13 ms·

I teach on the second floor of a city school where budget issues mean we don't have metal doors to the classrooms (older building, first floor has them). Every

by nsriv 4y ago

I teach on the second floor of a city school where budget issues mean we don't have metal doors to the classrooms (older building, first floor has them). Every room has a metal cabinet though, and so our barricade procedure for the room is to lock the door, slide the cabinet in front of it, then kick out the furniture sliders from underneath the cabinet. Today, us second floor teachers pooled our personal money (near end of the school year in the US, discretionary funds are low) to buy reams of printer paper to stack inside and fill the cabinet, so that it has stopping power for bullets. Office supply store was nice enough to give for cost when they found out what it was for. I don't mean to set off an arms control debate here, especially since I have a particular viewpoint on this, but I've found among many tech workers there's a certain blindness to ground reality. If you have a teacher or educator in your life, please check in on them this week. If you're well-off, or even not as much, understand that your profession is (wrongly or rightly) valued more than ours, so if you organize and amplify the voices of other roles, it will help immensely.

skrebbel 4y ago
I think it's extremely scary that in the world's richest country, writing stuff about schools like "we don't have metal doors", "our barricade procedure" and "stopping power for bullets" is considered perfectly normal. I was reading your comment and I just WTF'ed 5 times in a row. As a European, it's hard to wrap my mind around how simultaneously awesome and terrible the US has become. I feel terrible for you, and I'm extremely happy my kids go to a school without guards, without metal doors, with multiple, unguarded entrances, and so on. I hope your countrymen get their shit together and that someday this stuff feels like scary shit from the past. All the best to you until then, this stuff isn't OK and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
- nsriv 4y ago
  I appreciate this, thank you. I have quite a few friends that went to Germany for graduate school and really cherish that lifestyle, to the point where they're hesitant to come back and are considering starting a family there.
- slibhb 4y ago
  Who says it's considered normal? It reads like unproductive catastrophizing to me. In the unlikely event of a school shooting, I doubt "metal doors" or "barricade procedures" will make any difference.
  - nsriv 4y ago
    To be fair, part of my post was getting it off my chest. There's definitely a backlash to when these things happen that attempts to rationalize them i.e. "They don't happen that often!" and "The media seizes on these grandiose events to fear-monger!" Every school in America has devoted thought to this after Sandy Hook. Robb Elementary in Uvalde did too. Metal doors and barricading may have limited the loss of life to one or two classrooms.
  - skrebbel 4y ago
    This is a thread about "how do you feel". GGP's comment started with metal doors, not with "we're freaked out about shootings". I might have been reading their tone wrong, but to me, the comment reads as if metal doors are a staple ingredient of any decent school, and not having them is a source for stress. That very much suggests that in the author's circles, such talk is commonplace. For context, I've never seen a school with metal doors in my life and my only association with metal doors (until today) is prisons.
- corrral 4y ago
  It's both insane that we have so many school shootings, and insane that we've spent so much money fortifying schools and traumatizing teachers and kids (find some teachers and ask them how people react even to pre-announced active shooter drills—people break down shaking and crying, have actual fight-or-flight responses kick in, et c., when those fake gunshots start, and that's the adults) in response. The former is part of a broader sickness with our country, and the latter is part of an entirely different sickness in our country (must "do something", even if it's not justifiable and is net-harmful)
  - Robin_Message 4y ago
    I'm sorry, there are fake gun shots in active shooter drills? What the fucking fuck? That is insane. What possible benefit could there be to that bit of simulation that would outweigh the additional trauma that would cause? Not to mention all the survivors of school shootings who presumably have the dubious pleasure of being retraumatised on an annual basis. Fuck. You're right on "do something". But fuck. I never guessed anyone would make it deliberately more traumatic.
    - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
      I will not argue the efficacy of the drills. I don't support them, I don't know the data, etc. But, if you're going to do a drill, and it's known to be a drill, practice like you play the game; if loud gunshot sounds freeze your escapees or their teachers to the point where they're not preserving themselves, the drill was for nothing.
    - str34m 4y ago
      I worked in a public school about 10 years ago. They wouldn't tell any of us that the drills were coming. Everyone had to take cover in the classrooms and barricade the doors as the "Intruder Alert" message blared over the loudspeakers. Then someone would come through the halls and bang on every door. It's beyond insane.
