As far as I’m concerned, no teacher goes into a classroom without concealed weapons. I know I never have. Chalk is a bullet in the right hands. Students have no idea what I’m up to or whether what I’m teaching them is algebra or how to live. They don’t get either at home. Where the district has it wrong is making me conceal my actual gun: they let me carry it to make the students safer; the policy makes that clear; so aren’t things even safer if the kids know I’m carrying? I know it makes me feel safer. Anyway, it’s not as if I could hide this bulge for long. The kids I need to worry about can smell the oil on the cylinders, just as I will smell theirs the day they think they’re too smart for me. The training was a joke. If I’m not already responsible, I wouldn’t have a permit in the first place. What I do is show it, to let them know there’s a willing readiness to balance anything they might bring to class. On your ankle today, sir? they ask me. Under your arm? At the hip? They don’t get the answer until they perform academically. I tell you, the kids we lost last year were casualties of academic failure. The shooters thought the only way to challenge authority was to shoot. Of course they came from broken homes. What home isn’t broken? We teachers have to raise a generation that isn’t taught anything, they’re only sold. From me they get nuance. From me they learn that authority is a matter of negotiation. We don’t just question it, we defy its right to exist until it proves itself. And extra credit for anyone who can make it into school with contraband.
Copyright © August 17, 2008 David Hodges
7 comments
Comments feed for this article
August 17, 2008 at 11:36 pm
briseis
Man, I am GLAD that this piece of work isn’t in any of my classrooms. (And, yes, I’m sure of it.)
I’m glad too, Briseis. So far, they’ve only started packing heat with permission in Texas.
–David
August 18, 2008 at 2:59 am
nursemyra
that’s a scary scenario
can’t help myself
–David
August 18, 2008 at 12:00 pm
litlove
It always freaks me to remember that often you draw your scenarios from real life. They tread such a fine line between rendering the implausible likely and undermining the fantastic by revealing roots in reality. Recently my husband’s started working from home for an internet company and I think he may have the right idea, keeping his workplace interactions virtual.
Thank you, Litlove. The slaughter of five school girls at the one-room Amish West Nickel Mines Schoolhouse an hour west of here in Lancaster, PA, October 2006, was as impossible an event as has ever occurred, until it happened. I’m happy for your husband and admire his “distance strategy.” One can still be shot in virtual space, I’m afraid, but there’s less blood to clean up.
–David
August 18, 2008 at 9:42 pm
grantman
…” authority is a matter of negotiations,” wow!!! Great line, David…very good piece..A closed mind is such a wonderful thing to loose…
grantman
Thanks, Grantman.
–David
August 19, 2008 at 7:39 am
JJ Loch
Teachers have the hardest job in the world. FANTASTIC writing. And you also have the most influence, nurturing souls day after day, keeping a balance when life is unbalanced in many homes. You’re doing a GREAT job!!!
My geometry teacher told me words of wisdom years ago and I still repeat them. “Life is like a pendulum. It swings back and forth.” Those words have gotten me through hard times as an adult. 😀
What would we DO without teachers!
Blessings! JJ
Thanks, JJ. I join you in saluting teachers: yours, mine, everybody’s teachers. Just a gentle reminder, though, about the Novels on this site. They’re fiction, not memoir. The narrators are not me.
–David
August 21, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Wizzer at Guru fodder
I love this one David. The underlying care the teacher has for his kids’ education is evident – sadly too many go through the motions of teaching from books and not life.
I guess, like the inventor Volante Volanti, this teacher is a catastrophe of excesses. Thanks, Wizzer.
–David
August 23, 2008 at 12:19 pm
paisley
very interesting perspective… and i cannot say that i doubt the validity of the argument…
Thanks, Paisley. Nothing is more volatile than a reasonable argument.
–David