Posted on 06/19/2022 6:48:19 AM PDT by DoodleBob
Teachers from around the country told our team of producers they have long been frustrated with the larger public response to shootings and school safety and many have been particularly angry about the way this has long played out in Washington and state capitals. Tragically, the shooting in Uvalde reinforced and exacerbated many of these concerns. Here's what some of them had to say.
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Judy Woodruff:
If Congress and the president approve a bipartisan agreement on guns and school safety, it would provide new resources to try to prevent school shootings, like the massacre in Uvalde, and would likely mean new money for mental health care, violence prevention, and more training for educators.
Many educators want to see more action.
Stephanie Sy picks up the conversation from there.
Judy, teachers from around the country told our team of producers they have long been frustrated with the larger public response to shootings and school safety. And many have been particularly angry about the way this has played out in Washington and state capitals.
Tragically, the shooting in Uvalde reinforced and exacerbated many of these concerns.
Trina Moore, High School Teacher:
I have been teaching now for 27 years, and I have never had such a stressful time teaching as I have now.
Jean Darnell, Librarian Educator:
In the era of school shootings, every day is a nervous wreck sometimes.
Sarah Lerner, Marjory Stoneman Douglas School Shooting Survivor:
Prior to the shooting at my school, it was always this kind of looming thing that happened in other places.
And then, once it happened to us, now we're part of this terrible club of gun violence survivors. Immediately after we returned after the shooting here, I still felt safe. But I did not sign up to have all of these added asks and responsibilities put upon me, outside of what I am contractually obligated to do.
Sari Beth Rosenberg, High School Teacher:
A term I have been using a lot to describe how I'm feeling and other teachers, and people who work in schools and students across America, we're all feeling like we are sitting ducks.
Abbey Clements, Sandy Hook School Shooting Survivor:
To the person who tells me, you just need training and this is all you need to know, with the amount of ammunition that you can get and the power and lethality of the weapons that we have, like, it happens so fast.
Prior to surviving a school shooting myself, personally, I watched on the news. I knew that they happened occasionally. But I never really had this impending sense that it was going to happen to me.
Jean Darnell:
I was teaching standing in a cafeteria one time when there was a school shooting. Never once did I think, I'm going to have to take safety measures and learn how to pack a wound that's bleeding too much. I'm going to have to figure out how to turn my desk into a door anchor to kind of prevent someone from going in.
This is something that was never taught in a class, that was never explained to any of the educators coming out during my era.
Tim Smyth, High School Teacher:
We have all run through the drills. They are very scary to do, but very important to do.
Trina Moore:
You want to know what it does to kids? I'm with high school kids. And the last time we had one, they — the people who were checking the doors had a flashlight.
And so we were in my room, in this back room, and we could see the flashlight shining through the shades. And I had several — several kids just burst out in tears. And, honestly, I felt — I felt like crying too.
Abbey Clements:
I don't think we should drag children through these horrendous drills. And we certainly shouldn't have them endure active — active simulations that mimic real trauma and death, because this onus of gun violence is on the adults. And so how dare we put this on kids.
Sari Beth Rosenberg:
I'm so angry that I know how to have conversations with young people about school shootings.
Trina Moore:
I'm a teacher because, whether I like it or not, I can't help but see the good in people. And every one of my kids, I see the good in them.
And I am being asked now to not do that, to look for the red flags, to see them as potential enemies, which goes against everything I am as a teacher.
Tim Smyth:
That will be the day that I retired from teaching, if not only for me, if I was forced to be armed in the classroom. But even if other teachers volunteer to be armed, I would — I would retire from teaching.
Sarah Lerner:
If the shooter had gotten into my room that day, I mean, I don't have a gun, but, if I did, I wouldn't have been able to access it. I would have been shot and killed.
Trina Moore:
I would feel better prepared. If I felt that society cared more about teachers than they do right now.
I have felt so much hatred towards teachers that I haven't felt, even last year, nothing like this.
