend your children, attacking whomever it may be who threatens them, and I
will do so without compunction. If it's
one of the kids who is the attacker, don't expect any bleeding heart empathy
from me - I will take that kid out and snap his neck like a Thanksgiving turkey
if I get half a chance.
I spent more than an hour today moving bookshelves away from
walls so my blackout shades will completely cover the windows. I have three massive windows that expose my
entire classroom to anyone or anything hiding in the nearby woods. Should someone come through the foot path from
the high school, I am one of the rooms in first sight, completely and totally
open like a sitting duck. I am the last
set of eye-level windows before turning the corner to the field behind the
school. I spent time making a black-out
panel for the door window pane that's about 7"x20". Look in and you see us all; smash it and you
can reach through and open the door from the inside. I covered the panel from the inside - No one
can see in, but if I need to, I can see out by pulling the panel away.
I cannot even imagine the horror of what that school in
Connecticut went through. I cannot even
begin to fathom what those families face tonight, tomorrow, next week, next
year, nor for their entire lifetimes.
School is supposed to be a safe-haven. It's supposed to be someplace where parents
can trust us to return their children to them at the end of the day. School is supposed to be the one touchstone
that no matter how fucked up your life is or whatever horror exists in your
home, you can forget about it and just be a kid for six hours.
It's not supposed to be someplace where some whacked-out,
undisciplined, useless excuse for humanity is allowed to come in, armed with
firepower and a twisted mind.
I apologize for this blog being a downer. I apologize if it offends you --- No, no
actually I don't. Fuck off if you
support the asshole who murdered these children and adults. Fuck off if you're going to come up with some
excuse that this is society's fault, or the fault of drugs he was taking, or
whatever the fuck might come out in the next few days or weeks. Fuck you if you think we failed this asshole
somehow.
To quote Midnight Express: "The bad machine doesn't know that he's
a bad machine."
Let's stop allowing the bad machines to keep fucking up
society. Stop blaming everyone
else. This asshole was a useless life
form. If only he'd just put the gun in his mouth first, we'd be a better society for it.
That's my blog for today.
Back to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.
