I keep hoping that garland plays his cards right an releases a bomb on the Jan 6 investigation sometime in 2022. Right now, thanks to manchin and sinema, the democrats need a strong win. Otherwise we can kiss the senate goodbye on the midterms.
@blackandwhite AND...if they don't pass the voting rights bill soon it's going to be another stressful year. Trying to be positive...but some days it's not so easy.
One of the blessings about the first part of the pandemic was the fact that there were NO mass school shootings.
28 school shootings this year.
3 students killed today and 8 injured, some critically.
We can NOT become numb to school shootings. We have failed an entire generation of children we can't fail the next one.
I really like that you said "we cannot become numb' because one of the parents of the children was interviewed and said "kids just get mad at each other at school". It's already sort of been normalized. It's kinda bonkers.
Getting mad at school used to mean a fist fight or a knife fight at most between high school students.
I was a Kindergarten teacher in 1994, a few short years before Columbine. We had "codes" for certain things, but did not have lockdown drills. Living in California, we had Earthquake drills and fire drills.
One afternoon a man barged into my classroom demanding to take his child from the classroom. He was very upset and I believed he was on drugs. We were in our circle time reading a story when he angrily flung the door open demanding to take his child from school.
I immediately assessed my options.
The child was not actually in my actual class thank goodness. The space between me and the erratic "parent" was filled with nearly 30 students sitting on our circle rug. The parent was standing inside the classroom by the front door and class phone. I rose from the rocking chair and in my strongest teacher voice told the man he needed to go to the office in order to check his child out of school. I told him his child was not in my class and I was unable to help him, only the office could do that. I also told him he was interrupting our lesson He did not know where the office was located and confused. I pointed him in the direction of the office, and he shortly left.
As soon as he was out the door I locked it, picked up the phone and called the office to let them know we had an angry intruder on campus who was on the way to the office and to prepare for him. I then notified the kindergarten teacher in the adjoining classroom to be on guard.
That was certainly one of the scariest days I had as a teacher.
Perhaps the scariest day however happened the previous year. As we were entering our classroom from recess, my first grad student told me with excitement and broken English that he had brought a BOMB to school for show and tell. Confused I asked him, what do you mean "bomb"? He said: "You know "bomb"! and made an exploding sound. I asked him to show me what he was talking about and he took me outside the room to where he had left his backpack and I cautiously opened it. Inside I was shocked to see a full-sized hand grenade.
Leaving the backpack outside, I ushered him in the classroom where all the students had now gone to their desks. I immediately called the office and tried to communicate my concerns without raising the suspicions of my first graders. I asked to speak directly to the principal and informed her about the situation by "spelling" the item of concern to her, knowing that most of my first graders would not know I was spelling "grenade".
She shortly showed up with the janitor who put a metal trash can over the backpack and then plotted what they would do next. I believe the janitor eventually discovered it was indeed a grenade, but only the hard shell of a hand grenade, not a live one.
The principal said in hindsight, she should have immediately called the police, not tried to contain the grenade on her own. Ummm duh!
Oh how these things seem so simple compared to what teachers and students go through in this new reality.
@lovendures I hate to "like" your post. This particular shooting hit close to home - about an hour away from us here in Michigan. With my oldest in 9th grade this year, it was a much more visceral reaction when I heard the news. Absolutely horrific.
You are right that we have failed a whole generation of kids. It is astounding.
Stacy Abrams has announced she is running for Governor of Georgia: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/12/01/politics/stacey-abrams-georgia-governor-race/index.html please consider donating to her campaign and keep her surrounded with Light ... we need her in office here in Georgia!