    - corrral 4y ago
      Different schools do it different ways, often in cooperation with local law enforcement. Some do things like playing gunshots over a speaker somewhere in the building, others do different things. Most are the kind of activity that can mess people up in perhaps-unexpected ways—and again, that's the adults, let alone kids. There have been some cases of schools & police going way overboard with these things and doing much worse than playing some fake gunshot noises, and those have gotten some press (I think some are on YouTube?) but I don't think that's common. Regardless, even the more "normal" versions are pretty bad.
- uxp100 4y ago
  This is not so alien to Europe as you seem to think. Over the past 20 years, more people per capita have died in school shootings in Germany than in the US. A European nation was in a similar situation very recently. What is maybe unique about the US is that nothing will be done, where as Germany added additional gun control laws, and probably will not ever have as deadly a decade for schools as the 2000s again. I'm not attacking you, it's just a weird side effect of the US dominating discourse on the internet, but there is a certain habit of European HN posts exaggerating differences, one of favorites being something like: "I can't imagine living in the US, it only costs a few euros for my library card, in the US they charge per book, how dystopian" which is uh, just false, but also, Japan actually has a history of fee based lending libraries, and you would never see a similar comment about Japan, it would be celebrated as twee small business.
  - gunnarmorling 4y ago
    > Over the past 20 years, more people per capita have died in school shootings in Germany than in the US. Any stats to back that up? Seems completely counter-factual.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - uxp100 4y ago
      You can see the basic methodology in sibling comments, just some counting on wikipedia, really hinging on whether you include Universities (I did not). But a less controversial way of putting it is that other countries, including European ones, have had comparable incidents, and we can compare what they did with the US.
  - lawlorino 4y ago
    > Over the past 20 years, more people per capita have died in school shootings in Germany than in the US. This is absolutely not true and can be verified by a few minutes research on Wikipedia
  - andyjohnson0 4y ago
- RGamma 4y ago
  Current day USA is the love child of South Park and GTA. You can't even parody it properly anymore, because it's become a continuous self-parody. And best/worst of all, its inhabitants don't even notice.
- throwaway6734 4y ago
  The US education system is a patchwork of schools systems of wildly different quality based on the student population. >how simultaneously awesome and terrible the US has become It's still significantly better than it used to be.
farmerstan 4y ago
I think the answer to education is to break up large schools and have schools that are no larger than 100-150 kids in total. 10x the number of schools and have individual attention to kids and teachers both. Fire the bad teachers quickly. Have larger communal facilities for things like sports and more outdoor activities like a form of scouts.
- supercheetah 4y ago
  Currently existing schools can't find enough teachers. There definitely wouldn't be enough teachers to make this work even half way.
- devin 4y ago
  Respectfully, nobody asked your opinion. Your reply is not responsive at best.
  - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
    Hey, Keybase is owned by Zoom now, FYI..
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    This is a discussion, and there was nothing disrespectful about what he said. Respectfully, nobody asked for to jump in and be an ass.
  - nsriv 4y ago
    This is one of those issues that people have a myriad of solutions for that they want to share, and I've just learned to appreciate the mental effort as it's usually coming from a genuine place. Too often though it's like, "if we just changed urban zoning laws and new construction requirements and how society operates and the societal expectations of parents, children, and child-rearing, we could really solve this gun problem!" Sure, but IMO let's get guns out of people's houses and harder to get period.
- nsriv 4y ago
  I understand the impulse for smaller schools, trust me. I think you'd be surprised to look into city schools and the capacities they were originally built for, compared to the amount of students they serve today. Part of that is land value and construction costs, but many urban schools are in a version of just-in-time maintenance. Your solution for more smaller schools is at play in suburban areas, and result in some really high-quality private schools. In the US at least, most school expenses are funded through property tax, so higher land value and wealthier areas are able to support better schools. IMO there's a lot of credentialism in education already, need a master's degree to be certified (I do not, so I am a beneficiary of the shortage of math teachers since they needed to relax requirements to get people in classrooms). You can imagine my views on teachers' unions differ from yours, but firing bad teachers presumes supply outstrips demand. High schools in particular have already become those communal neighborhood facilities for sports with baseball, basketball, tennis courts.
