of loss and anger and memory on a rainy winter day

I am watching the rain fall on a chill winter's day, and I am thinking.

Yesterday morning I had the joyous opportunity to play with letters and words with kindergarten kids in three different schools in Albemarle County, Virginia.

They showed me how to make a J.
I challenged them with a special "J-word" - Jelloricious.

This was special. Special because, though I am not in Virginia this week, I could join through the contemporary technologies which make the world of these children something unique, and special because, unless you routinely see "school,' "education," and our planet through the eyes of young children, you are in no position to discuss education and educational poverty. The gift these five-year-olds give to me is a gift which makes my work possible.

But yesterday morning I also became aware of the horrible evil playing out in a Connecticut suburb, a place close to the homes of friends, a place close to the homes of dearly loved cousins - not that that matters, really - but a place any of us might find ourselves... as parents or teachers.

A mentally ill young white suburban male - does this sound familiar - who did not get the help he probably needed in school, whose family was spread out too far, whose father spent three hours a day commuting to a job I know was longer than eight hours in length, whose - well, we'll never know most of it but we know it all too well, walked into an elementary school, an elementary school secured with all the silly security systems politicians and media-trained parents demanded after Columbine, and murdered 20 babies, five and six-year-olds, and six of those "lazy, unionized" adults our leaders say work in our schools.

Why? There's no answer. I could tell you about profiling the paranoia which grows in certain isolated minds, about how that morphs into conspiracy, merges with America's peculiar machismo love of heavy weapons, and turns lethal, but that's the stuff of stupid Today Show interviews now. It doesn't matter.

There may be answers in American gun laws. America's leaders are far more interested in arresting 19-year-olds with beer cans than people with assault weaponry - "killing machines" is the only term we can use. (A police academy instructor once told us, "There may be legitimate reasons to own a single shot rifle, but the only purpose of handguns and multi-shot weapons is the murder of humans.") There is a great deal of the mantra of the American right wing in this, "the "right-to-life" ends at birth." We like to pretend, in America, that we are heroes instead of an increasingly frightened population, terrified of our own shadows, so we cling to our guns as a faux masculinity, unwilling to take any necessary steps which might make our children safer.

There may be answers in our health care system as well. As middle class health insurance has been gutted by greedy corporations and moronic state legislators, mental health supports have dropped. As school budgets have been cut so has counseling support. I remember being amazed, when I first went to work in a high school, that we had one social worker for 1800 adolescents. Many football coaches, one social worker. It is only because of Obamacare that this shooter could have even had health insurance as a 20-year-old not in college, and, you know, Obamacare is a socialist plot.

The Twilight Zone - The Bewitching Pool - not every suburban idyll is idyllic

There may be answers in our desires for status. I do not know if I would have spent a great deal of money to live in a place which left me with three hours of commuting each day, and only minutes with my children. I earned very little during the time I had to devote to parenting, but I was there. And I'm glad my son and I watched TV together and ate dinner together almost every night. I'm not trying to make anyone feel guilt here, but I think we might need to examine our priorities, to stop laughing at the Greeks or Irish because they value time home with their families more than money and 3,000 square foot homes on half acre lots. I think we need to decide whether our time is better spent in our adult pursuits or in parenting. I think we need to wonder about living in neighborhoods instead of subdivisions.

President Obama

And there may need to be a rethink about how we act when our kids are in trouble. Do we protect our reputation or do we get help?

But, as I watch today's rain, I guess the biggest question is our priorities as a society. I understand that I, as someone who hates guns - I carried one every day for my job, I'd never do that again - its no big deal for me to give up guns if it makes kids safer, but if guns are your love, your hobby, your passion, would you make that choice? I know every tax dollar I pay "hurts" - but I pay, as Michigan's late great Governor George Romney said, "because its my responsibility." I'd rather pay ten more bucks and have a psychologist in every school. I'd rather pay another ten bucks more and make sure the teenager on the next block over has the access to great mental health services. I'd rather pay more at a store which offers benefits to my retail-employed neighbors than shop at Walmart. I'd rather drive a car built by an American unionized worker because I know they have the salary and benefits they need to take care of their families and have dignity in their lives. And I'd rather do what I do with schools than make a lot of money.

I'm hardly a saint. That's not the point. The point is that from every direction, the White House, the Republicans in Congress, America's governors, the Koch Brothers, even Andrew Cuomo (who, like Mitt Romney, was raised to know better), and especially corporate America, children in our society have been pushed to the back of our priorities list. We worry about taxes, and rights, and unions and socialism, but maybe the first question should be, "what about our children?"

We are hurting right now. Horribly hurting. It is beyond our imaginations. But it will go on and on like this until we choose to make different decisions.

