Page 7

This year so far has been a replay of sorts for me from 20 years ago. The newspaper reports and the news of  the school shootings again and again are what happened during the 1997-98 school year. The news reports played a part in my decisions of March 24, 1998. How could they not? My classroom had a violent child with working knowledge and access to guns.  Parents' of the child were less than happy to get daily reports.   The father, as reported by the mother, said the teachers were bitches out to get him. My principal was down playing the issue.  I pondered those thoughts and the outbursts.  And had 8 months of documentation of reports..with unsafe responses from the principal and child study team.
20 years later I ponder still.  I ask, I  ponder and  I read.  We forget history and it repeats itself.
I didn't know of Gavin DeBecker's books in 1997.  I learned of them when I started to do the research on the school shootings.  The Gift of Fear and Protecting the Gift..language of practical love.
Page 7:  bottom paragraph-
"When the principal tells us our concerns are baseless, when the other parents insist there's no problem..
our hesitation may be the only thing that stands between us and fraudulent feelings of certainty. That hesitation stands there for a reason and we won't always find the reason with logic."
I used intuition and logic. My hesitation on the day I picked up the school phone to say I was sending the child to the principal..then called the LRC teacher to escort him...the hesitation..was to breath and to take a look at the anger filled face of a troubled child.. The day was full of logic....I went with my intuition..and am forever thankful for choosing wisdom over logic...intuition over the what will the principal say.  When you have principles, the voice of the principal should at times  be ignored.  Students are dying in our schools because of fraudulent principals.

Marian R. Carlino
April 26, 2018