SapporoChris 4y ago
I do value the teaching profession, I wish the pay was better. Despite the current events, I do not think they need more protection. I am in favor of gun control and I am in no way saying there are not issues. If you look up professions with the highest death rates. Teacher's are fairly low on the list, if they show up at all. https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/15-professions-with-the-highest-death-rates-in-the-us-618867/?singlepage=1 https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/15-professions-with-the-h...
- wnolens 4y ago
  The collective trauma to kids in the USA who don't feel safe at school is heart-breaking. Trauma doesn't evaporate, it warps you. Especially at that age. The statistics of it being improbable to die at school are no salve.
- nsriv 4y ago
  Appreciate your wishes for better pay and stance on gun control. One of the subjects I teach is stats, and I wish I could draw comfort from that statistic myself.
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  For comparison, the Washington Post[0] says: "The Education Department reports that roughly 50 million children attend public schools for roughly 180 days per year. ... That means the statistical likelihood of any given public school student being killed by a gun, in school, on any given day since 1999 was roughly 1 in 614,000,000." So in a given (180 day) year, such a child has a 1 in 3.4 million chance of dying, which means the equivalent annual death rate out of 100,000 children is 0.029 children. The article you link to says that the annual death rate per 100,000 "Police and sheriff’s patrol officers" is 14.6 which is a few orders of magnitudes bigger, although children don't have as much control over whether they go to public schools as cops have over which job they do. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/school-shootings-are-extraordinarily-rare-why-is-fear-of-them-driving-policy/2018/03/08/f4ead9f2-2247-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/school-shootings-are-...
  - 4y ago
lnwlebjel 4y ago
It is so sad, and infuriating(!) that you have to do this. It seems that an immediate action the federal government could do is devote funding toward 'fortification' of schools. Others know better that I how best to do this but it seems like something realistic that could happen now (unlike almost any gun control measure, or even something foolhardy like arming teachers (IMO)).
- jaywalk 4y ago
  The Democrats are not interested in anything that isn't gun control, and the Republicans aren't interested in gun control. $40b to Ukraine though? Full bipartisan support, passed in no time at all. You do the math.
- nsriv 4y ago
  When I came in as a new teacher, I had the same thoughts regarding school fortification. We have two armed guards at school and metal detectors. One guard at front door, the other roving. Our district actually got low 9 figures in stimulus to pay off decades of loan debt resulting from mismanagement and to make significant infrastructure improvements last year. We get metal doors next year, need the summer to install everything. This is all to say that my opinion of fortifying schools has drifted closer to our shared opinion of arming teachers; it creates a prison atmosphere (one that I've seen at other schools, I'm lucky to teach in the best one in the city), and that low-trust environment is not conducive to learning. At my most frustrated I am 100% "take everyone's guns away," then being pragmatic I'd rather the money go to mandatory buybacks and background checks and a registration system like the one we have for vehicles that puts pressure on manufacturers and sellers, as well as buyers to renew and recertify or else be in breach of regulation.
wnolens 4y ago
> Today, us second floor teachers pooled our personal money.. > If you're well-off, or even not as much, understand that your profession is (wrongly or rightly) valued more than ours It's some weird science fiction reality we live in where those responsible for raising the next generation of our race are compensated minimally and asked for so much. While a lot of us reel in 10x a teacher's salary to improve business processes which are mostly just selling non-essential goods. I used to participate in reddit's teacher gift program. Are you on this?
- nsriv 4y ago
  First I'm hearing about this, but sounds wonderful. We were told we would be reimbursed, and they're generally good about that sort of thing, but thank you! Please consider looking at places like DonorsChoose if you'd like to donate money, especially to towns away from large cities. It's my hope that we can get more active citizen participation in education reform, so if possible consider local activism. The scene can be messy and frustrating but it should offer you greater visibility in the ways money can change the paradigm and expectations of the system. And to be fair, I've been looking at getting out of teaching and landing a job in data analysis myself, so I'm not as pure of motive as many think teachers are. This last week has just really pushed me to make this my last year of teaching.