Abbey Clements:
The teachers are not OK. They're not OK in Uvalde.
They need an incredible amount of care and support. They cannot be told that you just need to kind of suck it up and move on. And I don't think anybody actually says that to survivors, but that's how it often feels.
Jean Darnell:
I'm 20 years into this. And I can tell you 20 years as an educator is hard, 20 years as a Black educator is even harder, and the repercussions on my health, irreplaceable.
Had my kids at a private school in Texas. Half the faculty was not only packing but we’re skilled and ready to use. Primary reason I had them there. I never worried for a second.
Is it clear yet that we don’t want teachers anywhere near our children and grandchildren? The are such fine examples of confidence and can-do attitudes.
Even if we built police stations at schools, they’d be upset!
In our medium sized Texas county, there are many, mostly liberals, who are apprehensive about teachers carrying. What they don’t know is two of the smaller schools already have teachers carrying!!!! Funny how they don’t even trust each other...
I don’t like to blame anyone for a crime without knowing everything as a fact, although one thing really keeps coming up especially when teachers and administration keep railing about Uvalde. What if, a TEACHER, had obeyed the lockdown procedures and NOT gone out a locked door?....Why did the teacher have to use a rock at first to prop it open? etc.
Government school admin interviewing applicant: Tell me about yourself.
Applicant: Well, I’m a perverted deviant who loves to cuddle with and groom small children.
Admin: You’re hired, welcome aboard!
Also, and probably the most important...Trina, if GOD was still in schools, we would NOT have these problems much at all and most would be defeated before they began. In the 70’s at our school located on a major highway between Austin and Houston, guns were in gun racks in unlocked trucks all day. No shooting incidents whatever!!!
That is what is wrong with America now!!!!
This is push news to tell the teachers how to feel.............................
focus on getting the killers off the streets and into prisons or asylums. It’s not the guns, it’s the killers!!
Hey teachers: YOU bear much responsibility for whatever insecurity, fear, or discomfort you are feeling. It’s not guns that are the problem, it’s the toxic degeneracy that YOU have been polluting students with for the past 100 years, and now, to borrow a phrase, your chickens are coming home to roost. YOU teach a curriculum that requires kids to hate God and one that rationalizes immorality. YOU have taught them what they know, because you have destroyed the nuclear family. YOUR work product of the last 100 plus years shows the utter failure of your secular, materialist, pagan worldview to produce a peaceful and prosperous society.
You are enablers and moral cowards. Your colleagues include pedophiles, groomers and communists, whom you encourage and defend.
Why are the trying to blame the NRA for what THE TEACHERS’ STUDENTS do. It’s the “teachers” who are with them all day, NOT THE NRA. If students are murdering other students, it must be something they are learning in “school.”
Hey teachers, you are in a very dangerous profession thanks to your preferred candidates the liberals who,have made it impossible,for you al. To defend yourselves. You wanna fix the issue? The get together and DEMAND the right to carry an to,have armed guards,on school grounds. If you don’t want that, the shut up, because you are just whining and not providing any sensible solutions! If you are so traumatized, then find another profession, because you and your ilk,are doing,all you can to make sure schools reamin very soft targets to criminals. You and your ilk are directly responsible for creating a,dangerous atmosphere to work,in.
These teachers could be working on hardening the school culture to deny access to criminals and nuts instead of having pity party.
Hey all you woke teachers. You know, the ones teaching everything except the three R’s. When you see a nut with a gun coming your way, get on the phone and call the nearest social worker to rush over with a bouquet of flowers to talk the nut job out of killing you.
My daughter and son-in-law are both teachers. They are doing fine. Also, their rehearsed protocol in the event of a shooter is NOT to hide under desks or tables but to push the desks & chairs to the door and subject the assailant with a barrage of books, rulers, anything at their disposal. The aim is to confront the guy with chaos.
Are they still heroes?
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