solutions

4 Ways You Can Take Action As A Teacher

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As a teacher I want action. As a teacher I want to be able to tell my students that they are safe at school. I also want to tell my students they are safe at home. I want my students to BE SAFE. As a teacher I want this to be understood-gun violence is an issue that goes further than the classroom.

The heated debate for the call for teachers to bear arms has encouraged me to do two things:

  1. Take responsibility for understanding the issue of gun violence as a whole through research.
  2. Find ways I can access my voice and power to end gun violence.

How can we take action? How can we turn our sadness, our pain and our anger into change?

Get informed.

I am a teacher, but first I am a student. My research started with Everytown.org, this nonprofit is the largest gun prevention organization in the country. I encourage you to spend some time on this website, reading on the many facets that make up gun violence within our country. This is what stood out to me:

-In America, an average of 96 people are killed each day.

-7 of these people are under 19 years old.

-About 62% of firearm deaths are suicide.

-America has a gun homicide rate that is 25 time higher than any other developed country.

-Gun violence disproportionately impacts the lives of people of color.

In order to prevent gun violence, we must understand where it comes from.

As a teacher, I am enraged. I am frustrated that the issue of guns has turned into an issue of guns in schools.

I have created a new mantra:

Turn rage into action.

My steps to taking action thus far:

  1. Vote. Find out who on your ballot supports gun reform and head out to the polls!
  2. End political funding from the National Rifle Association. Use this link to Follow the NRA Money  and call members of Congress that receive funding from the NRA for their campaigns.
  3. Share your voice! March for change. Start a conversation with a friend or family member.
  4. Make your voice heard. Encourage Call, email, text your legislators encouraging them to keep our students safe by:
    1. Creating stronger and more thorough background checks for firearm sales.
    2. Increasing the age for gun purchasing and handling to 21.
    3. Creating red flag laws. (When a person is exhibiting warning signs that they will harm themselves or others, families have the opportunity to seek help from court to have firearms removed. After judge considers evidence they order an Extreme Risk Protection Order or Gun Violence Restraining Order. This prohibits possession or purchasing of firearms for up to one year. Currently 6 states have passed this law, while 22 states have introduced this legislation.)

Turn rage into action in the classroom.

As educators, we are responsible for molding our student’s perspective of our country and government. How can we demonstrate civic responsibility? How can we engage our students in government a meaningful and appropriate way?

What other ways are you getting involved? Share below!

Works Cited

“Fatal Injury Reports,” Injury Prevention & Control: Data & Statistics (WISQARS), accessed December 23, 2017 http://1.usa.gov/1plXBux’]

Teaching is Political

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In teacher education programs, we have a responsibility to prepare future teachers for the civic profession of education.  For me, this means registering students to vote in my classes, advocating for political activism, and encouraging them to see themselves as agents of political change (and to act accordingly!).

Teaching is political.

I’m following the walk outs in West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Kentucky closely as their demands are the demands of educators across the nation.  Education has been deeply underfunded for two decades and low teacher salaries is just one of many far reaching consequences of political funding decisions.  Without funding, we are incapable of providing the supports necessary for meaningful inclusion of all learners.  Without funding, we are unable to promote professional growth and development of teachers to become and grow as teacher leaders.  Without funding, we struggle to convince exemplary teachers to host and mentor teacher interns. Our ability to recruit and retain the most engaging, responsive, empathetic, caring educators is compromised by our society’s weak commitment to education.

Our budget reflects our values.  Despite the teacher appreciation week festivities, as a country we do not value teachers or educational spaces.

Teaching is political.

So how can you get involved in moving teaching to a respected profession?

Join your professional organization!!  Join the Council for Exceptional Children if you are a special educator, the Division of Early Childhood and the National Association for the Education of Young Children for inclusive early childhood educators, the National Council for Teachers of English for you Language Arts educators.  Whatever your speciality, your professional organization needs you and your expertise!

REGISTER.  TO.  VOTE.  AND.  VOTE.  In every election.  In your local elections, school boards, city council, and mayor.  Vote in your state election, on education proposals, and community works initiatives.  Know your community’s priorities and engage in advocating for education.  Vote at the state and national level.  Know who you are voting for and what they believe about kids, teachers, education, and funding.  Track their votes so you can vote them out if they haven’t represented education well in the past.

We collectively make up the profession and we can ensure it reflects our collective values.  We can advocate for children, for teachers, for families, for resources.  We can make our voices heard.

I know you are tired.   

But teaching is political.  And so are you.

 

What Teachers Want: A Call To Arm

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There are many facets to the current debate over gun control, but a lot of focus has fallen on two extremes. One extreme is a call to ban all guns. On the opposite side, there is a call for teachers to be armed. As a teacher, I find the idea of arming teachers to be ludicrous for many reasons.

I was called to teach. I was not called to arms.

My job as a teacher is much more than just knowing content and how to deliver it to a teenage audience. I’m also a counselor, cheerleader, parent and confidant to hundreds of students every year. I call them “my kids” for a reason. I love them. I want to nurture them into kind, open-minded, knowledgeable individuals, and of course– to protect them.  Would I defend them if a gun were pointed at them? Yes.

But I was called to teach. I was not called to arms.

To quote my friend and colleague, Rebecca Field, who wrote “An open letter from a furious Henrico teacher,” “At the end of my teaching contract, it says that I will perform ‘other duties to be assigned.’ I do not interpret these words ‘as bleeding to death on the floor of my classroom.’” Nor is it in my contract that I have to protect my students with a gun. Would I be able to use a gun on a student I know? No.

I was called to teach. I was not called to arms.