by nsriv 4y ago

skrebbel 4y ago

I think it's extremely scary that in the world's richest country, writing stuff about schools like "we don't have metal doors", "our barricade procedure" and "stopping power for bullets" is considered perfectly normal. I was reading your comment and I just WTF'ed 5 times in a row. As a European, it's hard to wrap my mind around how simultaneously awesome and terrible the US has become. I feel terrible for you, and I'm extremely happy my kids go to a school without guards, without metal doors, with multiple, unguarded entrances, and so on. I hope your countrymen get their shit together and that someday this stuff feels like scary shit from the past. All the best to you until then, this stuff isn't OK and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

nsriv 4y ago
I appreciate this, thank you. I have quite a few friends that went to Germany for graduate school and really cherish that lifestyle, to the point where they're hesitant to come back and are considering starting a family there.
slibhb 4y ago
Who says it's considered normal? It reads like unproductive catastrophizing to me. In the unlikely event of a school shooting, I doubt "metal doors" or "barricade procedures" will make any difference.
- nsriv 4y ago
  To be fair, part of my post was getting it off my chest. There's definitely a backlash to when these things happen that attempts to rationalize them i.e. "They don't happen that often!" and "The media seizes on these grandiose events to fear-monger!" Every school in America has devoted thought to this after Sandy Hook. Robb Elementary in Uvalde did too. Metal doors and barricading may have limited the loss of life to one or two classrooms.
- skrebbel 4y ago
  This is a thread about "how do you feel". GGP's comment started with metal doors, not with "we're freaked out about shootings". I might have been reading their tone wrong, but to me, the comment reads as if metal doors are a staple ingredient of any decent school, and not having them is a source for stress. That very much suggests that in the author's circles, such talk is commonplace. For context, I've never seen a school with metal doors in my life and my only association with metal doors (until today) is prisons.
corrral 4y ago
It's both insane that we have so many school shootings, and insane that we've spent so much money fortifying schools and traumatizing teachers and kids (find some teachers and ask them how people react even to pre-announced active shooter drills—people break down shaking and crying, have actual fight-or-flight responses kick in, et c., when those fake gunshots start, and that's the adults) in response. The former is part of a broader sickness with our country, and the latter is part of an entirely different sickness in our country (must "do something", even if it's not justifiable and is net-harmful)
- Robin_Message 4y ago
  I'm sorry, there are fake gun shots in active shooter drills? What the fucking fuck? That is insane. What possible benefit could there be to that bit of simulation that would outweigh the additional trauma that would cause? Not to mention all the survivors of school shootings who presumably have the dubious pleasure of being retraumatised on an annual basis. Fuck. You're right on "do something". But fuck. I never guessed anyone would make it deliberately more traumatic.
  - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
    I will not argue the efficacy of the drills. I don't support them, I don't know the data, etc. But, if you're going to do a drill, and it's known to be a drill, practice like you play the game; if loud gunshot sounds freeze your escapees or their teachers to the point where they're not preserving themselves, the drill was for nothing.
  - str34m 4y ago
    I worked in a public school about 10 years ago. They wouldn't tell any of us that the drills were coming. Everyone had to take cover in the classrooms and barricade the doors as the "Intruder Alert" message blared over the loudspeakers. Then someone would come through the halls and bang on every door. It's beyond insane.
  - corrral 4y ago
    Different schools do it different ways, often in cooperation with local law enforcement. Some do things like playing gunshots over a speaker somewhere in the building, others do different things. Most are the kind of activity that can mess people up in perhaps-unexpected ways—and again, that's the adults, let alone kids. There have been some cases of schools & police going way overboard with these things and doing much worse than playing some fake gunshot noises, and those have gotten some press (I think some are on YouTube?) but I don't think that's common. Regardless, even the more "normal" versions are pretty bad.
uxp100 4y ago
This is not so alien to Europe as you seem to think. Over the past 20 years, more people per capita have died in school shootings in Germany than in the US. A European nation was in a similar situation very recently. What is maybe unique about the US is that nothing will be done, where as Germany added additional gun control laws, and probably will not ever have as deadly a decade for schools as the 2000s again. I'm not attacking you, it's just a weird side effect of the US dominating discourse on the internet, but there is a certain habit of European HN posts exaggerating differences, one of favorites being something like: "I can't imagine living in the US, it only costs a few euros for my library card, in the US they charge per book, how dystopian" which is uh, just false, but also, Japan actually has a history of fee based lending libraries, and you would never see a similar comment about Japan, it would be celebrated as twee small business.
- gunnarmorling 4y ago
  > Over the past 20 years, more people per capita have died in school shootings in Germany than in the US. Any stats to back that up? Seems completely counter-factual.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - uxp100 4y ago
    You can see the basic methodology in sibling comments, just some counting on wikipedia, really hinging on whether you include Universities (I did not). But a less controversial way of putting it is that other countries, including European ones, have had comparable incidents, and we can compare what they did with the US.
- lawlorino 4y ago
  > Over the past 20 years, more people per capita have died in school shootings in Germany than in the US. This is absolutely not true and can be verified by a few minutes research on Wikipedia
- andyjohnson0 4y ago
RGamma 4y ago
Current day USA is the love child of South Park and GTA. You can't even parody it properly anymore, because it's become a continuous self-parody. And best/worst of all, its inhabitants don't even notice.
throwaway6734 4y ago
The US education system is a patchwork of schools systems of wildly different quality based on the student population. >how simultaneously awesome and terrible the US has become It's still significantly better than it used to be.

