Blog Post #2
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Throughout my entire experience as a student, I have always been extremely worried about the potential violence that could occur. Although I always felt like the schools I attended did a good job with our safety measures, I still always worried about the idea of a school shooting occurring. Looking back on that now, I believe that it's pretty sad and unfortunate that as a kid, I had to always have these fears in the back of my mind. After reading through each article, and watching the documentary, I found many things that surprised me, and many things that unfortunately did not surprise me about school violence today. A fact that did not surprise me was how 57% of teens studied said that they were worried about the possibility of a school shooting happening (Graf, 2018). Majority of the teens studied being worried about a school shooting didn't surprise me at all, as I have also had these fears during my time attending school. Another fact that did not surprise me was how easy it was for the Columbine shooters to acquire the guns they used to shoot up their school. According to the documentary (around the 34 minute mark), it explains how the guns were legally purchased at stores, and gun shows (Moore, 2002). This did not surprise me because unfortunately, many school shootings have happened since Columbine, and it is due to the easy access of guns, and them getting into the hands of the wrong people. A fact that surprised me was that about 1 in 5 high school students reported being bullied on school property, and more than 1 in 12 high school students reported being cyber-bullied (Preventing school violence, 2019). This surprised me because during my time attending school, I never really witnessed any sort of bullying, so I figured it wasn't an issue anymore, just like my blog post from last week where I figured race and discrimination in schools wasn't a problem anymore either. No child should ever have to fear about a potential school shooting, or any sort of violence occurring in their school. The classroom is somewhere that is supposed to be safe, and not a place where a child should have to fear for his own life. As a future educator, I will make sure my kids feel as safe, and secure as possible while they are in my class, and I hope as time goes on, more rules will be in place to make sure the safety and protection of the students remains the main priority. Nick Incalcaterra References Graf, N. (2018, April). A majority of U.S. teens fear a shooting could happen at their school, and most parents share their concern. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/18/a-majority-of-u-s-teens-fear-a-shooting-could-happen-at-their-school-and-most-parents-share-their-concern/ Moore, M. (Producer & Director) (2002). Bowling for Columbine [Film]. United States: Dog Eat Dog Productions. https://watchdocumentaries.com/bowling-for-columbine/ Preventing school violence. (2019). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/youthviolence/schoolviolence/fastfact.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fviolenceprevention%2Fyouthviolence%2Fschoolviolence%2Findex.html |
Nick,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your reactions to surprise and shock after watching the documentary and reading the articles. It shocked me the most of reading the facts about school violence and how it can affect student’s mindsets. I felt that school violence caused students to feel fear, scared, afraid, and worried at the same time. In my experience, in my middle school years, my school used to have locked downs because of an intruder coming into the school without an ID and when it was time for a locked-down, I went to hide in the teacher’s closet so that intruder doesn’t see me or kill me. Locked downs caused me scared and afraid as well because I was also thinking of my twin sister as well because we both went to the same school. And also, in my middle school years, I experienced bullying because of my facial hair, which was my unibrows, and every lunchtime, I will always get bullied by teenagers because of my facial hair. But I totally agree with your reactions because school violence can be surprising when it doesn’t occur. I also agree that as educators, we will want to make sure our students feel as safe and secure as possible and be protected by teachers, and make our classroom feel safe and secure.
-Rebecca Pineda