What can we do?

In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, so many questions and ideas are flying around. Fingers are being pointed, petitions are being drafted and signed, conversations are taking place, money is being raised, tears are shed: "What can we do to make sure this never happens again?" We ask ourselves.

I offer my blog in complete humility. My voice is one of many and my thoughts are probably not very inspiring or important, but I feel the need to express them.

I am a teacher in a high school in a fairly rough area. I see the mental and emotional and sometimes physical abuse my students go through. I try to be there for them... I try to give them some discipline shared out with grace. I try to discern what they need. I fill out paperwork for educational psychologist visits, counsellors, parent meetings, social worker reviews, IEPs,...

Being a teenager is hard and all the pain I went through 10 years ago is faster, deeper, bigger from the prolific speed and accessibility of the internet, of the vastness of tv, of the range of sources which can now influence our young ones so easily. In a world where we can publicly shame someone on twitter, where Presidents can respond, where celebrities interact with us... we can see the effect of words and meaning on our little hearts and that hunger for popularity and praise in our minds.

I'm not going to pretend it doesn't affect me too... I'll check to see how many hits this blog gets...

In our online world of over-analysation, it seems so easy to hide our feelings and thoughts from people... it seems easy to hide and let our emotions build up till we want to explode. Till little black things grow in our hearts. Hatreds and prejudices and superiorities and rages.

How can we work ourselves back to the good place where innocence reigns?

And now we have a world conversation about guns in classrooms and mental health in America and violent culture and what caused a primary school shooting...

We can try to find answers, but will we ever really know? Is our surety merely just presumption? Can we ever truly find a reason for such a monstrosity?

I am a teacher... I grew up with guns in our house. Hunter father. Marksman. We went shooting, I had a sling shot and a bow and arrow, and I learnt to shoot. I enjoy shooting guns as a hobby.

I don't want a gun in my classroom.

Guns are tools and should be respected. Like microscopes, knives, cleaning products, baseball bats, everything around us has potential... They have specific purposes and protocols and maintenance that needs to be followed.

I want my classroom to be a safe, happy place. Where people can feel free to be themselves. Where my hurting teenagers can set aside all that and learn something new, stretch the reaches of their potential, think in new ways, listen to each other, talk to each other, be with each other. I don't want them to merely tolerate one another, but to understand and celebrate the differences.

I don't want guns in my classroom.

For years I've joked about tasers or maybe shock collars, but I've found that a steady eye, a calm smile, a soothing tone, a gentle hand on the shoulder has much more effect, even on very disturbed and violent young people.

I'm not saying it's the answer to people with guns coming to shoot up my classroom. But I'm saying, I don't want a gun in my classroom... but maybe a taser.

That being said, my classroom is not completely defenceless... I've had kids freak out... one student in particular, I thought he was going to stab me with my own scissors which he got out of my desk; on more than one occasion, I've had to take my staple gun away from less-than-trustworthy teenagers because they might shoot one another as a joke. I know I sound like a crazed mid-Western mom "You're going to put someone's eye out with that thing." But it's true.

I'm not saying if a shooter came into my classroom I'd have the foresight to take them out with my staple gun... but it's definitely a possibility.

The thing is, anything around us could be used as a weapon if we want it to be... from a nasty twitter/fb status to an electric cord, to a stapler; I can hurt people with everyday items if I want to: everyone remembers the pen in the hand scene from the Bourne Ultimatum... GROSS. Anyone who has been the victim of eye drops in your coffee office prank knows what I'm talking about.

If people want to kill large numbers of people, it's not hard to make an explosive or get poison, or use a baseball bat or just go out with a big car to a school parking lot when school lets out... (now you're just giving people ideas)... It's not good guns versus bad guns...

So what can we do to keep this from never happening again? I'm afraid to say that all of our legislation will probably fail us... it isn't the law we want to change, it's our hearts... all of our hearts... we want to get rid of the fear and the hatred and the rage and all of those little black things that have grown up inside our hearts. We need healing... all of us do... all of us are messed up and hurting and angry at something, at someone, at the very least that we live in a world where things like this can happen...

I have heard enough these past weeks of freedom from and freedom to... We are free, but where has it gotten us? Freedom isn't what is most needed--we need grace, we need love, we need redemption, we need Jesus.

I'm not talking about prayer in schools. I'm not talking about making every student in the country have to learn Bible lessons. In our hearts, in our lives, we need Jesus.

I work with students from over 60 countries and 50 languages. They are Muslims, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Catholics, Atheists, Christians, Sheiks... I don't want to change any of my children. I don't want them to think that my religion is better than theirs. I want them to love who they are, I want them to be proud of who they are. I want them to be able to talk about the differences in their beliefs, and accept one another, and celebrate together, and love each other.

A Polish Christian boy learned to say "salam malaykum" to his Bengali-Muslim friend's mother when he went to visit at their house... that makes my heart SOAR! But we all need Jesus, don't we... His peace and grace and love... and I pray that over my classroom every day, even if none of my students know it, even if no one else agrees and believes me... The Holy Spirit is there in my classroom, and it's a quiet, peaceful place where children feel safe and loved and work hard.

I don't want a gun in my classroom.

I want to believe that if a shooter came in, that He would feel that Spirit of Peace and be unable to shoot; but if he/she could, if they could disregard that peace, then I will shoot my staple gun, I will throw chairs, I will lash at them with power cords in order to keep my students safe, and if I had one, I'd use a taser.

We must admit, there is something fierce about all of those little snivelling black things growing up around us and in us, and there is something equally fierce in the love and courage it takes to fight those black things, and there is something beautiful in our desire to protect innocence and to nurture love and peace and safety. When I think that we all do agree that there is something horribly wrong when innocence is destroyed, I have hope.

"Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -"

~Emily Dickinson