farmerstan 4y ago

I think the answer to education is to break up large schools and have schools that are no larger than 100-150 kids in total. 10x the number of schools and have individual attention to kids and teachers both. Fire the bad teachers quickly. Have larger communal facilities for things like sports and more outdoor activities like a form of scouts.

supercheetah 4y ago
Currently existing schools can't find enough teachers. There definitely wouldn't be enough teachers to make this work even half way.
devin 4y ago
Respectfully, nobody asked your opinion. Your reply is not responsive at best.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
  Hey, Keybase is owned by Zoom now, FYI..
- jaywalk 4y ago
  This is a discussion, and there was nothing disrespectful about what he said. Respectfully, nobody asked for to jump in and be an ass.
- nsriv 4y ago
  This is one of those issues that people have a myriad of solutions for that they want to share, and I've just learned to appreciate the mental effort as it's usually coming from a genuine place. Too often though it's like, "if we just changed urban zoning laws and new construction requirements and how society operates and the societal expectations of parents, children, and child-rearing, we could really solve this gun problem!" Sure, but IMO let's get guns out of people's houses and harder to get period.
nsriv 4y ago
I understand the impulse for smaller schools, trust me. I think you'd be surprised to look into city schools and the capacities they were originally built for, compared to the amount of students they serve today. Part of that is land value and construction costs, but many urban schools are in a version of just-in-time maintenance. Your solution for more smaller schools is at play in suburban areas, and result in some really high-quality private schools. In the US at least, most school expenses are funded through property tax, so higher land value and wealthier areas are able to support better schools. IMO there's a lot of credentialism in education already, need a master's degree to be certified (I do not, so I am a beneficiary of the shortage of math teachers since they needed to relax requirements to get people in classrooms). You can imagine my views on teachers' unions differ from yours, but firing bad teachers presumes supply outstrips demand. High schools in particular have already become those communal neighborhood facilities for sports with baseball, basketball, tennis courts.

