From the New York Times, By ALEXANDREA J. RAVENELLE
A WEEK and a half ago, the day after the school shooting near Cleveland, a student stood in the doorway of my Bronx college classroom. He was eating half a bagel with cream cheese. It was a month into the semester, 45 minutes into the class period. I didn’t remember ever having seen him before.
He had been staring into my room, watching us through the small rectangular window next to the heavy metal door. He seemed to be looking for something. I motioned to him. He opened the door and said he wanted to talk to me.
I was tight on time, trying to finish discussing a chapter before giving a test the next time the class met, so I refused. But before I could tell him to e-mail me or wait to talk after class, he said, in front of all the students, “Something big is going to go down at the test.” Then he disappeared.
All I could think of was Cleveland.
Every time I hear about a school shooting — whether in a college, like the Virginia Tech massacre of 2007; a public high school, like last month’s attack; or a private academy, like the one in Jacksonville, Fla., where, on Tuesday, a fired teacher killed an administrator and himself — I say a silent prayer for the students and teachers who were injured or died. I think about their families and those who watched their peers mowed down, about the warning signs that may or may not have been there. And I wonder if it could happen to me.
For nearly a decade, I’ve served as an adjunct sociology instructor at various colleges in New York City, from Yeshiva University to Hostos Community College in the Bronx. I’ve taught in schools with high-tech smart boards and integrated audio systems and in schools that reeked of roach poison and featured electric rat traps in the faculty lounge. I’ve lectured in classrooms at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where clusters of headless mannequins offered a silent rebuke for bad jokes.
I like and admire my pupils; many of them are juggling work and families along with school. And most of the time I think they like me too. Students send me post-term thank-you notes, and to my delight a few have even told me they became sociology majors thanks to my class.
But students have also gotten angry at me and blown up. I’m used to people crying when they don’t get the grades they think they deserve. A woman once threw an umbrella across the length of the classroom because I marked her late. When I told another student that he had been dropped from the class for nonattendance, he recorded the exchange and threatened to report me to my supervisor. Two years ago one student, angry about his D, sued me three times. I was interviewed by a high-priced law partner in a Midtown skyscraper and spent hours sitting in plastic chairs in courthouse holding rooms, the air heavy with annoyance and anxiety, before the cases were dismissed.
I know I’m not the only teacher who, facing down an angry student, worries that he could come back firing off more than snide comments.
The levels of trust and openness that are necessary for teaching are diminished every time someone opens fire in a classroom. Idle comments become vaguely menacing threats. Classrooms are no longer just about learning but also about observing — watching to see who seems upset, uninvolved, angry.
In the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shooting, schools were quick to institute (and advertise) new text-message alert systems and extra security measures. But in my experience they’ve been less clear on how to report worrisome behavior or determine if a threat is legitimate.
After the student in my doorway disappeared, I wondered if I should have interrupted class to talk to him. I thought: If I report it, I might ruin his future, turning a random adolescent comment into a suspension or worse. But I had a room of 30 people counting on me; if I didn’t report it, I would be to blame if something happened.
In the end, I reported his comment to my supervisor, copying the department secretary as backup. I notified the school’s public safety department, which stationed undercover officers in the hallway. I told my best friends. I didn’t tell my mother.
When my students filed in for the test, several asked if I knew what the young man had been warning me against. I told them I didn’t, but reassured them that it was probably nothing. And nothing happened.
Alexandrea J. Ravenelle, a marketing and communications consultant, is an adjunct lecturer in sociology at colleges in New York City.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/10/opinion/teachers-need-trust-and-security.html?_r=1&hpw
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