I was again shocked to read about yet another incident where a teenager, a well liked individual with good grades, brought a weapon into his school. In this particular article, the 15 year old brought two handguns into his High School and proceeded to hold a classroom of twenty-three students and their teacher hostage. For those of you who may have not seen this on the news or as a headline on a website, the 15 year old took his own life upon a SWAT team entering the classroom; the other twenty-three students and teacher were uninjured. The shooter passed away yesterday at the hospital.
Now I have personally had two totally different high school experiences. My first, of which I attended for three years, cracked down heavily on any form of abuse of school policy they saw, and also increased school security yearly. The year before I started at the school all of the lockers had been pulled out; my freshman year they enforced a rule that only seniors with passes could go to and from their vehicles during the school hours, and were only granted passes if they had a job and could prove proof of employment. My sophomore year we began seeing local police officers on the property monitoring full time; my junior year introduced German Sheppard police dogs which were used for smelling any contraband and aid in further monitoring the police officers assigned to them. My senior year was sure to start with metal detectors at each and every entrance including the parking lots. I was there and watched first hand the growing need for additional security; I was not oblivious to it and learned quite a bit for the ordeal, least of all to live in fear daily.
On the flip side, my senior year was spent at a much smaller school in a community without any fear of gangs, drugs or violence, which my other high school was constantly contending with. The school to my surprise and culture shock though, had an unfenced and unmonitored parking lot, no passes were needed and we had lockers. Yet it was here that I saw more drugs, abusive of drugs, peer pressure, sex and potential for harm then I did while at my other school. Again, I was not oblivious and being the spit and vinegar person I can be, I again lived without fear in my day to day school life.
Is my high school experiences different from what is going on today in our schools? Probably
Are there real fears to have as parents for the daily well being of our children? Yes
Do those fears include school hours? of course they do, but then again, don’t you worry each minute they are not with you?
So how do we talk to our children about the dangers we and the schools are trying to protect them from? By simply telling them the truth
I was raised by parents who didn’t shield things like that from me, and yes at times what they told me was scary, but maybe being scared and taught how to be aware and conscious of my surroundings made me more confident and less fearful while in the situations. I think we are forgetting what our children see and hear on a daily basis from just what is played on the news channels and radios.
To me the bigger question is how do we get the protection that is needed in all of our schools? In the current economic climate we have more and more schools passing out pink slips to already underpaid teachers and staff, canceling more and more programs and some even closing altogether. So with all of that, where in the already strapped budget do we find the money to put in the security needed to take most of our fears away?
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