My heart goes out to the families of all the people killed yesterday at Virginia Tech University. My son told me the news before I saw it on TV. He had heard it online from one of his friends in the States. We watched the pictures on the news when I came home from work, horrified.
As a parent I spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about j, but stupidly, I tend to feel that he is safe at school. Not so. I put myself in the place of parents of students at Virginia Tech, watching that news footage. j says I overreact. He already knows all the facts and statistics for other school related shootings. He thinks it's 'interesting'. I wonder what kind of enquiring mind I have raised.
When I visited schools in Calgary, Alberta as part of a group of teachers looking at the programme for gifted students out there I took part in a 'Lock Down' drill. We don't have these here, we have evacuation drills for fire etc. In the Lock Down, I worked with a teacher to lock the children into the classroom with us and build a barricade from furniture that we could shelter behind. We shut the blinds and were as silent as we could be in an attempt to hide our existence from 'the gunman'. I was terrified.
Maybe we have to revisit our thinking on this at school. I am so saddened by the need for such thinking.
1 comment:
It's very sad these days that we have to take so many precausions to protect us from the insane few. Where has innocence gone?
I love your spring flowers - how I miss these flowers and leaves living up in the Canadian Arctic.
I grew up in the Redcar/Marske area and every spring we would go for a walk in Bluebell Woods and also those daffodil woods in the Teeside area. I can't remember exactly where they were and if they still are! Oh, and climb to the top of Roseberry Topping on Easter Monday to roll our eggs. Do these traditions still exist?
Janet Mf in Yellowknife
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