http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/131/the-kids-are-alright
Part of this episode was the fact of teachers trying to notice students that are troubled, or possibly doing something stupid like a school shooting. It's one of those things that I have the very real possibility of doing because I deal with writing, and I make my students write about their own thoughts and opinions. I have the very real chance to see the mental health of students, and seeing just who is mentally stable and who might be walking on a thin line outside of that.
All things considering, I'm supposed to be a gate keeper of the university and recognize when, or if, a student starts to go off of the rails. The only problem with that? I am pretty loose with the crazy stuff that students throw at me. Just this semester I've had students tell me stories about LSD trips, getting arrested by the cops, Senior pranks, almost dying because of pranks from their friends, and that's just the scratch of the surface.
If looked at in the wrong light, I could have easily reported a large chunk of those students. There were down right sociopathic mentalities with students with these stories, and I had to sort through them and figure out if the student I was dealing with was mentally well adjusted.
Not only that, but I have students who mentally show that they just give up. They're going to school, they do the best they can, and then one thing triggers and then they just give up. Depending on those triggers of why they stop showing up, I'm starting to put myself in the cross hairs of students that aren't okay.
That's the scary part about teaching, hearing why other students in other schools decide to go on shooting sprees. I fail a student and I put my butt in line of a gun shot. I make students think critically and analytically - I'm in the cross hairs. I make a bad joke, be slightly offensive, or do anything that makes a student angry and instead of them getting a spine and learning how to be an adult, I run the risk of dealing with a crazy and being in the line of a gun shot.
School shootings are their own deal that I could write page about (I mean, come on people, you come in fully armed, and you only kill two people? Do the words fish in a barrel mean nothing to you? I'm sorry, but yes, deaths are horrible, but the accuracy of those people is down right horrible.) but it's a scary realization that at any point one of my students could come in and shoot me because of something I've done to them. Instead of talking to me, instead of getting help with whatever issue they're dealing with, they're reaching for a gun and my classroom is a target for them to hit.
Now, in the future, if any of my students decide to go on a school shooting and shoot up my classroom, please shoot me first. I'm going to go out on a limb, and after seeing someone get shot, I'm going to make fun of you. Mockery and insults are my coping method. If you put me in a bad spot, I'm going to hurt you . . . mentally. If you show up into y classroom and you take ten shots, but only manage to kill three people, please believe that I'm going to broadcast your hit rate to everyone. You're going to be reloading and I'm going to yell out, "It's okay everyone, even if they shoot another five times, none of us are going to get hit because they're such a bad shot!" It'll only go down hill from there. I'll broadcast your grades, why you're failing, or anything else that I can put on you. In short, shoot me first, or at least put me pretty high up on the list, because if you don't, I'm going to make the rest of your shooting spree a living hell.
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