Hey everyone! This week’s topic might be one of the biggest issues faced in school today: school violence. School violence can range from bullying all the way to school shootings. As future educators we need to be extremely aware of our surroundings for the safety of our students and ourselves. The headline of the Pew Research Center article “A majority of U.S. teens fear a shooting could happen at their school, and most parents share their concern” is terribly concerning but not at all surprising. When in high school at least in my experience there were a handful of kids that the entire school would not have been at all surprised if they shot up the school. It is scary that I am almost desensitized to it at this point. We hear stories it seems like every single week about something happening at another school.
As I have said before in my previous blog, I am a gymnastics coach. I competed gymnastics from 2008-2020, as a young gymnast I was not aware of all issues and abuse surrounding me. In 2017 the first gymnast came forward about the abuse she suffered at the hands of USAG team doctor Larry Nasser. After that hundreds of women came forward sharing their stories. Now as a coach I am on high alert when it comes to my gymnasts. It is sad that I can not trust the other professionals at the competitions, but I'd much rather be cautious than having something happen to one of my girls on my watch. I plan on taking that same ideology with me into the classroom. Some of my teachers had their own plans to keep the class safe in case of an emergency. We would practice “slide and hide” during lockdown drills, this technique involved having 2 students elected to move a large filing cabinet in front of the door to block and intruders. I also had some teachers who had rope ladders on hand that could be thrown out of the window so the class could escape.
One of the recurring themes from the documentary was discussing who was to blame for the increase in violence in schools. Everyone has their own opinions, the left wing blames guns and NRA, while the right wing blames heavy metal music. I grew up listening to Metallica, their song “Ronnie” is a fictional retelling of a school shooting. Within the lyrics you can see what may drive a person to commit violence. For example the line “Small town boy, big time frown Never talks, never plays, Different path, lost his way”, these 15 words seem to depict every single school shooter, but somehow we can’t figure out the cause. Personally I am unsure if there is one exact thing that can be blamed. It is different then the gymnastics world, there was one thing to blame, the fact that there were no systems in place to protect the gymnasts from predators. Until the Columbine shooting there were no systems in place to protect the students because it wasn't even on anyone’s radar that a person would want to shoot up a school. The documentary talked about the possibility of the presence of guns causing an increase in the violence however a majority of people own guns yet there is almost no gun violence. So maybe the guns are not to be blamed.
Another one of the themes in the documentary and the given articles discuss is the increase in bullying. One of the biggest issues is that when students are constantly getting bullied they just can’t see it ending. These kids need to realize that there is so much more to life than highschool, that four years do not define their entire lives. For example take the book “The Ugly Duckling” at the end of the book the ugly duckling turns into a beautiful swan, the bullying stopped. These kids just need to wait it out and not do anything rash but they get blinded by their feelings and commit terrible acts of violence. As a future educator, especially wanting to work at the high school level, I think it is of the utmost importance to remind kids that high school isn't everything, things can change every single day, and it is important to make a permanent decision based on a temporary feeling.
References
Bowling for columbine (2002). WatchDocumentaries.com. (2022, January 1). Retrieved October 2, 2022, from https://watchdocumentaries.com/bowling-for-columbine/
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021, September 2). Fast fact: Preventing school violence |violence prevention|injury Center|CDC. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved October 2, 2022, from https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/youthviolence/schoolviolence/fastfact.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fviolenceprevention%2Fyouthviolence%2Fschoolviolence%2Findex.html
George, D. S. (2022, July 4). School shootings rose to highest number in 20 years, Federal Data says. The Washington Post. Retrieved October 2, 2022, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/28/school-shootings-crime-report/
Graf, N. (2020, May 30). A majority of U.S. teens fear a shooting could happen at their school, and most parents share their concern. Pew Research Center. Retrieved October 2, 2022, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/18/a-majority-of-u-s-teens-fear-a-shooting-could-happen-at-their-school-and-most-parents-share-their-concern/
Metallica – Ronnie. Genius. (n.d.). Retrieved October 2, 2022, from https://genius.com/Metallica-ronnie-lyrics
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