To fortify schools, build teachers

As encouraged as I am about the activism of the teenagers from Parkland these days – and indeed, by the activism and eternal optimism displayed by most of the teenagers whom I am privileged to meet here in Raleigh – I am equally disheartened to hear some of the headlined ideas on preventing mass school shootings. I’ve tried for days to articulate a rationale explaining why arming teachers (one aspect of “target hardening”) is an incredibly bad idea. When the phrase “at less cost” was added to the conversation, I found the words: “No. Just no.”

So, what’s next? To what should we instead be saying a collective “yes” in the wake of another tragedy? An easy yes should be to teacher building. Who among us was surprised to hear that, yet again, teachers selflessly put themselves in harm’s way when someone attacked their students? Not one of us, I gather. In fact, teachers sacrificing their lives by shielding students is one of the constants in these painfully consistent stories.

As a college supervisor for student teachers, I have witnessed a code red – lockdown, not drill – in action. With an active shooter situation and a prisoner at large, I watched a 19-year veteran teacher in her trailer, passionately teaching her vocabulary lesson, interrupted by the school alarm; in less than a minute her doors were locked, her windows drawn, her emergency medical bag in her hands and her students crouched around interior walls. These students made not one peep for 30 minutes, some wept, but none doubted that their teacher was there for them. Her actions were brave, competent, calm, masterful. I have never been more impressed, more humbled, more grateful for teachers like her.

That scenario plays out daily, and parents know it: we sendgifts and thank you notes and warm Starbucks to the teachers in our children’s lives because we know the kind of people they are, the kind of people we want, the kind of people our children deserve. What teachers don’t deserve is the social status and pay their calling receives. They are already highly trained; they are already people of talent.

As a teacher educator, I dread the call five or 10 years after graduation from some of my brightest teachers with families now who can no longer justify the pay, the juggling, the cost to their own children’s opportunities if they stay in a low-wage job where even community college might be an impossible burden to college-savings accounts for multiple kids. I want those teachers to stay in education. I want them to use their years of experience to be able to spot kids who need more high-touch counseling, to mentor kids who are struggling with a host of challenges daily, to recommend appropriate resources for students – to do their remarkable jobs with impact and competence that comes with recruiting our best and brightest and giving them development opportunities.

If there is training to be done, let’s invest in highly adept professional development, in mental health education, in master’s degrees for content knowledge – not in marksmanship and weapons-training. Teachers are indeed on the front lines: they know the kids better than anyone else in the school, they know home life situations, they can spot daily changes and changes over time and they are generally caring, focused, and organized people. They are some of the best people we know. They indeed can be an army, with 3.6 million teachers estimated nationwide. None that I know would sign up to take a life; it’s just not in them.

Building up teachers – whether by recruitment (read “paying them well”), retention, professional development, even by giving them adequate infrastructure with which to do their best work – is an easy step toward fortifying schools, toward not only protecting our children but also proactively offering them the best all around academic situation. Teachers are there to teach – about history that shouldn’t be repeated, about civil discourse, about big and bold ideas, about ethical behavior and how algebra can get us there. Employ that arsenal of our best knowledge and wisdom over 200 days a year, replicate it thousands of times in each professional educator teaching in each school all over our country, and we will have an easy yes, a much more effective force for change.

This story was originally published March 3, 2018 at 9:00 AM with the headline "To fortify schools, build teachers."