Why I Will Never Carry a Gun In My Classroom

Excellent article. — Molly

 

 

I am an educator. I will not be drafted into an ideological war.

By Victoria Barrett 

Several years ago, I taught a student who seemed capable of shooting up a classroom. He radiated contempt for me, his freshman composition classmates and the assignments, muttering about the stupidity of his peers and rolling his eyes when they spoke. His writing displayed a generalized hatred toward women and some violent fantasies involving hypothetical, gruesome gun crimes against cheating girlfriends. One day, as I rounded the corner, I heard him berating a female student in the hallway because she had defended me against whatever complaints he aired. Spittle flew from his face toward hers.

Eventually, as is almost always the case with such students, he found reason to complain to my boss about my teaching. He took issue in particular with my having deleted a violent comment on the class blog. My boss explained that it was my right and responsibility to maintain a safe learning space for the whole class, which sometimes meant censoring comments. The student became irrational and nonsensical. After he left, my boss walked straight to my office to say she was concerned for my safety, and had referred the student to the appropriate office for assessment of a possible threat.

Teaching freshman comp courses, like teaching high school, is routinely high-stakes, high-emotion work. Students who are still teenagers, who are struggling with leaving home for the first time, and who have probably been told that a college education is the key to a successful future carry an incredible level of stress. We’re accustomed to tantrums, shouting and a wide range of irrational behavior. In my courses, that behavior tends most frequently to come from young men. But this student had evoked a more threatening tone. If anyone in the 17 years I’ve taught college might have shown up with a firearm, this student was the one.

So far, this sounds like a viable argument for arming teachers, an idea that bubbles up after every school shooting in this country and one that President Trump expressed support for on Wednesday. But my fellow teachers and I did not enter this profession to be security guards. And if this proposal becomes a reality, we will not have safer schools. We will have confusion, possibly more tragedy and an exodus of educators at a time when our country can’t afford it.

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