The Unarmed Teacher

            Most schools have not had shootings, but all schools have had students with struggles. These struggles range from family crises to student stress to mental illness to harassment and bullying. As a teacher, I know that part of my job is to be available and supportive to students who need to talk about their difficulties.

            That’s why I make sure my classroom is a safe and inviting place for students. My walls are covered with inspiring artwork, I welcome everyone who walks into the room, and I make sure my room is used for school clubs and activities, so there is always a bit of a buzz in the area as students come in and out to check in with me about after-school events.

            Over the years, it has never occurred to me that my room would be safer for students were I carrying a weapon. In fact, I am certain that the presence of a gun in my room would have deterred some students from stopping by to talk. A gun would not have added to the kind of emotional and physical security that these students sought. They wanted to learn from me, teach me something, talk with me, and enjoy the learning environment that we’d created together. They needed a smile, a song played in between classes, and photos on the wall depicting Malala Yousafzai, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Kermit the Frog. Not guns.

            There are some students and adults who argue that arming teachers would help bolster school safety, but these arguments fall short on many levels. For one, they lack clarity on where the guns would be stored, and how they would be accessible in moments of crisis. In addition, they fail to address our nation’s deep struggles with racial profiling, and how that might affect students and teachers of color. And they also don’t address how guns would make a classroom more inviting for that student who is struggling and needs to talk.

            Like many teachers, I have visualized what my actions would be should an active shooter enter my school. My thoughts have always been that I would do everything in my power to keep my students physically and emotionally safe. I’ve treated every lockdown drill seriously, and have taken the time for mental preparation. I’ve established in my mind that I would take a bullet to protect any student in my care.

            But holding a gun in my classroom would be different: It would require a major shift in my own demeanor, moving me from nurturance to enforcement. This shift would turn some kids away, and it would alter my own approach to the job. I can’t see a benefit in that. In fact, it seems to undercut the purpose of an educator, as part of the teacher’s job is to help students envision a more just and peaceful world. Our job is to help them see a way to make things better; adding guns to the classroom seems more like surrendering to the darker side of human nature. Teachers don’t specialize in despair; we prefer to work with hope.

            On Friday, about an hour after school had ended, a student of mine stepped in the room to talk. A family crisis had made it impossible for her to complete a story assignment for me, and her red eyes and tears revealed how upset she was about it. We talked it over, I listened and I did my best to offer words of support. There was no easy solution, and we’ll talk again tomorrow. But in that moment, she needed to hear from someone that it would be OK. I did my best to provide that.

            Nothing about this conversation would have been enhanced by the presence of a gun. As we consider measures to improve school security, let’s remember the true purpose of the teacher – as a source of instruction, guidance and encouragement. Teachers offer safety, but it’s not the kind of safety a weapon provides. It’s the kind that comes from the heart and mind. The kind we can’t live without.

            If we change our societal view of what we want from a teacher, we will have to live with the consequences. Because once you change it, there’s no going back.

After Parkland

            My students are in the midst of a five-day weekend, and their well-deserved break began at about the same minute that a 19-year-old began shooting ex-classmates and staff at a high school in Parkland, Fla., on Wednesday. It soon became clear that this was another school shooting with multiple fatalities, yet also a shooting in which students had used their phones and social media platforms during the event to document for the world just what a school shooting looks and sounds like.

            I’m aware that nearly every media platform has been a forum for gun-control debate over the past four days, and I’m also aware that many students at this Florida high school have been speaking out, channeling their grief toward gun-control activism. It’s a teachable moment, so what does a journalism educator do?

            First, you respond to the messages you’re sent. The first journalism student who reached out to me about the shooting sent an email at 1:30 a.m. on Friday. She had stayed up late writing a powerful opinion piece about guns in America. I responded to tell her she had done what she needed to do, which was to get her words down on paper. I followed up with emails to the editor-in-chief and business managers to see if they were interested in adding more pages to next week’s paper, in order to cover this issue. They said they were up for it, and other students began volunteering to write and lay out pages for our coverage. My advice to the writers was to do what that first student had done – write what is on their minds. We’ll have time to do more reporting on this issue in the weeks ahead, but for now the kids seemed to need an outlet for their emotions.

I have witnessed the powerful emotions this debate produces. Twenty years ago, I was a reporter for the Staten Island Advance, and I was assigned to the gun-debate beat. School shootings were on the rise, and so were protests. I traveled with a group of protesters to Springfield, Mass., the home of gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson. The protesters placed pairs of shoes belonging to individuals who had died from gun violence in a local park, then traveled to Smith & Wesson’s headquarters to march.

One of those protesters had lost her husband to a gun murder, and she had become a nationwide leader in the cause. Another had lost her son when a neighborhood child got his hands on a gun left unattended in a home, and accidentally shot the young boy. This protester told me about her commute to work, and how it took her past the cemetery in which her son was buried. She would drive into the cemetery each morning, mourning her son’s death before continuing on her way to work.

I also interviewed gun advocates at the local sportsmen’s club. As they gathered for dinner and fellowship, these avid hunters told me what I’ve heard time and again over the past two decades: Guns don’t kill people; people kill people. I listened, took notes, and thanked them for their time.

