Reasonable Measures

February 6, 2013


When my son was little, he was what we called a ‘runner’. The world was a fascinating place to him, and if something shiny or colorful or interesting caught his eye, his only thought was to chase after it. He didn’t worry about safety or being lost; young children are in-the-moment, the-world-revolves-around-me kind of beings. He always assumed if he took off somewhere, I was right behind him, chasing the butterflies, too.

And so it happened one day while we were at church that he ran. We attended church at a local high school campus while we waited for our actual church to be built. Nicholas was at the age where he was straddling the adjacent rooms of the infants and the toddlers, depending on his ability on any given Sunday to participate in the more structured pre-school environment of the toddlers. During the service I ducked out of the sermon briefly to nurse my newborn, who was also being cared for in the infant room. Just before I settled in with the baby, I looked around to check in on Nicholas, and he was not there. The nursery sitters said he must be in with the toddlers today. I poked my head in through the adjoining door—no Nicholas there, either. The pre-school teacher paused in her lesson and let me know that Nicholas was in with the babies today.

Except, he wasn’t. We looked in the bathrooms; we looked under tables. We looked down the hallways and in nearby open rooms. It became increasingly apparent that no one knew where my boy was, and I moved quickly into panic mode. I was frantic, and the mood of anxiety was only increased by the wailing cries of hunger from Danielle, who had still not gotten to nurse. I ran outside to the school campus, shouting Nicholas’ name. Neither the nursery sitter nor the pre-school teacher could help; they still had charges in their care. I saw a familiar face who had slipped out of the sermon to check on HIS little one, and he began to canvas the campus with me. The school sits on a fairly busy street, and I had horrific visions of Nicholas wandering out into ongoing traffic, oblivious to everything but a fluffy cloud he might be following. After a seemingly interminable twenty minute search, my friend found Nicholas sobbing, crying out for his mama. I collapsed to the sidewalk, wracked with sobs of relief, and hugged him tight.

It turns out, Nicholas had gone on a ‘nature walk’ with the toddlers that day. Something had caught his eye, and he wandered away from the orderly line of pre-schoolers. He was enthralled enough that he didn’t realize they had left him behind, and when the kids got back to the make-shift classroom, the teacher assumed that he had settled himself back into the nursery. He had been gone at least ten minutes by himself before I showed up looking for him.

Many of my friends were angry on my behalf, and I can understand. There were certainly measures that should have been in place to prevent such a thing from happening. Vigilance with small children is crucial, critical. And yet, I knew he was a runner. I knew how quickly he could slip away. The teachers were despondent and deeply apologetic, and by the very next week, a number of safety procedures were in place: sign-in/sign out sheets, name tags for each child, a halt to fluidity between rooms, and sturdy childproof gates at all possible entrances. These were all good measures, and long overdue.

In the past several weeks, this incident has come back to me. We are reactionary, as human beings. We discover a problem, and we want to fix it. We want to prevent it from recurring. Several weeks ago, when the tragic massacre occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary, immediately we wanted to figure out how to protect all of our children from such a nightmare. I remember the same panic after the Columbine shooting. Suddenly, school safety plans were insufficient; clearly we all had to ‘up our game.’ Who knew when someone would go off the deep end? What could we do to predict and avert such an incident? After Columbine, schools across the nation set up security cameras, enacted new emergency policies, and fenced in campuses. New security officer positions were created, and more staff members were stationed about campus before and after school, vigilant against unwanted intruders who might mean harm to our children. At my own school, each staff member is issued a neon reflective vest and a piercing whistle to alert other adults to danger, should it rear its ugly head.

These, too, are good measures. There is nothing wrong with heightened awareness, and increased presence. However, Sandy Hook has encouraged people to propose even more stringent security measures. After all, Sandy Hook was a gated school, with surveillance cameras in place. They should have been protected from the gunman who broached the gates and attacked students and teachers alike. So what more is there to do? The public debate centers around gun laws and gun control. Stricter laws. Bans on assault weapons. Armed guards. Armed teachers. Home school everybody and let the parents wield weapons at their doors. Reactionary, reactionary, reactionary….with not a lot of care or forethought given to real efficacy or potential dangerous side-effects of these measures.

