Today is Friday, December 28, 2012. My stats today: 10 minutes of yoga, 10 minutes of lifting weights and 49 minutes of walking = 2.7 miles for a December total of 52.7 miles My weight was 164.4 pounds.
QUOTE from H. Jackson Brown Jr., author of the best seller Life's Little Instruction Book: "Think big thoughts, but relish small pleasures,"
My THOUGHTS today have to do with no longer being a teacher. This morning's paper had an article entitled Group offers gun training for teachers. Gun-rights advocates in Utah were offering six hours of training Thursday in handling concealed weapons for 200 Utah teachers in the latest effort to arm teachers to control school assailants. Thank God I'm no longer teaching. I agree with Carol Lear, the chief lawyer for the Utah Office of Education who said: "It's a terrible idea. It's a horrible, terrible, no-good, rotten idea."
I went to high school in Chatfield, Minnesota. What's running through my mind right now is imagining 65 year-old Mrs. Pieper (our English teacher) packing a six-shooter in her bra holster. It would have to be a bra holster because women can't really carry a gun on their hip. This is funny but it is also rediculous.
One other thought about teachers with guns is this. In my 36 years of teaching I was threatened with being killed one time. In 1997 we had a 12-year-old boy from Oregon move to Anamosa to be with his Dad. His Mom could no longer handle him. With his long straggly hair and dirty clothes you could tell he was not a happy kid and had had a tough time in life. The second day I gave him a worksheet to do and he takes it and crumples it up in front of me and throws it in the waste basket. I also was supervisor at hot lunch and by the end of the first week I gave him a permanent seat because of his behavior. He was not happy about that.The second week the counsellor told me that when talking with him he made the comment that he wanted to kill Mr. Bungum and the Principal. My thought is that if that kid knew the teachers had guns at school I firmly believe he would've tried to steal one and would've used it on me or the Principal or both of us. If I had been packing a six-gun my guess is he would've ambushed me before I could retaliate. And where would I have kept it - in a holster on my hip or in my desk???? It is a rediculous thought and I'm grateful I didn't have to be make a decision on whether to carry a gun as a seventh grade teacher. Thank God there were no guns in our school. By the way, I didn't sleep much after that - it was only when he went back (after a month) to Oregon that I felt safe again.
My other thought is that in other countries the death rate from guns is unbelievably low compared to the U.S. They all have gun control laws that are much stricter than ours. This country is so gun crazy that it is scary. In my opinion the NRA should be banned - there is no reason people in the U.S. have to have assault weapons used by the military. There is only one reason assault weapons are made and that is to kill people - not pheasants or deer, etc. Guns for hunting and sport shooting are fine - let's leave it at that.
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