School Crime, Essay Example

It seems that the news has been full of stories about criminal activity going on in schools. This includes illegal drug activity, school shootings/murders, teachers having sexual relationships with underage students, embezzlement, bullying, etc. There are a number of students, in this country, who witness school crime on a daily basis, on average. Many crimes happen in front of students and some of these crimes are going on behind students’ backs. Some crimes originate outside of the school but still affect students within the school, such as cyber bullying or someone posting illegal information or pictures on social networking sites. There was one story in the news where a young student killed herself because someone was making her a victim of cyber bullying.

Most Popular School Crime

We have all heard of some type of crime in schools, mostly related to school shootings, where students and teachers are wounded and killed. One of the most famous stories of school crime involving guns is the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado in the 90s. I believe there were something like 10 or 12 students killed and a teacher. There were two young students enrolled in the school who decided to come in one day and shoot people.

Another school shooting, one of the most recent, happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut earlier this year, where about 25 or so people were killed, most of them children. The story about this incident tells about how a young gunman entered the school by shooting his way through a secured door, and then going in and killing the principal, followed by several little children and some teachers. The news coverage showed students running from the school and one article I read said that a few students fled the school and ran across the street to a person’s house and told him their teacher was dead. That is scary! I’m not sure how I would have handled that, but I definitely would have told the children to come inside and called the police.

Another incident of school crime, which is even more recent than Sandy Hook, is the one a couple months ago in Atlanta. This time, it did not end up with anybody being killed, but a young gunman entered an elementary school in Atlanta and was talked out of doing anybody any harm by a woman who worked in the office. Again, scary. She stayed calm and took it upon herself to try and talk to the disturbed young man and ended up having him surrender to police. The news showed children running from that school as well.

What Teachers Can Do

One of the responsibilities of teachers is to ensure that the students are well-taken care of and safe, as much as possible. However, this would be difficult to do in the face of a school shooting. I do know that one teacher involved in the Sandy Hook shooting rushed her students into the restroom and barricaded the door. She talked to them quietly and tried to keep them calm. She stayed there until help arrived at the restroom door and she wouldn’t open the door until they pushed their identification badges under the door.

The question is what I would do to protect students within the school setting, if a school crime such as a shooting was going on. That is a tough question to answer, since no one really knows what type of situation he or she would be in, if this sort of thing happened. But, I would have some pre-thought out ideas about how to react if a shooting began at my school and I would let the students in on it. We would do some different drills based on possible scenarios, such as having a place to hide, in the event something was going on in the school. Personally, I would lobby for an armed guard to be placed into all schools, along with upgraded security systems. Guards used to be present in schools back in the 70s and 80s. If there had been an alarm that sounded when the Sandy Hook assailant breached the security door, an armed guard could have met him in the hallway before he got to many or any students to kill them. In addition, I would also lobby for locks on the classroom doors, to make it more difficult for an unauthorized person to just walk into a classroom. That would disrupt the person’s plans and may buy time for help to arrive at the school.

Other than a teacher packing a pistol, I don’t think there is much else for a teacher to do to protect children from something like this. I do remember that one of the teachers killed in the Sandy Hook shooting told some of the students to get into the closet and be quiet and she stood in front of the door and told the shooter they were in the gym. But, he shot her and the other students in the classroom that were not in the closet. That is one way to try and protect the students, lie about their whereabouts and try to get the shooter to leave without knowing where they are hiding. That is something that could be agreed on in advance so that the students know where to hide and to be quiet.

I think things are so bad with these school shootings that we may one day have to consider training and arming teachers, principals and guards, as well as placing a metal detector and sophisticated alarms at all entrances.