Teacher Appreciation Week
Educators have become front line fighters in America’s bizarre and increasingly deadly gun epidemic
By: Eric Davidson
Here at Armed With Reason, our goal is to share the latest gun violence prevention data, uplift stories of survivors and activists, and generally try to stanch the flow of gun lobby misinformation. Hence we don’t usually focus on our educational system — or so you would think.
Sadly, educators have become front-line soldiers in America’s bizarre and deadly gun epidemic. School shootings have increased since the once-unimaginable Columbine High School massacre in 1999, to the point where a main debate today is whether we have become numb to “yet another” school shooting when they arrive, seemingly every week.
I personally remember when Columbine happened, it was top story in the news for weeks. Now a school shooting will get its top story, but is nearly forgotten by the next day. It is easy to imagine a TV news producer sitting in a pitch meeting asking, “Well, how many were killed?” as justification for where to place it in the broadcast.
And recently in Tennessee, the latest “Oh my god, no, that’s insane, that would never happen” happened, as that state’s General Assembly passed a bill allowing teachers to carry guns inside schools. And if that shocks you, Giffords reminds us that more than half the States in the U.S. already have laws permitting teachers to carry guns on school grounds. And boy, hasn’t that turned out to be a great deterrent?
Needless to say, polls find most teachers and parents strongly disagree with this “solution.”
Yet every day, walking into these dystopian realities, teachers set their lesson plans and a large coffee down on their desks, welcome their students, and go about doing their best to keep our children educated and hopeful.
So like everyone else this week, we wish to celebrate national Teacher Appreciation Week, in our own humble way. Below are a few recent education-related articles we’ve published on Armed With Reason.
Here’s to all teachers, pre-K to post-grad — THANK YOU!
How Is the Brain Affected by Gun Violence?
Researchers at Columbia University are using digital imaging techniques to investigate the ongoing effects of gun violence trauma
Dan Rigney - Development & Communications at The Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus
From booking bands on campus to keeping guns off them
The NRA’s Biggest Back-to-School Sale: The Safety of Our Children
The NRA's feckless "School Shield" program
Reflections from a Columbine Survivor: 25 Years Later
The father of a Columbine victim mourns for those lost, and hopes for the future
The Armed with Reason Podcast: Columbine, Now & Then
Experiencing Columbine High School as a student, and now as a teacher
GVPanorama - He Was the Principal at Columbine. Helping Communities Heal Became His Life’s Work
Frank DeAngelis turned his survivor's guilt into a mission to help heal
Friday Finds
In addition to the roundup of this week’s GVP news, we give a specific focus to the somber 25th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre that occurred in Littleton, Colorado, on April 20, 1999.
How to Reduce Gun Violence? Teachers Share Their Ideas
— Shared in Friday Finds, from Education Week.
Eric Davidson is Senior Editor at Armed With Reason. His first book, We Never Learn, has recently been reissued in an Expanded Edition. His father was a college professor, and the guitarist in his band, New Bomb Turks, is a high school teacher.