Teachers can’t get their schools to pay for the professional development they need for the jobs they have now. Most teachers I know are paying out of pocket for travel to and from conferences, registration fees, professional membership dues, and graduate courses. Where’s the money going to come from to purchase each teacher a weapon and provide the training needed to become proficient?
Will we be evaluated on our shooting accuracy on a 4 point rubric, with competitions for earning a rating of “highly effective”?
Will we need to post a daily shooting objective on the white board: “Teacher will be able to hit an assailant with the first shot fired 80% of the time from a distance of 50 yards.”
Will high school teachers get the newest models of weapons and pass down the broken and outmoded ones to middle and elementary schools?
Will teachers with the highest target shooting scores be given the “plum” teaching assignments, AP classes, and cushiest schools?
Will teachers need to purchase their own ammunition, bought on sale at Target or WalMart and shelved with the “Back to School” items, like notebooks and backpacks?
Will music and art teachers not get their own weapons, because their subjects aren’t “required”?
Will teachers in charter schools be held to the same expectations as teachers in traditional public schools?
Will parents who home school their children be required to purchase guns and go through state-mandated training?
Will families that choose private schools for their children receive a “gun voucher” to buy their weapons with state tax dollars?
Will private school teachers get AR15s, charter school teachers get AK47s, and public school teachers get squirt guns?
At the same time, lots of folks are also suggesting the need for “enhanced security measures” in all schools.
Well, I don’t want our schools to become “junior prisons.”
I don’t want metal detectors at the entrance of every school.
I don’t want school doors to be locked, and to need to be “buzzed in” when a parent or university student teacher supervisor is visiting.
I don’t want the first person a kindergarten student sees at their school every morning to be an armed security guard.
I don’t want police officers, or retired veterans, in schools.
I don’t want “enhanced security measures” in every school.
I want schools to be open, welcoming, and inviting spaces that function as the centers of their communities, bringing together children and the adults who care about them.
Instead of “enhanced security measures”, I want to “arm” our teachers and students with “enhanced nurturing measures” in every schools…
- more school counselors
- school nurses
- special education teachers
- school psychologists
- social workers
- school nutritionists
- school physicians
- librarians
- music and art teachers…
Maybe if we can keep the guns out of our schools, and “arm” our schools with the persons and services that so many of our most vulnerable kids really need, then our schools can help our children build a country where these acts of violence become nothing more than a dim and distant memory…not a seemingly everyday tragedy.
