Summer Break – the Least Understood and Most Maligned Aspect of a Teacher’s Life

 

by Steven Singer, Director of BAT Blogging and Research

originally published on his blog: https://gadflyonthewallblog.wordpress.com/2016/06/21/summer-break-the-least-understood-and-most-maligned-aspect-of-a-teachers-life/

It’s inevitable.

Once the weather gets warm and school lets out, it’s no longer safe for teachers to be out in public.

You’ve got to stay indoors, get off the Internet, hide the cell phone – do whatever you can to stay away from non-educators.

Because if, like me, you happen to be out and about – let’s say standing in line at your favorite neighborhood burger joint waiting for a juicy slab of ground beef to stop sizzling on the grill – you’re bound to hear the kind of willful ignorance that sets a teacher’s nerves permanently on edge.

Imagine just two normal people – they seem nice enough – standing in line having a friendly conversation. It’s hot outside, so you might hear the usual topics discussed: the weather, the best place to buy ice cream, which public pool has the best prices – that an oh I don’t know, how easy teachers have it with their summers off.

Son of a…!

Normal folks, I know you often get the urge to talk about this. You think it’s just another topic of polite conversation. It’s nothing serious. You think it’s just like complaining about the heat or how the price of admission at the local theme park always seems to be on the rise.

But you’re wrong.

Here’s why: first, you aren’t alone in the comfort of your own home. You’re out in public. And I guarantee there’s probably a teacher somewhere within earshot. Second, you have no idea what the heck you’re talking about. You are completely talking out of your ass.

Oh, you think you know. Everyone thinks they know what it’s like to be a teacher. Everyone thinks they can do that job no matter what qualifications they have.

It’s funny. I never presume to assume I could do other people’s jobs without some kind of training or skill.

I’d never say, “Police officers have it so easy. I could do that!”

I’d never say that about any public servants. Not firefighters, sanitation workers, social workers, lawyers, doctors – even politicians.

I think most people feel the same way – except when it comes to teaching. That’s the one job where everyone has an opinion and it’s based on next to nothing.

Here’s how it goes: I’ve been a student, therefore I can be a teacher.

Imagine if we applied that logic elsewhere. I’ve been sick, therefore I can be a doctor. I’ve been to court, therefore I can be my own lawyer. I can turn on a light, therefore I can run the electric company.

No one would be so ignorant. Except when it comes to teaching.

But that’s not all.

Not only are most folks comfortable opining about a topic of which they are so ignorant, but they feel themselves to be particular experts about one aspect of the job more than any others – summer break!

Those teachers sure have it easy, they say. They get their summers off! That’s one sweet deal!

Don’t get me wrong. As a public school teacher, I’m grateful for summer break. But it’s not what non-teachers think it is.

First off, summer break is not a vacation.

When you work a regular job you get a vacation day here and there. You get a week or two of paid time off.

Teachers don’t get that.

During the summer teachers don’t get salaried like that. Some of us don’t even get a paycheck, and those of us that do aren’t earning money for those days off. We’re getting money that we already earned from August through June. This is money that was withheld from our pay during the fall and winter, money given to us now in the summer.

Wait a minute. Money withheld from our salaries? When someone pays you later for services rendered, don’t they owe you interest? Usually, they do. But not for teachers.

We work for the government. We get paid with tax dollars from the community at large. If the community had to give us our salaries up front – like almost every other job in existence – it would be harder on the taxpayers. So we let the community pay us later – interest free.

Like I said, summer break isn’t a vacation. It’s more like an annual couple months of being laid off.

When I say this to non-educators, though, they often smirk. “It must be pretty sweet getting so much money that you can afford to have it paid out like that.”

Let me just say this – You don’t know me. You don’t know what the heck I can and cannot afford. Teachers aren’t millionaires. We’re barely thousandaires. Many of us CAN’T afford it. We work a second job in the summer – often at little more than minimum wage.

Moreover, during the school year, teaching is not a 9-5 job. We don’t punch a clock working 8 hours with an hour lunch and then punch out.

If I’m not at least working 10 hours a day, I’m not even trying. Those 8 hours on the books barely cover my time in front of a class of students. I get a 30-40 minute lunch, various duties throughout the day and about 40 minutes to plan what I’m going to teach. That’s time to make any materials for my classes, design programs for the students, grade papers and fill out the never-ending and ever-expanding piles of paperwork.

As a language arts teacher, I routinely have my students write essays. You think they grade themselves? I’ve got to read those things, son, each and everyone. I’ve got homework to grade. I’ve got scores to input into the computer. I’ve got parents to call, students to tutor and a stream of detentions to oversee. And that’s just the minimum, not counting any extra-curriculars, clubs, PTA meetings, meet the principal nights, etc.

