Safety in our Schools

While reflecting on recent events in Baltimore City Public Schools, I am forced to ask the question, are teachers safe in the classroom? After receiving national news coverage about the teacher beating at Reginal F. Lewis High School, a more recent event at Calverton Elementary/Middle has caused this teacher to wonder how safe his fellow colleagues are while they are on the job. A staff member at Calverton was working extra hours at the West Baltimore School last Sunday afternoon when two 13-year old boys broke into the building and one tried to rape her. This news caused alarm and discussion among my colleagues at my school. The question, came up, “are we safe in our school”? I began to reflect on my position about this topic. I feel as though I am safe in my school, but stories like this cause one to reflect on and rethink their opinion. Teachers and Staff are at schools to help educate and mold the minds of young individuals, and stories like this are tragic and bring a negative light to our education system. My condolences go out to both individuals involved in these events, and I wonder if something could have been done by the system to ensure teacher and staff safety to a greater degree. Is more school police and hall monitors the answer, after talking with several teachers in the system, some of the teachers have no way to get a hold of school police if something happens in their classroom. I feel as though any professional or worker should be safe in their work environment, steps needs to be taken to ensure teacher and staff safety at our school in Baltimore City. I do not have a solution to the problem, but feel as though administration, staff, teachers, and North Avenue have to come together to make sure nothing like this happens again.

Where do we go from here?

While reflecting on discussions and course topics, the idea of the silver bullet has stuck in my mind. The overall agreement that something needs to be changed, but which direction do we go in? With successful changes being made in school systems all across America, I’m not sure that Baltimore City can just take a blue print from one system and copy it to fix the problems in our system. Voucher systems, Charter Schools, small high schools, and k-8 models all seem to be in strategies that Baltimore City seems to be considering or starting to put in place. I feel that just changing something in the system to say we are trying is not good enough. Every few years a new “silver bullet” may come along, and do we as a system adopt that strategy or do we continue with the changes that have been put in place. I see similarities with how Baltimore City is currently paying the past few superintendents, we tried them, and they did not work, so now we are paying for our mistakes. The difference between paying a monetary sum of someone’s salary is much different than the cost of the education of our students. If we make changes, they have to be the correct ones or our students are the ones who lose. I do not have the answer, and I’m not sure anyone does, but this pattern of making systematic changes to the system every few years does not seem to be working. Baltimore City Public schools are continually near the bottom of the nation’s lowest performing schools; people want to blame it on economics, the system, teachers, parents or even the students. The blame game needs to stop, and a solution needs to be found. I want to be part of the solution, reflecting on a quote from the last class, I want to be someone who pulls the trigger of the loaded gun and not someone who is just searching for the silver bullet. There may be no silver bullet, but every change needs be thought out and put in place for more reasons then just saying “we tried”. The education of our students is the ultimate silver bullet, and how we come about that is up to every teacher in every classroom.