School Daze

People work really hard to have their Christmas cards reflect their idyllic family life. Some book photographers, others coordinate outfits, still others seek the perfect natural backdrop. In 1987, my parents chose the main entrance of my elementary school. It was the last year all of their children would attend the same educational institution. We all loved this school, we attended it with pride, my parents were active in its PTA, my dad coached its Academic team, my loud laughter resonated through its halls. None of us ever said goodbye to our parents at its doors worried about our safety. We only ever had an occasional precautionary fire drill, nothing like the lock down drills of today. It was 1987. Columbine wouldn’t horrify parents for 12 more years.

I was in first grade in this picture. I had an amazing teacher who was incredibly encouraging. I felt she was incredibly warm and caring. She was in the twilight of her career, her methods informed by decades of experience in the classroom. I am not sure what she would have done in an active shooter scenario. She was older; I wouldn’t describe her as nimble, and yet, my class was the same age as the one mowed down in a small town in Connecticut. But it was 1987. It was a simpler time. The atrocities of Sandy Hook wouldn’t horrify parents for 25 more years.

What happened in the interim?

Gun laws are such that federal law prohibits you from purchasing a hand gun until you are 21. However, since the assault weapons ban of 1994 was allowed to expire in 2004, most state laws permit 18 year olds to purchase AR-15s . (AR-15, aka: the type of weapon used to annihilate a freshman class this week as they exited their classroom in the wake of a false fire alarm triggered by the expelled assassin.) What do hand guns and AR-15s have in common? They are both designed specifically to kill people. They are not for hunting animals. They are used exclusively for homicide. How do they differ? AR-15s are much more efficient in this task. While classified as semi-automatic, they can be retrofitted easily to be even more deadly.

The other thing that has changed is the rise of the internet where sullen teens can find camaraderie with radicalized white nationalists who empower them with militia drills and a president who gives this divisive viewpoint a national microphone. Such was the case with the Parkland shooter. He trained with a Florida militia before carrying out his premeditated murder of former classmates. He is wearing a MAGA hat in his online profile picture. The president didn’t start this trend. He just legitimizes their fringe voices for personal gain. Elections have consequences, and one of this last one is that a lot of hateful speech is getting a more powerful microphone.

In the wake of the rise of school shootings, many K-12 schools have instituted active shooter drills, just like the radiation drills of the 50s, in response to the existential threat posed by the ready availability of guns in this country and its stable of troubled white males. My sister teaches in the same school where her daughter is in second grade. I can’t really imagine if one of these scenarios played out at their school. I am quite certain my sister would selflessly shield any proximal children while also being paralyzed with fear about the potential fate of her own. But here is the thing, I am a teacher too, and I feel my school is underprepared.

I teach college chemistry. If you want to be amused but suddenly quite alone, go to a wedding and pretend to be a college chemistry professor. You will immediately bring a very visceral sense memory to the surface in a larger percentage of partygoers than you might think. If you are sociable and kind of humorous like myself, you will catch many of them entirely off guard. You will watch their countenance contort as they try to reconcile their brief amusing interactions with you with an educational experience that for them was entirely unfun.

As a professor of chemistry, I push people. I push them sometimes to their limits. It is my professional obligation to promote the transition of novice learners from the status of regurgitative to innovative. I like to say I teach an applied mathematics class, but I also teach a foreign language class. As chemistry professors, we demand you have the math competency but that you also develop an intuition based on empirical evidence of physical properties and chemical reactivity. To the uninitiated, it can be maddening. When I considered taking this job, a mentor of mine from my alma mater recommended that the first thing I buy for my new office was a box of tissues. At the time, I did not realize just how prescient he was.

I am new to this profession, but when events like Parkland happen, I already have moments in my career that make me shudder. I teach at an open access community college. I have a broad range of students who come to my classroom from diverse backgrounds with a spectrum of preparedness for the intensity that college science demands. Every time an event like this week happens, I cannot help but reflect on students I feared could become that next headline. But I also cannot shake the feeling that my employer has not prepared me for such a scenario.

A year ago, active shooter training was mentioned at a meeting of leaders in my division, but since that mention, no training has been offered. My college has installed the boxes with intercoms last semester, but I have received no training on how to use it.  I have no idea where the signal goes and what response time I should expect if I ever press its button.

My classroom doors lock from the outside.

In my role, I am a teacher of adults. These adults can have access to weapons. Some of them have had military training. I have definitely had veterans almost every semester. I can’t shake the feeling that in my role as a professor in courses that by their challenging nature weed students out of potential career paths, I might be providing the stress that breaks them. Perhaps my anxiety is misplaced. I mean, Virginia Teach was almost 11 years ago.

I kind of completely don’t understand the perceived injustices under which young white teen males labor. I completely don’t understand the reflexive defense of the unassailable civilian right to bear any and all arms in the wake of a river of blood shed by school-aged children.  I always thought it would take something truly horrific, something truly indefensible to shift the chilly climate on gun reform in DC, and then the mass loss of innocent first grader life in CT moved no one.

How many more of these moments will we allow to go unchecked because “freedom”? How many educators will enter their classrooms on Monday considering their students’ best exit strategies in the event of a threat? It doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. I have called my elected representatives every day this week to register my concern and support of any and all efforts to bring the conversation even remotely close to a middle ground which is supported by the majority of my fellow citizens. Many times I have fought off tears of fear and anxiety.  I love everything about what I do to bring my students to a greater appreciation of science and of their potential to better themselves. I just pray I never have to become a human shield in defense of them their right to pursue it.

But I am not just going to sit around and twiddle my thumbs. I am making a new syllabus for classroom policies around student stress. I detail all of the psychological and financial supports our campus offers for students in crisis. I know there are lockable doors from our classroom that lead into spaces with no windows, so I detail a plan of evacuation for if shots ring out. But lastly, I implore them to be vigilant. They are on the front line with their peers. Students admit more to each other than they ever let on to me. I outline a procedure to follow if one suspects a fellow student needs support. I encourage every instructor who has not received training and whose students are not continually drilled in such scenarios to confront the harsh reality that one might arise and take the available measures to inform students of their options. Let Parkland, with its chilling cell phone coverage student terror, be the clarion call to action.  Let it call to action people like me, who were underestimating the power of their denial that such an event could occur to subvert common sense measures that would make everyone in their classrooms feel marginally safer. Now is a time for action, and like all meaningful change, it begins at the local level with honest and earnest human interaction.