An Outbreak of Stupid

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."  --Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's executive vice president, speaking at a Washington news conference today.


On Monday, a normally bubbly student stuck around the library's check-out desk, quiet and nervous.  When I asked her if she was okay, she wouldn't make eye contact, silently shaking her head and asking for a private place to talk.  Turns out, her sister, who lives thousands of miles away, hung herself last weekend, leaving behind 4 children, one of whom is 2 months old.  No one in her family could bear to break the news to the student's mom.  That difficult conversation will happen this weekend.

Just days earlier,  some kook took a military gun to an East-Coast elementary school and shot--point blank--tiny people and their teachers. To death.  Any recommendations how I might provide good care to the 1,400 kids who come to East High each morning, many of whom carry heavy, dark bags with them?

I don't plan, any time soon, to get my concealed-weapon's license.  Mostly because I do not think for a moment that I could pull out a gun, keep my cool and off the bad guy in front of us.  Would I shield my students from his evil?  Yes, I would.  Would I kick his nuts to Kansas?  Absolutely.  But would I shoot him?  No, I would not.  Nor would I carry a gun--especially a loaded gun--to school, just in case. 

People who think arming school personnel is a reasonable option either live in Texas or haven't spent a day in a school--more or less 180 of them--for a very, very long time.  School folks work with clients whose worlds continually teeter on turmoil.  Do you really expect them to ignore the weapon whose bulk would call to them underneath our apple-laden knitted sweaters?  Or to feel comforted by it?   

Yeah, right.

He recoiled from the pack of reporters wanting to know why he’d lost control of his House Republican conference, whether he can survive as House Speaker, and how a solution to the “fiscal cliff” can be achieved. “How we get there, God only knows,” Boehner conceded. (from The Washington Post)

While it's true that I couldn't get the idea of that cold beer in the fridge out of my mind during the last few hours of school today, it doesn't mean I didn't bring my best to the students who were knee deep in the pressure of semester finals.  So you can understand if I'm a bit disgusted by Washington politicians who cried "Uncle" so that they could head to their spacious homes for the holidays.  Apparently, the idea of coping with and solving a problem that they themselves (or their predecessors) created--a really hard problem, people!--was too much and they decided that hot toddies and new nine irons were far more appealing than sticking around to solve their self-imposed problems.

If teachers threw up their arms when faced with, oh, I don't know, the staggering impossibilities of meeting No Child Left Behind standards (yeah, that's right.  NO child),  I'm pretty sure that millions of folks would demand that we be fired, tenure be damned.  And, frankly, many of us would understand the outrage, even if the standards are pipe dreams.

So, tonight, disgusted by wieners with microphones, befuddled by those who blast the "godless" public schools and their "liberal-leaning" employees who never do enough, I cracked open a cold one and said a silent prayer for my student, whose sister is no more.  And, I'll be honest, I was glad to know that, since I got all my work done before I left today,  I've got 14 days to gear up for the hard work of doing my job, come January 7.