Hey! Teachers! Leave Them Kids Alone!

Well, it has arrived. The inevitable return to school.

My students, of course, have not returned to school yet. This is the mandatory preparation week during which teachers drag themselves back in to their classrooms and try to recall their login passwords and remember who "Hamlet" is.

I always have mixed feelings about this week. On the one hand, it's wonderful to get back into your office, to organize your day planner, and to have the chance to catch up with your colleagues before the students arrive and you really start running. On the other hand, it's incredibly boring. The only good thing about teaching is the actual time TEACHING ... it's the students who bring the life into the school. The rest of it, no matter how hard administrators try and how earnest they are ... is really pretty boring by comparison. For example, we spent yesterday going over school policy, procedure and ... get ready for it ... the new computer program that will assist us in organizing our markbooks. Boo-yah! And tomorrow, we will complete our mandatory eight hour First Aid course. I think that being trained in First Aid is important, and I absolutely understand why we are doing it, but ... it's going to be really sunny tomorrow, and I just don't wanna.

As a matter of fact, I was working up a pretty darn bad attitude about all of this back-to-school prep, when I remembered that I could be teaching in Harrold, Texas this year. Many of you will have already heard that Harrold is the first district in the United States in which teachers will be able to carry concealed weapons into the classrooms. Not to worry though. These teachers, according to the superintendent, must be registered to carry firearms and must receive training in crisis management and hostile situations. I guess that's how they are spending their preparatory week, if they have one. (Note: The superintendent has also stipulated that teachers must select ammunition for their guns that is designed to minimize the risk of ricochet in school halls. Talk about reassuring!)

Now, this policy may seem ridiculous, even horrific, but the superintendent has an explanation for it. The town of Harrold is 30 minutes away from the closest emergency response centre, so the teachers need to be armed in the event of a school shooting situation. Seem reasonable?

Here's my problem with this explanation. The school district of Harrold, Texas, has a total of 110 students in it. I would never want to trivialize the possibility of a school shooting, as one cannot assume that any particular school is completely immune, but wouldn't it make more sense to monitor the tiny student population instead of bringing guns IN to the school? I don't know about you, but I can't think of one teacher that I have that would have instilled confidence in me as a student if they were packing heat. As my friend Graham recently reminded me, I had a prof in university who couldn't find her TELEPHONE in her office when it started ringing while we were having a conference. And I don't mean a cell phone, either ... I mean a late 70's model, 40 pound, plastic, land-line telephone. With a rotary dial.

Ah ... but the Harrold superintendent has ANTICIPATED the argument about his teeny, tiny town, and has clarified his statements. He is worried not about his students shooting each other, but rather about the school's proximity to a large, interstate highway, which anyone can drive down. So, in essence, he is worried about an anonymous maniac on the highway pulling over, coming into the school, and shooting students and teachers. Now, I am not 100% positive about this, but until I see proof otherwise, let's call this event ... unprecedented.

Of course, the considerable pro-gun faction in the United States is having a field day with this, particularly with the recent gun tragedy in a Knoxville, Tennessee School last week. But I can't help but wonder if armed teachers would have made this particular situation better or worse. It was a targeted attack - one student shot another and then fled. If a teacher, with rudimentary training in crisis management, had flung his bullets into the fray, would there still be only one victim? Would it have been clear in that split second, even to the best-intentioned person, who the gunman actually was, and at whom the gun(s) should be pointed?

I really think that if a school feels the need for increased safety, the kind of safety that can be accomplished only by armed personnel (and I have no doubt that there are schools that are concerned with this) then they should hire a highly-trained individual who will act as a security guard on campus. It is difficult enough for a teacher to build a rapport with their students, and it is tricky to squeeze trust through the barrel of a gun. Then again, Texas doesn't seem to be particularly concerned with teacher/student rapport; according to a recent report by the Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, 48,197 Texas students were hit by teachers or principals in the 2006/2007 school year. That's right, folks, Texas is one of 13 states in which corporal punishment is not only legal, but "frequently used." Doesn't this make the school in Harrold seem even more appealing? I don't know about you, but nothing about an environment where armed adults are allowed to hit students says "education" to me. And it certainly won't say "safety" to the students.

So, in light of all this, I will skip happily to school tomorrow in giddy anticipation of my eight hours of First Aid training, and I will welcome my boring policy meetings with a positive attitude. Because I know that somewhere, in a dark and scary place, some teachers are preparing for their school year on a firing range. And I, thank God, am not one of them.

Confucius has nothing on Larry.

DISCLAIMER:

I generally have nothing but disdain for people who whine about their dating lives publicly on their blogs. So I generally never do it. But this one is just too damn good to leave alone.


My friend Larry, through a simple philosophy, has given my life meaning. And here it is:

Life should be viewed as a method of collecting anecdotes.

This may seem simplistic, unfulfilling or even sacrilegious ... but it is the only way that I can continue to muddle my way through life and have it not seem entirely ludicrous.

