guest post by Samantha Fox
I am a third-grade teacher at a moderately poor school. I deal with troubled children on a regular basis but as Rebecca Berlin Field of Douglas S. Freeman High School in Virginia wrote, “Nowhere in my contract does it state that if the need arises, I have to shield students from gunfire with my own body. If it did, I wouldn’t have signed it. I love my job. I love my students. I am also a mother with two amazing daughters. I am a wife of a wonderful man. I have a dog that I adore. I don’t want to die defending other people’s children; I want to teach kindness and responsibility … and art history.”
I also am a mother of two wonderful children and a wife to an amazing husband and have a dog I adore. I want to teach love and understanding, to discourage bullying, and create opportunities for children that their parents may not have had. I challenge anyone to call me a coward when I teach 25 active and sometimes angry 3rd graders 5 days a week, but I am not trained to fire a weapon nor could I ever fire one even if trained.
It is madness to even to suggest that teachers be armed. New York City police statistics show that simply hitting a target, let alone hitting it in a specific spot, is a difficult challenge. In 2006, in cases where police officers intentionally fired a gun at a person, they discharged 364 bullets and hit their target 103 times, for a hit rate of 28.3 percent. In 2005 a 17.4% hit rate. New York City officers achieved a 34 percent accuracy rate in 2007 (and a 43 percent accuracy rate when the target ranged from zero to six feet away). Yet our President wants to arm teachers after a simple training course. There is greater likelihood that an innocent student will be shot than an arm gunman. MADNESS at an extreme.
Guns have no place in schools. Cameras, stronger security maybe but the real answer is to eliminate bullying, to teach our children to respect all students. And the place to start this lesson given President Trumps tweets and comments is from the top down.
I want teachers and parents to speak out against this lunacy.