So the way I see it, I’m owed a little bit of down time during the summer. I need it just to recharge my batteries. During the school year, I’m going at a pace like lightning every day. If I didn’t have some time in the summer to unwind, I wouldn’t be able to keep up that pace for the majority of the year.

Heck. If I’m sick one day, when I come back to school it takes a few days to get back up to speed.
But non-teachers don’t know any of that, because students don’t know. Students just see the teacher in class and they assume that’s all we do. And that’s a forgivable assumption for students. You know why? Because they’re children! But you? You’re an adult human being. You don’t have the right to make such assumptions without any pretext at even trying to find out.

However, this is exactly what most people do. They think there’s nothing wrong with complaining about teachers, especially during the summer.

And here’s the worst part.

When you complain like that, you make my job so much harder.

You’re going to go home with that negativity, you’re going to keep voicing it, you’re going to say it in front of your own impressionable children who might not seem like it, but they listen to every word you say. Not just that, but they listen to HOW you say it. Even more than the words, they hear the disdain.

So when school is back in session, they bring that false impression of how easy their teachers have it, and that becomes disrespect, just another thing I have to overcome in order to help your child succeed.

You hear a lot in the news about foreign countries having better education systems than ours. It’s mostly B.S. propaganda, playing with statistics for political ends, but there is one area where there’s a grain of truth to it – respect.

In many foreign countries especially in Asia, teachers are held in the highest esteem. It wouldn’t even cross parents’ minds to scorn educators, and if their kids did it, the adults would be mortally ashamed!

But not in the U.S.A. We take the one profession most dedicated to helping our children have better lives and we crap all over it.

You know that’s why I’m there in the classroom – to help your child succeed. Sure I get a paycheck, but there are lots of jobs I could do to support my family, many of them paying a whole lot more while requiring less hours a week and providing actual paid vacation days.

Like most educators, I’ve got a masters degree. Every year I take continuing education courses. Heck! I’m even nationally board certified – a distinction of which only about 34% of teachers throughout the country can boast. I’ve been nominated for teachers excellence awards. I travel across the country multiple times a year at my own expense to enrich my field. I write letters, I protest, I lobby my congresspeople to support our national system of public education. I’ve devoted my life to making a difference in young people’s lives.
Isn’t that something worth a little bit of respect? Don’t you want someone like me to be there for your child in the classroom?

It’s funny. When it comes to most public services, you wouldn’t dream of denigrating a helping hand.

You’d never hear anyone say something like this:

Those damn firemen! There would be fewer fires if it weren’t for them! Have you ever seen a building burning without it being surrounded by firemen? If they’d just work a little bit harder, there’d be fewer burning buildings!

Or:

Those damn doctors! All they do is make people sick! You never see a sick person unless he’s surrounded by doctors prescribing him medicines, doing surgeries. If we had fewer doctors, fewer people would get sick! Let’s close more hospitals!

But this is how people talk about teachers. Regular folks have been convinced that far from helping children escape ignorance, teachers actually cause it. They don’t work hard enough. They don’t care enough. They have too many union protections.

I’ve never heard anyone complain that firemen would fight fires better if they didn’t have helmets and fireproof clothing. I’ve never heard anyone say police would work harder to fight crime if they didn’t have Kevlar and service pistols.

But somehow when it comes to teachers, the situation is different.

Normal people, you’ve got to understand something. We live in a world where rich folks want to take away teachers for the poor and middle class. They want your kids to learn from computer programs and YouTube while their kids get… teachers!

For your kids it’s always narrow the curriculum, more standardized tests, more unproven academic standards, more corporate profits, less parental control, fewer regulations, fewer student services.

And do you know who has volunteered to fight against all this craziness to make sure your kids actually get some kind of quality education?

THE TEACHERS!

That’s right – the same people you feel empowered to deride while standing in line waiting for your burgers and fries. The same people who you have no problem denigrating with just as much certainty as ignorance.
So please, think about that next time.

Don’t bitch and moan about your community’s teachers. How about giving them some support?

At very least add teaching to the list of impolite topics to address in public. That’s right – religion, politics AND TEACHING.

Because every time a non-educator vents their spleen about those lazy, no-good teachers, they make it that much easier for the powers that be to continue eroding your child’s educational experience.

