A Teacher's Tales

  Recent research and studies conducted among teachers across Canada indicates that an increasing number of them fear for their safety. Let me tell you an interesting story to do with that issue.
   On April 20, 1999, you will recall, the news came out of Columbine about the murderous rampage at the high school there. A year later,that incident still loomed large in the minds of many parents and teachers. On May 26, 2000,I intercepted a letter being passed by a grade seven student in my room. In it, he detailed plans to, among other things, "cut off the head of ( a named classmate) and use it for a bloody hockey puck." I made a big mistake at that point in believing that my immediate superior, the school principal, would handle the situation properly. I took the student and the note to him, and was told to leave the matter in his hands. Imagine my surprise on the Monday morning when I was standing at my desk, before the bell, and I heard that student's voice from behind me. I had expected he would at least be suspended for a couple of days. I found out that he had been told he would have to work in the hall in front of the office for one day as his punishment for the note writing. That was all that had been done. I phoned the police to inquire about any legal responsibilities I might have in the situation, and all of a sudden, things became really interesting. The officer who spoke to me said that there were indeed responsibilities. He told me that THERE WAS NO REPORT OF THE INCIDENT, and said one should have been made the day it occurred. An officer was sent to the school to take a report from me. The principal was out at lunch when the officer arrived, and came back to find her standing talking to me, taking my statement. In front of the students and the officer and anyone else who was within hearing, the principal loudly berated me for having called the police. He angrily told me later that he had NOT WANTED TO TELL THE PARENTS OF THE THREE STUDENTS named in the note. Each one of those boys had been named as part of some murderous design, just like the first.
   Only one year after that horrendous incident in the States, this principal took it upon himself to decide that this threatening letter "was all a joke". To keep everything easy for himself and to avoid having any report of less-than-perfection at his school, he tried to cover up the whole thing. How can anyone say what might have happened if the police had not been called? How can that principal, or anyone else, presume to know how things would have gone? How could he dare to deny the parents involved the knowledge of what was happening around their sons in their classroom? Who was he to decide for those parents what they should or should not know? I left that school at the end of June, taking an administrative transfer to be away from that principal, and his laissez-faire attitude to the safety of the students and the staff. The only problem is, he is not the only one of his ilk. After teaching as many years as I have, and after more than one conversation with police officers about other classroom situations, I suspect that, sadly, he is the norm. The path of least resistance, the easy way out, is the one chosen by most school administrators, and if there is a price to be paid for it, guess who gets to pay?