Lately I have been working part-time as a substitute teacher in a local school district. I have worked with various grade-levels and filled in for absent special education teachers and teachers for honors students. It's been quite a variety.
Until now, I hadn't been involved in a pre-college school system for almost 30 years. I didn't know what to expect. Would it be just as it was when I was in school? Vastly different?
What I have found is some things, many in fact, are the same as I remember, while other things have changed. Little boys still fidget in their seats and play the drums with pencils that have no erasers. Little girls still tell them to be quite. The girls aren't as disruptive in an audible manner, they avoid paying attention to the teacher by passing notes, doodling on folders and daydreaming. Of course, there is plenty of daydreaming on the boys' part, too.
Unauthorized gum chewing still seems to go unnoticed, for the most part. Girls still gravitate toward pink and other bright colors while boys wear jeans and T-shirts. Of course there are exceptions. There always have been.
The walls in the classroom still bear pie charts and chore charts; a clock with a second hand, and, for a new twist, a smart board. Blackboards and chalk have been replaced for the neater, high-tech teaching tool of today. No longer does the naughty student or teacher's pet spend 10 minutes after the bell rings banging together dusty erasers.
In my class yesterday, I experienced the biggest change in the classroom in who knows how many generations. There was a lock-down. Tornado drills I remember. Fire drills I remember. But never a lock-down. It seemed a dark cloak that weighed down giggles and bubble gum, hair-bands and innocence. And it was only a drill.
Today's students need to know what to do if there is an unwanted "intruder," as the school calls it. We know the translation: a shooter. As I crouched near a wall, door locked, shutters closed, with 30 students who were instructed not to make a sound, I got a little choked up. I thought about all the students who have crouched in fear, not in practice, listening for the sound of a gunman's boots, not just a harmless teacher checking to make sure the door was secured properly, procedure followed.
I thought about my own children, and all the kids, at a school just a few miles from me. So very young. Then I thought again of the students who have fallen victim to a school intruder. What were they like? Bright smiles, love art, hate math, sings in choir, science geek, teacher's pet, outcast, mean girl, football hero, shy kid, late homework, A+, future doctor, teacher, mailman, preacher, parent, grandpa, neighbor, friend.
Some things in school have changed. Different in a way that is unimaginable sometimes. I guess since I had to experience the lock-down drill, it became a little more real to me that this world isn't the safe place we like to think it is. Really, it never has been. I suppose I have to accept that. It is hard for me though, to think of the children who suffer. Why the children?
ENCOURAGEMENT: Pray for our schools.
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