They Are Murdering Teachers In Mexico And We Will Not Be Silent by Dr. Michael Flanagan

They are Murdering Teachers in Mexico and We Will Not Be Silent! 
By Dr. Michael Flanagan, Co-Director BATs Action Team

As of the writing of this blog piece, at least six teachers have been killed by the government of Mexico while protesting the privatization of education, and the testing of teachers. The local and federal police have also been locking up teacher union leaders and terrorizing our colleagues. The teachers killed were members of the group known as the National Coordinator of Education Workers, or CNTE.   http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/06/mexico-teachers-protest-160620042629755.html

There are many things wrong with the reporting of the events in Oaxaca, Mexico. First, in the article I have linked in this piece, the Associated Press refers to, “clashes with the police”. When there are six teachers’ dead and dozens more wounded those are not “clashes”. They are executions. The government of Mexico killed 43 student teachers in September of 2014, and as of now not a single person has been held accountable. The bodies of the victims were never found. The government lies.

Secondly, the AP article consistently refers to the CNTE as “radical teachers union”. This is another propaganda technique to minimize and vilify those who are fighting for their rights. History is always written with the blood of such radicals. The slaughter of educators will be spun into a heroic effort to save society. The spin will become the ultimate “bad teacher” narrative.

We in the U.S. are no strangers to the oppression of corporate privatizers and anti union fascists who target teachers for various reasons. Chief among them are that teachers are now, and always have been, the voice for social change. We educate and enlighten the next generation. We lead by example. We encourage our students to strive to make a difference in the world. That is a threat to the elites who refuse to relinquish their power. Teachers are a danger to those who seek to condition our children into being the next wage slaves. All that the corporatists and their political lackeys want is the next heard of sheep to be led to the slaughter. They will stop at nothing to silence dissent, especially by educators. I know there is no comparison to the murders in Mexico, but just this past week on June 15th, we saw 14 teachers arrested protesting the Governor McCrory of North Carolina’s anti-teacher education policies. We have had teacher strikes in Chicago, and sick outs in Detroit where the politicians threatened the arrests of those protesting for better learning conditions for their students. It is time for teachers to rise up en mass. Corrupt power knows no borders.

During this most disgusting of presidential campaign seasons, we in the U.S. have been saturated with racist rhetoric and anti Mexican vitriol. “Build a wall… they are rapists and drug dealers… illegals …deport them…”. Our politicians have no problems de-humanizing our Mexican colleagues, because in this country bigotry is a campaign platform. That propaganda now comes at the price of teachers’ lives. The mainstream media is silent as the bodies of teachers and student protesters pile up. Do we here in the U.S. really think a wall will stop our government from turning on us? The repugnant anti-teacher, anti-union propaganda is rampant in the U.S. We teachers are already the victims of persecution by politicians and the media, so can state led massacres be so inconceivable?

We cannot sit by and allow our government, and our mainstream media to plaster Donald Trump on our cable news while our brethren die in the streets right over the border. We are teachers; we are the change our society needs. If not us, then who? If not now, then when? We must stand with the brave teachers of Mexico, and never forget those who have fallen. We are teachers, and we will educate. Our martyrs lie in the streets of Oaxaca, Mexico and they will not have died in vain.

Please go to #CNTE or @CNTEMX to follow events in Mexico.  #Solidarity

Stop Treating Public Schools as Society’s Whipping Boy

By:  Steven Singer, Director BATs Blogging and Research

Originally published on his blog - https://gadflyonthewallblog.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/stop-treating-public-schools-as-societys-whipping-boy/

The United States is no stranger to stupidity and ignorance.

A significant portion of the population doesn’t know basic science facts like that the Earth revolves around the sun.

We only learn history and geography by going to war or drone striking countries usually  filled with brown people.

And when it comes to basic math and English, just read the poorly spelled placards at our political conventions calling for more trickle down economics.

Heck! We’re the country that elected C-student George W. Bush President!

Twice!

And lest you think that was a fluke, Donald Trump, a xenophobic reality TV star with zero political experience, is the presumptive Republican candidate for the same office RIGHT NOW!

Yet whenever so-called intelligent people bring up these and countless other examples of American idiocy, they invariably simplify the blame.

We’re a country of more than 320 million people made up of various cultures, nationalities, ideologies, economic brackets and living in a wide range of geographic areas and circumstances. Yet we think the cause of our national ignorance somehow isn’t complex and multifaceted.

No. That would be too much for us to understand. Instead, we take the easy way out and put the blame squarely in one solitary place – public schools.

It’s always the school’s fault. That and those lazy, complacent teachers.

Some folks think the moon landing was a hoax. So apparently the schools aren’t doing their jobs.

Other people can’t tell you the month and year of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Therefore, bad teachers.

Everything from believing you can catch AIDS from a toilet seat to thinking President Barack Obama is a secret Muslim – it all could have been rectified if the schools had just taught us better.

Nonsense.

If you need a legal warning that your McDonald’s coffee is hot, there’s not much your third grade teacher could have done to help.

If you think the solution to gun violence is strapping bullet proof backpacks to kindergarten children while arming their teachers, there’s little that could have been accomplished by further academic study.

Anti-intellectualism is in the very air we breathe in this country.