I am in favor of reasonable measures to protect ourselves and our children at school sites. We lock our doors at home at night while we sleep; we buckle into our seatbelts when we’re driving. When Nicholas went ‘running’ I was in favor of measures that would help prevent a recurrence. But there are reasonable measures, and then there are ones bordering on paranoia. Locking Nicholas into a covered crib would have ensured he wouldn’t run again from the church. Pinning him into a stationery seat for the duration of the service would have done the same. If we’d kept all the kids in the pre-school on kid-leashes during the whole church service, that too would possibly have minimized the potential recurrence. But is that really the way we want to live our lives? Do we want to lock up our children to keep them safe from the off-chance that danger might befall them? Do we want our schools to become lands of martial law, a hundred deputies on every campus just waiting for someone to make a false move? I imagine arming personnel on campus could easily cause at least as many tragedies as it would be likely to avert.

I am a teacher. I went into teaching because I believe in the inherent good in people, and the value of focusing on the positive possibilities our future generations represent. It is not in my nature to look with suspicion on everyone who crosses my path. I am not so naïve as to believe that every individual has pure motives and good intentions, but the day I begin to think that the dangerous and the malicious have become the norm, it is time for me to retire. Arming the teachers? A reactionary measure, incited by paranoia--borne out of good intentions, but paranoia nonetheless. Are we to teach our students each day, crouching down behind a protective barrier, weapons drawn and at the ready? I refuse to believe this is how we should exist. This is not the world I want my students to learn to love. How can they grow and stretch intellectually when they are cowering in fear every time the door opens? Fear fosters fear.

We must be prepared, according to the voices clamoring for safety—for guarantees. But there are no guarantees, are there? We can’t possibly predict and avert every tragedy. I can’t begin to wrap my brain around the kind of mindset of one who would perpetrate such crimes. We have experts who do their best, but even they don’t know with certainty. If they could, we wouldn’t have some of the heinous crimes we’ve seen on school campuses across the nation. But expert I am not in this field. I am not a sniper. I am not a hostage negotiator. I am not trained to counteract a terrorist. Those jobs should be left to those who have the skills and aptitude and training. I do not want that training, nor do I want my profession to adopt that training alongside training in lesson design and classroom management and differentiated instruction. They are different worlds, and as best as we can, we should strive to keep them so.

Sandy Hook. Virginia Tech. Columbine. Three schools and communities that suffered unspeakable carnage and loss. But there are hundreds of thousands of schools across our land that continue to operate normally, where teachers and administrators do their best to support students and show them the way to a better future without threat of imminent danger from a hostile or unstable person. Hundreds of thousands. We must not let paranoia let us forget that THAT is the norm. Reasonable measures? Of course. But let us not fall to the mindset of victimhood, terrified not of IF, but of WHEN. That’s no way to live. That’s no future to show our children.

UCLA Trip

February 5, 2013

Danielle earned admission into the CJSF organization again this year, and the group took a college site-seeing trip down to UCLA on Monday.  Several of her friends went too, and she said they had a great time.  One day, the kid is playing with CareBears and My Little Ponies, and the next day she's proudly sporting a UCLA sweatshirt and thinking about heading off to college.  Where did the time go?

Incentive

February 3, 2013

This is my incentive for working hard at physical therapy to regain strength in my knee.  Doug bought these for me for Christmas, and I got to wear them twice before I had my surgery on January 3rd.  The recovery from my ACL/meniscus surgery is going more slowly than I had hoped, but these babies are helping me keep my focus.

Thought for the Day

January 27, 2012

Most of the time when I'm on Pinterest, I'm all, "Oooh...pretty shoes and dresses! And look at all the yummy food I can try!" But there's always a subtle subtext of, "I must be a terrible mom--look at all the cool party ideas and fun science experiments and cool crafts and interesting photo shoots that I never did with my kids when they were young!"

Sharpshooter

January 24. 2013

Long before Katness Everdeen made her mark on the literary world or stood up on screen to volunteer as tribute, Danielle has been asking us to sign her up for archery lessons.  I'm not really sure where the interest initially came from, but Danielle is nothing if not persistent.  Once she gets ahold of an idea, she wants to see it through.  However, when she first asked five or six years ago, I was quite reluctant.  I wasn't convinced that with the impulsivity number two and kid number three sometimes exhibited that I might suddenly find myself with one of them in the emergency room watching a doctor extricate an arrow from one of my kids' bodies. Not that I thought anyone would intentionally shoot an arrow through their sibling; they just weren't always well-known for attention to detail and watching their surroundings when they were younger. 