Anyone who has known for more than 25 minutes knows that my life continually veers toward weirdness. I'm not sure why this is; on the surface, I am pretty much an average plain Jane, with several passable life skills, none exceptional. I play the piano and sing reasonably well, but not well enough to put on a concert (my flute and saxophone skills have slipped well below "bearable.") I'm a pretty good volleyball player, horseback rider, dancer, public speaker. I think I'm quite a good English teacher, but then again, you can't open your car door without hitting an English teacher. I can write, but my proof of that is about 50 unfinished writing projects in various drawers and filing cabinets and computer hard drives. So it's reasonable to think that my life would tend toward the ordinary. Not so. For example:

1) When I was five, I was the only kid in London Ontario to contract scarlet fever that year. Yes, you have heard of scarlet fever before - it's the medieval disease that eventually kills Beth in Louisa May Alcott's novel "Little Women," published in 1868. I don't think that anybody BESIDES me has had it since that book became a best-seller.

2) I was called for jury duty AND audited by the government of Canada before my twenty-fifth birthday.

3.) I have been inside a house while it was being robbed. I was with my friend Allison Campbell-Rogers (ACR) and luckily we were oblivious - we were upstairs watching "South Park" while the downstairs was being looted. I am convinced that the robbers did not come upstairs because of our hysterical laughter, and therefore can say with some certainty that "South Park" saved my life.

4.) I have been hit by a car. While standing on a sidewalk. By a drunk driver. Who was STEALING the car. In CUBA. I did avoid any major, lasting injuries, which I suppose makes me lucky. I would argue however, that I am not as lucky as, say, people who DON'T get run over by drunken, international auto thieves.

See what I'm saying? All weird, but all worthy anecdotes.

It is this philosophy that has led me to value my latest weirdo experience, or at least reach a level of acceptance that prevents me from descending into a total depression and drinking fabric softener on the weekends. So here it is.

About two months ago, I received a package in the mail. It was exciting - I love getting non-bill mail. "It must be a gift!" I thought. I grabbed the package and raced up to my condo to open it. Inside the package was a hardcover copy of "The Prisoner of Azkaban," the third book in the Harry Potter series. That was it. No note, nothing else. And, to make matters more confusing, I realized that the package was not addressed to me BUT my name and address did appear in the top left-hand corner in the "return address" space. The package itself was addressed to a man I had never heard of, at an address I had never been to.

I was totally stumped. Why would anyone send me this book? Was it mine? I checked my bookshelf; my copy of "The Prisoner of Azkaban" was missing, along with several other books in the series. (Note: I am a compulsive book lender, and I admit that I never keep track of where they are. I simply trust that they will be returned to me, and truly, most of them are, sooner or later.) Was it possible that I packaged up the book, sent it to a stranger, and it was returned to me due to insufficient postage? I can be absent-minded, but this seemed ridiculous. I did a reverse-phone number search using the address on the package, but in the end I simply felt too shy and silly to phone. I mean, what was I going to say?

"Ummm ... hi ... I don't know you ... do you know me? Because I think I sent you a children's book ... no ... I'm not sure ... well, I know it seems like I'm crazy but ... I guess it could be dementia ... I did have scarlet fever as a child, you know ..."

So, I did the only thing I could think of - I put the book on my shelf and went about my life. Then, last week, I finally got an answer to the riddle that had been quietly plaguing me for months.

My 2.1 readers will remember that, although my intention was to NEVER discuss my dating life on this blog, I had one date that was so supremely awful that I included a scathing description of it in my "Youb tube" blog. I simply can't bring myself to write about it again, so you can look it up or just trust me. All you need to know is that he showed me the grossest Youtube video ever ... which involved ... well ... POO ... and then treated me with utmost disdain when I didn't share his sense of humour. I never expected to hear from him again, so you can imagine my surprise when he called to see if I had received the book.

"I'm glad you called," I told him. "I couldn't figure out where the book had come from, or if it was even for me."

"What, you don't remember loaning it to me?"

I suppressed the urge to say that not remembering much of our encounters was probably due to some kind of post-traumatic stress. "No, sorry. I was confused because the package wasn't addressed to me, and there was no note inside."

"Oh yeah, that was my experiment. I figured it would cost $6.50 to mail, so wrote you down as the "sender" and threw it in the box without postage. See? You got it back as the "sender" because of "insufficient postage." I just didn't want you to think I was the type of guy who wouldn't return a book. Even though you hate me anyway."

Now at this point, about a billion things were going through my head. Here's a brief synopsis:

1.) That's actually pretty clever.

2.) I don't HATE him ... hate is an awfully harsh word.

3.) Well, he's got a PhD in physics ... so it's not really all THAT clever.

4.) What does it matter if I think he doesn't return books? I already know that he shows scatological videos on dates.

5.) And now I know he practices mail fraud.

6.) And that he's cheap.

7.) Maybe I do hate him.

8.) Seriously, this is stupider than getting hit by that car.

After I hung up the phone, I started laughing, and I couldn't stop. The book episode was perfect closure for this ridiculous four-date "relationship." And, as anecdotes go, it's one of the best I've got. My friends who go on "real" dates that involve things like dinner and pleasant conversation will never build up a story bank like mine. And really, isn't that what being a writer is all about? Finding stories?

Larry, you're right. Your philosophy gives value to the stupidest things, and makes me see humour everywhere. So I thank you. Because otherwise my life would be too depressing for words, and I would certainly be drinking Woolite on weekends.

A

P.S. And ladies, if you ever come across a tall, handsome physicist-turned high-school teacher, don't let him near your computer and don't loan him any books. Unless, of course, you are looking to collect some anecdotes of your own.