Cleaning out my little black bag, I stopped. My train ticket was colorful. My train ticket had a useful message and drew my eye. The cracks in the window especially caught my attention. My ticket would make a fine cover for a zombie novel.
“Look, listen, live.” The threat of death seems to be everywhere: Category 5 storms, news reports of increasingly random shootings, coverage of car crashes, fires, floods, overdoses, domestic violence, flesh-eating bacteria, sharks, and now even week-end train rides. I think of my students, the many middle-school students who passed through my doors. How many of them can evaluate the odds of a shark attack?
Our scheduled and unscheduled active shooter drills seem necessary. We have to have a strategy, an escape plan. The threat is real. I tried to sequester my kids in out-of-sight areas of the gym once because security knew a kid with a gun was on his way. Eventually, I got through to them that THIS ONE was not a drill. Caring adults talked that kid down from the ledge and nothing happened. Nothing was reported to the news to my knowledge either. How many “almosts” never hit the news? I personally know another one, a gun that made it into a highly respected high school. A teacher talked that kid into giving up the gun.
The barrage of frightening information goes on and on and on. I am an adult and I can sort the information, so I am not worried about the train, the shark, or most of the other possibilities in my list. I cheerfully get into my car and carry my backpack onto many planes. But I remember being thirteen. Thirteen’s a twixt age, and children prone to anxiety can get lost in fear. Our students are beginning to make escape plans when they visit county fairs. They evaluate each classroom — sensibly, I’m afraid — to figure out how to escape a shooter. They ask how to identify a flesh-eating bacteria. What about this spot? Do I need to see a doctor?
Today’s post has been percolating for awhile. I haven’t known how to write it because the world may need scared kids today. We can’t keep telling them, “It’s O.K.!” when it’s not O.K. Those adolescents going out to do war with climate change, suicide and bullying? Their passion may be our last, best hope.
Eduhonesty: Still, the open information spigot should not be allowed to run full-force and non-stop. My classroom recommendation is to mostly leave the gloom, doom and darkness to internet and television commentators. Twist the handle of the faucet, allowing for trickles of storm and other news, but remember the kids probably don’t require much help to see what a mess the news is showing on any given day. By phone, television, tablet or laptop, U.S. children have become steeped in menacing messages. Kids are getting hammered by harsh truths. Even a train ride into the city for a festival, beach day or air show carries with it the anti-selfie message threat of the shattered train window.
I don’t intend to add extra blows to that barrage. Instead, I will be looking for better news to offer balance to the overall picture. The neighbors who banded together to help the newly arrived Eritrean family get started? Similar stories can be a place to start. For a quick good-news cheat, why not google “happy news”?