Last Friday I
met with a staff member who is a former middle school teacher. Before we began, she informed me of the
tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
She was crying. When you’re a teacher, every child is your child and
every educational professional is part of a larger community who understands
that connection. Losing those children
and those colleagues, even though we’ve not met them, is more than a news
story. The loss of these children and
these colleagues brings us all to tears.
These are our children and these are our colleagues, and this is our
loss. Every educator grieves with the
community of Newtown, Connecticut.
Other people
are talking and writing about the issues of violence and our children. They will write about the 1,187 children
under 18 whom the FBI
statistics tell us were violently killed in 2011. Or they’ll tell us that 565 of those children
were killed by firearms. The discussions
have already started about the confluence of mental illness and firearms, and
of the need for families to have more support around family members with mental
illness. These discussions will go
forward and, as the President suggested, they must lead to action.
However,
this also seems a time for us to examine how we perceive schools and educators
and children. Over the past 30 years, we
seem to have developed a general perception that educators have failed and that
schools have failed, despite all the evidence that we have that this isn’t the
case. Our popular media sometimes
portrays a few educators as saints and, more often, as manipulating, bumbling
caricatures who only take the job for the easy work it offers. That’s in contrast to the educators I
know. The educators I know are dedicated
folks who care deeply about children and work hard to help children create
their futures. Educators weep when a
child is harmed because we see what children can become. Despite what I know from working alongside,
observing, and training educators, some pressure groups have decided that what
they perceive to be problems in education come from educators. These detractors are wrong in both their
perception of failure and their perception of educators.
The
educators at Sandy Hook Elementary who died were killed as they protected
children. That makes them heroes. I believe that these extraordinary people
were actually ordinary educators who reacted to a moment that required the
bravery that came when the children they cared for were threatened. It’s the same level of care that got them up
that morning to go to work and perform among the most important valuable roles
that we ask of adults. They didn’t
expect to become martyred heroes that morning when they went to work – they
just expected that they’d have the privilege of educating, of seeing children becoming
their futures in small increments.
That’s what educators do, and experiencing that privilege is what makes
us care so deeply about children.
Educators
aren’t saints – like every other person, we stumble in trying to live up to our
ideals. But educators are an amazing
profession of people who spend our lives in dedication to others and in hope
for the future. It is this focus on hope
that really defines us. Unlike any other
profession that I know, it is hope that frames education. We see more of what is possible than what
only is. When hope is taken away for
children, we cry; but we look forward to the next moment and the next
hope. An unimaginable tragedy like the
murder of 20 children and six colleagues doesn’t distinguish our hope. It gives us more resolve to serve children
better.
So maybe we
can stop with the negative perceptions and mischaracterizations of who and what
educators are. And maybe we can start a
new conversation that looks to our educators as the keepers of hope whom they
are. Maybe while we discuss firearms,
mental illness, and public safety, we can also talk about the strengths of our educational
workforce and the amazing miracles they perform daily. We must honor the heroes who gave their lives
in a moment of threat. And we must also
honor all of the educators who give their lives daily.
