Ok it’s 2 am. Can’t sleep. Too much caffeine. Seriously. Never imagined that would happen. Well that and I’m on an air mattress that makes a funky sound when I move. Anyway I’m laying here looking through apps on my phone. So I opened Instagram. I know there is a huge controversy over Instagram right now, but since I posted my first picture there 112 weeks ago (Halloween 2010!) I have been addicted. It’s so much more than square sepia pictures, it’s this whole social media aspect that goes with it. So back to my point (too much caffeine remember), many of my current and former students & cheerleaders follow me there. I’m ok with that, I don’t say anything or post anything there that would offend. Also, in my district I am not allowed to have contact with kids via social media (that’s an entire different blog post I won’t write as long as they sign my checks) but Instagram doesn’t allow you to send private message so this is a way I can connect to them (and learn a lot about them). I let them follow me and often if they are no longer students at my school I follow back.

So I was looking through my stream and saw some pictures of former cheerleaders. They made me laugh. I started thinking about the girls I had on that squad. There were some really cool & sweet girls the 2 years I had them. But you see I did not take the time I should have getting to know them. Not because I’m evil or hate kids but because it was a really rough 2 years coaching. Not all the girls that year were sweet and not all the parents were as supportive as the parents of those kids. Lets just put it this way, by my choice, I no longer coach. I was miserable and hurt. So to protect myself I shut the emotional & fun part of that job off. I went through the motions. I taught, then I went home.

This year I’ve been having similar issues in the classroom. Some situations are becoming too much. So I’ve discovered (like recently discovered, as in just now) that I’m starting to do that again. But not just with 10 cheerleaders, with my 160 students. That is not fair. Not to them. Not to me (I think about the fun I missed shutting the girls out before). It’s wrong and everyone around suffers.

By clicking links from tweet to article to articles today I got sucked in reading about Nick Saban and the NFL. (Yeah I know I’m football obsessed, it’s ok.) I read an article that quoted Ol St Nick saying he regretted leaving LSU & college football and another saying he did not feel comfortable with the players in the NFL. Do I think that is bc he lost his authority in NFL, yeah. Do I think that is a HUGE problem in classrooms today, yeah. I can’t change that. But let’s think about him at the Dolphins. He became heartless. He wasn’t the guy cooking gumbo for the fire dept after they worked long hours doing tornado clean up. Or the guy who let sweaty cheerleaders sit in his fancy car. No he was the guy who stepped over his player having a seizure on the locker room floor (allegedly). That guy. The guy who turned off the emotion & fun part of the job and just went through the motions, taught, and went home. Wow that sounds familiar. I’m glad Saban left that. Not just because I’m a Bama fan hoping for that #15 championship, but because he nor his players deserved that.

Sometimes we get so dang focused on our job. On seeing the big picture. On looking at that entire forest that we aren’t taking time to look at and enjoy the hundreds of different trees that you pass along the way. I’m ready to go back to studying the trees and trusting the forest will grow one tree at a time. I’m sure you can guess my professional New Years Resolution. Happy 2013 y’all!

Tonight I took my kids (ages 4 & 6) to see Santa. Their joy of seeing him was contagious. How could it not be? As a parent, this is one of the things I look forward to each year. No matter how fun it was this year there was this cloud of tragedy hanging over everything. The flags at half-mast. The TV in the mall food court showing pictures of beautiful children, the same age as my daughter, who will not be going to the mall to see Santa this year. My heart, as well as hearts throughout the world, have broken for these children and their parents. Even the Commander and Cheif couldn’t speak about this without keeping his composure. Words like “why” and “senseless” come to mind. Questions are asked that have no answers. All we can do is hold our children a little tighter.

As a teacher I have so much more going through my head. This is a teacher’s worse nightmare. We practice lock-down drills, but is that enough? Should we be teaching kids the importance of the escape and best way to do so? I don’t know if you can really prepare for this. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this last two days. It does shock me the number of people who were surprised teachers protected their students. There are reasons we are teachers, and it’s not because it is a job. I hope to goodness teachers out there wouldn’t think twice about what they would do. Even on their lowest days as a teacher (like last Wednesday was to me).

The second reaction I had as a teacher was thinking about the person who could do this. It’s not about guns, though I feel like this needs to be a wake up call to discussions on this and some laws need to change. And no teachers and school secretaries shouldn’t have guns either. Seriously dumbest comments that have come from this. But we need to think about the person. Teaching as many years I have, there are people I have come in contact that I would not be too surprised if they did something like this. And I keep asking myself “did I do all I could to help this person?” I wonder if we should increase the counseling that we have in schools. I wonder if we do enough to get kids out of abusive homes that have lasting effects on them. I wonder if we are too quick to punish and send off to alternative schools instead of getting them help they need. I’m so guilty of just hoping for punishment. Unfortuately the world we live in, teacher take on responsibilities parents ignore. Like it or not we do, so are we doing all we can? I don’t know if we are or not. No matter how bad the government wants to be, being a teacher is no longer making sure we teach the Common Core. There is so much more.

I’m not sure if we can prevent this from happening again. But I feel this is a wake up call to me, and I hope others, to do what we can to prevent it. It is time we stop saying “that’s not my job” and teach children to become positive citizens in our society.

As of now all we can do is remember and pray for the victims of this disgusting tradegy. We pray for their families. The emotional healing of those children who witnessed this, even though they escaped physically unharmed. We need to do something about tougher gun laws – since yesterday my area has had 3 terrible tragedies caused my gun violence, including a gunman in a hospital. And we need to make sure our children and students know what to do in a situation like this. Lastly, we need to show & tell our children how much we love them.