The following year, two young men shot and killed many of their classmates at Columbine High School in Colorado, and now school shootings had become part of our national parlance. I interviewed Staten Island students who had been questioned in their schools because they, like the Columbine shooters, wore trench coats. They were confused as to what a coat had to do with gun violence. So was I.

Two months after Columbine, I left full-time reporting for full-time teaching. My working life, since the summer of 1999, has been devoted to teaching first, and writing second. I have taught writing skills to many students, and over the years the classrooms and schools in which I’ve taught have become more and more protected from the outside world. The Newtown, Conn., shootings of more than five years ago led to stricter security in schools across the nation. The school shootings, however, have continued.

At no time during these two decades have federal legislators passed any laws regulating the Second Amendment rights that Americans have. When nothing happened after Newtown, it seemed as though federal gun regulations were simply an impossibility. Now we have Parkland, with Snapchat videos documenting the violence. We have students appearing on the Sunday-morning talk shows to challenge their legislators.

As an educator, my job is typically to keep my own political views out of the classroom. My role is to ask good questions, support students in their journeys of discovery, and remain present for all voices that arise. I’ve had students conduct projects on safe gun use, in which they documented the ways in which they and their parents used guns safely at shooting ranges. I’ve also had students write passionately about the need for stricter gun control. And just a few months ago, I helped a student as she wrote a news story about her peers’ views on gun control, featuring students on both sides of the issue.

When we resume school on Tuesday, I will remain dedicated to helping my students feel safe and protected in finding their own voices on this issue. But I also want my students to feel safe and protected in the literal sense, and that’s where it becomes difficult for teachers like me to remain truly objective on this issue of school shootings and guns. I have a very hard time understanding why we can’t regulate a guaranteed right more closely. Full background checks, a national gun registry and bans on semiautomatic weapons seem like common sense to me. Laws like those passed in Connecticut after Newtown seem completely reasonable, and in keeping with the Second Amendment rights that many Americans treasure.

I’m happy to share those views with students if they ask. But back in the classroom, I will encourage them to talk and listen and find their voices. I am a teacher who views gun control as a must. But I am also a teacher who must support his students. I’ll start by encouraging my student-reporters to go after it, both in their opinion pieces and in their own reporting. Their peers in Parkland have experienced a nightmare, and instead of hiding their heads these teens are inviting us all to a serious and necessary conversation. I’m going to encourage my kids to take part.

Teacher Dad

            I had known for a few months that I’d be teaching my daughter. I just didn’t know what she should call me.

            Not Dad. And definitely not Mr. Hynes. Ideally, also not any of the names she might have mumbled under her breath throughout the past 16 years.

            But like it or not, here we were together. At my high school this year, I am the only journalism teacher. Katie goes to this school, and she wanted to take Journalism I. So on the first day of school, I looked out upon my class of ambitious young reporters, and among them I saw my own flesh and blood.

            I introduced the class to them, talked about my own journalism experience, and asked them if they could identify the terms “journalism,” “news” and “media.” They were interested, and we were on our way.

            At some point in that first class period, Katie raised her hand. “What should I call you?” she asked.

            I thought to myself, “Didn’t I have an entire summer to think this over?” I did, and I had not considered it. Searching for an answer, I flashed back to my previous job, an alternative school in Boston at which I had taught for three years. At that school, teachers were called by their first names, to deepen the sense of community among students and staff. “That will work,” I thought to myself.

            “OK,” I said to the students, who were actually quite interested in where this was going, “I don’t want Katie calling me ‘Mr. Hynes’ in class, so I’m going to give everyone in this class complete permission to call me ‘Warren.’ ”

            The kids smiled; some of them even let out a “Yes!” or a fist pump. When class ended, one of the students walked up to Katie and said, “Man, I really thought he was going to say that we could all call him ‘Dad.’ ”

            Over the next few weeks, a few students tried out “Warren” to see how it felt, and they ended up going back to Mr. Hynes. As for Katie, it’s kind of a funny thing; she calls me “Warren” all the time at home, along various other “W” first names, such as Wally and Wendell. That’s all done in a loving attempt to get under my skin. I can handle it, as I’d much rather she call me by a nickname than not talk to me at all.

            At school, though, she really couldn’t avoid “Dad.” It just came out that way, even in class. In moments when life is busy and stressful – which school can often be – we need to call our parents what they are to us. I’m Katie’s dad, and her brain couldn’t take the time to consider my first-name suggestion. She just needed me to be her father.

When school was over, and she was Face-Timing a friend on the phone while I walked by, it was back to “Hello, Warren.” When I called her down to dinner, she’d respond with “Yes, Warren.” But during those journalism classes, she’d call me over with a question by waiting until I walked past her desk, then whispering, “Dad.”

We made it through the semester-long class in one piece, and now she’s off to other activities. But as the second semester began, I scanned the rosters for my spring blog writing class and saw something even more terrifying than teaching my daughter.

I’m now teaching her boyfriend.