So now we're several years past her initial request, and it hasn't dimmed for her at all.  In the meantime, both of the kids have matured and grown up, so I'm not quite so fearful of accidental 'spearings'.  We decided this Christmas would be the perfect time to get Danielle the gift of lessons.  We got her a gift certificate to Impact Archery, which is run by a professional archer.  He apparently has trained and taught several actors to shoot for various movies.  He's a little gruff--a 'man's man', I suppose, but he clearly knows his sport.

Doug took Danielle for her first lesson today, and she absolutely loved it.  Within minutes she had settled into a rhythm and stance, and Doug even overheard another patron say she looked like a real natural.  He got a few pictures of her as she was shooting, and for a first time out, her aim was pretty impressive.  She's very excited to continue on with her lessons.  If she really takes to it, we'll soon get her her own bow and arrows and set up an archery lane in the back yard.

Danielle's Self-Portrait

January 16, 2013

I'm so impressed with Danielle's artistic ability.  For her 8th grade Advanced Art class, she had to take a small picture of herself and recreate it in pencil.  It's hard to tell from the picture, but her artwork is a 16 x 20 sized portrait. 

Leadership Camp

January 13, 2013

This is a group photo of Bree and her fellow attendees at the leadership camp she attended this weekend.  She was selected to attend by virtue of her involvement in several organizations on campus.  I continue to be amazed and proud of all the things she's accomplishing at San Diego State.

Well, This Came for Me a Little Earlier Than Expected

January 13, 2013

As I am slowly but surely making my recovery from knee surgery, I am reminded almost by the minute of how much I am NOT yet my former self.  A week and a half  post-surgery, and I'm still hobbling about painfully on crutches.  However, I am making progress for sure.  When Doug and I decided to hit the grocery store (late at night, on a Sunday, so as to avoid crowds), I felt fairly certain I was up to the task.  I had bought quite a lot of groceries in advance of my surgery, making sure the pantry was very well stocked, but we still needed a few items that I hadn't covered.  (More milk, for one.  My goodness, the boys in our household--Doug included--make milk disappear like magic!)

Anyway, we got out of the car and headed toward the front of the store.  Barely inside, I realized how daunting the thought was of me making my way down all the aisles to collect the things we needed.  I was already tired.  The cashier nearest the door happened to see us as we made our way inside and offered up this:

My first thought was, "No way! Those are for people who really need them."  And then I thought, "Hey-right now, I AM one of those people." I was at once grateful and embarrassed, but I climbed aboard and took off.  The cashier even said that if their other one wasn't being repaired, Doug and I could have a race to see who was faster.  Now THAT would have been fun!  I felt silly driving my little cart around the grocery store, but let me tell you, it was fun, too.  I'm just glad that my condition is a temporary one.  Perhaps later, in my Golden Years, when my body chooses to betray me in a somewhat more permanent way, I'll be happy to have a little cart of my own to amble about in.  And by that time, if Doug is in need of one too, I'll be happy to show him who would have won that race if Vons had both of their carts ready for action. 

Winter Formal, Sophomore Year

January 12, 2013

Nicholas asked Natalie Gonzales to accompany him to the Winter Formal this year.  She had a previous commitment for dinner, but she was able to meet up with him at the dance.  Normally I have Winter Formal dance duty, but because of my knee surgery I had to bow out.  In addition, we had to have Danielle at her soccer game at the same time Nicholas was getting dressed for formal, so I never even got to see him all dressed up, nor did I get to see his date!  I had to rely on a few photos from his dad and from my good friend Allison, who was chaperoning.

Nicholas didn't seem too disappointed that he didn't get to take Natalie to dinner.  I think he just focused on having a good time at the dance.  He said they both had a great time!

Should We Just Keep It?

January 7, 2013

Brianna asked for this T-Shirt for Christmas (a chip off the old block, so to speak), and although I ordered it well before the holidays, it took its time getting here.  I told her that she could expect a late Christmas gift in one of the care packages I send her, but now I'm wondering if I should just keep it.  Ha ha!