There is nothing a school policy or any school security can do about this. This is a society which needs to ask itself some very deep questions.

Because when I next interact with five-year-olds, I do not want to look at them with fear in my heart. I do not want to do that.

- Ira Socol

A Toxic Mix and Children at Risk

Childhood - at least in 'western' nations - is really not usually the ultra-high-risk place that one would imagine after watching television news or reading alarmist web sites. This, in fact, is - in many ways - the safest of times to be a child. Subtract idiot parents who oppose vaccinations and the threats from disease are way down (I have siblings who grew up when polio was a major risk). Vehicles are much, much safer (even if back seat rules create new dangers by forcing parents to look backwards continuously). Homes and product packaging are safer. Policing is typically better. No one sells actual lawn darts anymore.

And yet...

We know the risks are real. We have so many terrible schools where students' spirits and potential are crushed. We have so much poverty. We have so many parents with poor access to health care and mental health care. We abuse children with everything from physical and sexual violence to completely inappropriate high-pressure testing.

And now we have a dramatically increased risk in America. We have a toxic mix - economic disaster combined with a lack of a responsible socialist safety net and a national tolerance of privately owned assault weapons - that threatens all of our children.

In the past three days: A shooting rampage in Binghamton, New York at a citizenship training center. A shooting rampage in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that left five children of police officers without fathers. And a father murdering his five children near Seattle, Washington. Coast-to-Coast. Desperate (and desperately weak) people offered no help by America's society except the right to own weapons inappropriate in the hands of most soldiers, snap under relentless pressure, and destroy lives en masse.

I can not imagine America embracing the right to health care anytime soon. Nor can I imagine America becoming realistic about guns. Nor would I suppose that Americans - as a society - will stop viewing poverty as a personal moral failure in the near future. And I can't see a time when Americans - again, as a society, I'm not discussing individuals - will give the same inherent value to life, children, or families that European societies do. So, the toxic mix which has generated this weekend's nightmares will remain.

And that puts far more pressure on our schools and our educators to do whatever 'we' can to help.

Walking the corridors of every school in America are the children of families under enormous stresses. Parents are unemployed. Bills are unpaid. Health is uninsured. Homes are in foreclosure. And far more American families are likely to own high-powered weapons than are likely to have good mental health services available to them.

Sitting in chairs in every classroom in America are children who will go home to newly unstable families. Who face desperately confusing immediate futures. Who might lack the food they need. Who are now crowded into shared living situations. Who may have frustrated parents who are now drinking too much, or are struggling with now financially unsolvable health issues, or are now working too many jobs for too little pay.

And everything a school does - from expectations regarding homework or materials to be purchased, from science fair projects to parent-teacher conferences, from sports to dress codes, from beginning reading to college applications, impacts all of that and is impacted by all of that.

Pressures applied at the wrong moment can have catastrophic consequences, and unless we are paying very close attention, we will have no idea of what are the wrong moments or the wrong pressure points.

Last week in a presentation on Online Accessibility I briefly diverted the conversation to a face-to-face classroom issue, something I called "humiliation from the start." I described how very often - college professors/instructors/lecturers and secondary school teachers especially - we humiliate students with disabilities or force unplanned and unwanted disclosure on the first day. How everything from "ice breaking activities" (popular among more progressive educators), to "fill out this form - or card" activities, to "read this" declarations, can be so horribly destructive when you are not yet sure who can walk well, speak well, hear well, read ink-on-paper well, or write well with a pen. I know, in my academic career, how often I have abandoned courses after one session because of these humiliating teaching strategies (I am actually dealing, right now, with the ongoing fall out of one such situation). Afterwards, as I was getting on the elevator, a faculty member thanked me for that segment. "I never thought of that, or imagined it as a problem," he said, "and I should have." He explained that he teaches our 'Diversity in Education' course.

Looking out across our classrooms, our schoolyards, our corridors - we must work doubly hard right now to see our students as individuals, with individual needs, with individual problems, with individual skills and talents, and individual struggles. And we must look out and see children (or adults) who go home to environments which are not of their own making. And we must be flexible in everything we do, so that we are helping, not applying pressure where we need not do so.

This extends to everything from behavioral tolerance to assignment due dates. To rescheduling when needed. To accepting alternative solutions. To going out of our way to provide multiple possibilities for communication.

And it means listening to your students in new ways. And to reaching out to them. Assuring them that school is not just a "safe place" - but a place to build the resources which support personal safety. A place where adults are 'here to help' (or to help find help) - no matter the problem.

I hate to put any more pressure on teachers. But I've watched the news in the US this weekend, and I do not think we have any choice.

- Ira Socol