Financially, arming and educating teachers how to operate a gun is impossible. State and federal funding for schools is and always has been low. Many schools can’t afford to give teachers basic classroom supplies, to send teachers to state required professional development, or to give them a step in their pay each year. If schools can’t even buy their teachers whiteboard markers, how would they afford to buy each teacher a gun? Lock boxes? Ammunition? If schools can’t even pay for teachers’ continuing education in the content they teach, how would they afford gun safety training? If schools can’t even give teachers the next step up in their pay, how would they afford to offer teachers a bonus for being armed? It would cost billions of dollars that do not exist, and even if they did, those taxpayer dollars be better spent on mental health services and social-emotional learning in the classroom. Or on books that teach students compassion. Or on making smaller class sizes so teachers have more time to get to know their students.

We were called to teach. We were not called to arms.

We, teachers, call to be armed with more counselors, social workers, school psychologists, and nurses in our schools. We call to be armed with community support to make our schools educational, cultural, and healthy environments. We call to be armed with the knowledge that our students are safe from violence while they are in our buildings.

We were called to teach. We were not called to arms.

Neither banning all guns nor arming teachers are solutions to making our schools safe from gun violence. The Second Amendment can’t be entirely undone. Guns won’t simply disappear. However, the answer is definitely not more guns, especially in our schools. The answer is to empower teachers to use tools of teaching, not war.

Again, I say, we were called to teach. We were not called to arms.

 

 

What Teachers Want: Are You Serious?

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In the wake of yet another school shooting, the government and members of the media are beating a familiar drum: more guns, not less, will  put a stop to our decades-long national epidemic of mass shootings in schools. The President of the United States has been aggressively putting forward the idea that our nation needs armed teachers to  prevent school shootings. The notion of transforming our educators into a paramilitary strike-force of academic achievement is completely absurd for many reasons. Chief among these is that it is simply impractical to expect a teacher to become a trained marksman and learn to adequately respond in an active shooter situation.  Then there’s the funding required for such a proposal. Not to mention that putting more guns in schools creates a culture and environment that does nothing to address the struggles of children at risk.

Not My Job!

Being a teacher requires us to wear many hats: nurse, counselor, social worker, caretaker, parent… nowhere in our training or toolbox of skills does that ever include shooter.

There are many field experiences, trainings, and degrees required to become a teacher. Those most powerful and effective learning experiences are on the job, hands on learning.  Soldiers and police officers undergo intense training as well. According to an FBI study done of active school shooter situations from the years 2000-2013, “law enforcement suffered casualties in 21 of the 45 incidents where they engaged the shooter to end the threat.” So this means that almost 50% of professionally trained law enforcement died!  HALF. Even with all of their training.

So we want to consider that a teacher who takes a one day gun safety class is now qualified to react and protect themselves and students from an intruder intent on doing the most damage?  How would teachers stand a reasonable chance of survival, when half of our trained law enforcement perishes while attempting the same task?

There is not a lesson plan that can adequately prepare teachers for an active shooter.  Can you imagine the consequences, the outrage if a teacher accidently shot and killed a student in the process? Is this a risk that our society is willing to accept?

Who is Paying?

Incentivizing teachers to become trained to carry weapons requires funding. Where would that money come from? If money is available for schools and to give to teachers, how about a higher salary or incentives for more logical things like additional endorsements and social emotional trainings?

The federal government just cut taxes and passed a budget resolution to increase spending, creating a large spending gap.

How does arming teachers fit in to this proposal?  You would need guns, training, liability insurance.  Just for starters.

In 2016, in Fairfax County, Virginia, a meal tax was proposed to raise money for the county. This proposal was defeated. The tax would have generated roughly 99 million dollars of tax revenue for the county, 70% of which was designated to go to Fairfax County Public Schools, primarily as an increase in teacher salaries.

Funding for public school resources, universal PreK, and teacher salaries is not a priority, but guns are. It is hard to take the call to arms seriously when those asking for it are against investing in our children and the things that they need to thrive.

Environment

The biggest need in our schools is for a more positive, empathetic, and proactive mindset that focuses on strengths and solutions. Children that come from difficult home lives and who are predisposed to risk factors need to mentored, loved, and seen. This can only happen when we all get on board and take action. Children who need help and support are not difficult to pick out, so why do they continue to slip through the cracks?

What Now?

Research has shown that early intervention is critical for children exposed to adverse conditions. Harvard University conducted a study about The Toxic Stress of Early Childhood Adversity fining that toxic stress affects children’s metal and physical health for a lifetime. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) conducted a study on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) and gave an ACE score based on the answers to questions relating to trauma. “There are 10 types of childhood trauma measured in the ACE Study. Five are personal — physical abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect, and emotional neglect. Five are related to other family members: a parent who’s an alcoholic, a mother who’s a victim of domestic violence, a family member in jail, a family member diagnosed with a mental illness, and the disappearance of a parent through divorce, death, or abandonment.” The CDC’s Adverse Childhood Experiences Study uncovered a stunning link between childhood trauma and the chronic diseases people develop as adults, as well as social and emotional struggles. Is this not where we should focus the conversation, resources, and outrage? What can we do to PREVENT, ANTICIPATE, and CHANGE the inevitable struggle of at risk children?

Since we know the consequences of adverse childhood experiences are inevitable, let’s invest in what we need to support children! How will guns in schools help with any of these things?

 

https://acestoohigh.com/got-your-ace-score/

https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/inbrief-the-impact-of-early-adversity-on-childrens-development/

https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/september/fbi-releases-study-on-active-shooter-incidents/pdfs/a-study-of-active-shooter-incidents-in-the-u.s.-between-2000-and-2013

 

 

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