SapporoChris 4y ago

I do value the teaching profession, I wish the pay was better. Despite the current events, I do not think they need more protection. I am in favor of gun control and I am in no way saying there are not issues. If you look up professions with the highest death rates. Teacher's are fairly low on the list, if they show up at all. https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/15-professions-with-the-highest-death-rates-in-the-us-618867/?singlepage=1 https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/15-professions-with-the-h...

wnolens 4y ago
The collective trauma to kids in the USA who don't feel safe at school is heart-breaking. Trauma doesn't evaporate, it warps you. Especially at that age. The statistics of it being improbable to die at school are no salve.
nsriv 4y ago
Appreciate your wishes for better pay and stance on gun control. One of the subjects I teach is stats, and I wish I could draw comfort from that statistic myself.
dane-pgp 4y ago
For comparison, the Washington Post[0] says: "The Education Department reports that roughly 50 million children attend public schools for roughly 180 days per year. ... That means the statistical likelihood of any given public school student being killed by a gun, in school, on any given day since 1999 was roughly 1 in 614,000,000." So in a given (180 day) year, such a child has a 1 in 3.4 million chance of dying, which means the equivalent annual death rate out of 100,000 children is 0.029 children. The article you link to says that the annual death rate per 100,000 "Police and sheriff’s patrol officers" is 14.6 which is a few orders of magnitudes bigger, although children don't have as much control over whether they go to public schools as cops have over which job they do. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/school-shootings-are-extraordinarily-rare-why-is-fear-of-them-driving-policy/2018/03/08/f4ead9f2-2247-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/school-shootings-are-...
- 4y ago

lnwlebjel 4y ago

It is so sad, and infuriating(!) that you have to do this. It seems that an immediate action the federal government could do is devote funding toward 'fortification' of schools. Others know better that I how best to do this but it seems like something realistic that could happen now (unlike almost any gun control measure, or even something foolhardy like arming teachers (IMO)).

jaywalk 4y ago
The Democrats are not interested in anything that isn't gun control, and the Republicans aren't interested in gun control. $40b to Ukraine though? Full bipartisan support, passed in no time at all. You do the math.
nsriv 4y ago
When I came in as a new teacher, I had the same thoughts regarding school fortification. We have two armed guards at school and metal detectors. One guard at front door, the other roving. Our district actually got low 9 figures in stimulus to pay off decades of loan debt resulting from mismanagement and to make significant infrastructure improvements last year. We get metal doors next year, need the summer to install everything. This is all to say that my opinion of fortifying schools has drifted closer to our shared opinion of arming teachers; it creates a prison atmosphere (one that I've seen at other schools, I'm lucky to teach in the best one in the city), and that low-trust environment is not conducive to learning. At my most frustrated I am 100% "take everyone's guns away," then being pragmatic I'd rather the money go to mandatory buybacks and background checks and a registration system like the one we have for vehicles that puts pressure on manufacturers and sellers, as well as buyers to renew and recertify or else be in breach of regulation.

wnolens 4y ago

> Today, us second floor teachers pooled our personal money.. > If you're well-off, or even not as much, understand that your profession is (wrongly or rightly) valued more than ours It's some weird science fiction reality we live in where those responsible for raising the next generation of our race are compensated minimally and asked for so much. While a lot of us reel in 10x a teacher's salary to improve business processes which are mostly just selling non-essential goods. I used to participate in reddit's teacher gift program. Are you on this?

nsriv 4y ago
First I'm hearing about this, but sounds wonderful. We were told we would be reimbursed, and they're generally good about that sort of thing, but thank you! Please consider looking at places like DonorsChoose if you'd like to donate money, especially to towns away from large cities. It's my hope that we can get more active citizen participation in education reform, so if possible consider local activism. The scene can be messy and frustrating but it should offer you greater visibility in the ways money can change the paradigm and expectations of the system. And to be fair, I've been looking at getting out of teaching and landing a job in data analysis myself, so I'm not as pure of motive as many think teachers are. This last week has just really pushed me to make this my last year of teaching.