No one wants to appear smart. We want to be the jocks, not the nerds. But when we feel guilty for our ignorance who do we attack? The smart people! The teachers! The schools!

Sadly, it’s often really intelligent people doing it.

A few weeks ago, famed astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson got into a Twitter battlewith rapper B. o. B. over whether the Earth is flat.

Yes, in America that is somehow still debatable.

And Dr. Tyson was understandably upset. “I don’t mind that people don’t know things,” he said in a Huffington Post interview. “But if you don’t know and you have the power of influence over others, that’s dangerous.”

Agreed, but then he became guilty of his own criticism by pointing his finger solely at the schools. “I blame the education system that can graduate someone into adulthood who cannot tell the difference between what is and is not true about this world,” he said.

Maybe this would be a more effective criticism if B. o. B. were an actual high school graduate and hadn’t, in fact, dropped out in 9th grade. Tyson has a masters in astronomy and a doctorate in astrophysics, but he couldn’t tell what is true about this world in relation to one rather famous rapper’s education. Therefore his alma maters of Princeton and Columbia must be pretty shitty schools?

Perhaps the problem isn’t that B. o. B. is ignorant, but that too many people arewilling to accept him as an expert on the shape of the Earth instead of someone like Dr. Tyson. But that’s not a fault of the public school system. It’s because of our attitude toward schooling, knowledge and expertise. An attitude that Dr. Tyson perhaps unconsciously helped foster.

I don’t mean to pile on Dr. Tyson. He’s one of my heroes. I’m just disappointed that in this case he’s being so intellectually lazy.

He’s not the only one.

Unfairly blaming schools also came from columnist Andy Borowitz when describing the dangers of Trump’s candidacy.

“Stopping Trump is a short term solution,” he said. “The long term solution, and it will be more difficult, is fixing the education system that has created so many people ignorant enough to vote for Trump.”

To be fair, almost everything Borowitz says publicly is satirical, uttered with tongue buried deeply in cheek. But it still feeds into this scapegoating of public schools. The public schools didn’t create ignorance. They fight it and in some cases fail. I wonder why?

Whatever the reason, Trump, himself, isn’t decrying it. He’s celebrating it.

When he won the Nevada GOP primary, he made a point to thank all the dumb people who voted for him. “We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated,” Trump told a crowd to huge cheers.

Strangely he didn’t then go on to laud what a great job public schools are doing by providing him with so many brain dead supporters.

So what exactly is the problem? Isn’t it troubling that so many American’s hold stupid beliefs? And isn’t this at least partially the fault of our public schools?

The answer is yes and yes.

We live in an anti-intellectual age. And that is troublesome.

And yes, our public schools are struggling to adequately educate everyone.

But when you blame everything on public schools you (1) obscure other factors like our piss poor media, and (2) you aren’t helping improve our schools.

First of all, much of our modern ignorance is fueled by toxic mass media. Most of us aren’t in school anymore. Unless you’re younger than 21 or 18, you probably get most of your facts from the news, TV, movies, video games and/or the Internet – not textbooks or school teachers.

We used to have an independent press that could investigate stories and report the truth. Now almost all of our major news sources are owned by a handful of giant corporations.

We don’t get news anymore. We get corporate public relations. The reason most people believe this crap is because it’s reported as if it were truth.

The rise of Fox News has a lot to do with it, but that is not the only culprit. Even traditionally revered sources such as the Associated Press are guilty of corporate collusion and bad, bad reporting.

They have no problem conflating an anonymous poll of superdelegates with actual votes as if they were the same thing even if doing so unduly influences the election in favor of one candidate. They have no problem broadcasting a Playboy Playmate’s vaccination advice every day of the week while mostly ignoring what research scientists have to say on the subject.

Second, constantly ragging on public schools doesn’t help make them better.

It’s not as if doing so actually resulted in addressing the real problems we have with our school system. Instead it reinforces the idea that they can’t be saved. We should just give up on public schools.

If we actually focused on the real problems with schools instead of constant innuendo, defamation and vitriol, we might be able to enact real solutions. For instance, more than half of our public school students live below the poverty line. They go to schools that aren’t funded adequately. We’ve allowed them to be resegregated based on class so its easier to ensure rich kids get a Cadillac education and poor kids get the scraps.

Moreover, we’ve let corporate interest take precedence over the needs of children. Instead of letting the experts in the field make education policy, we’ve left that up to the businesses that profit off of it. Instead of letting teachers and professors decide what are best academic standards, we’ve let think tanks create and impose shoddy, untested and developmentally inappropriate Common Core Standards. Instead of letting students be evaluated based on data gathered in the classroom by teachers who are there day-in, day-out, we’ve insisted schools be judged based on crappy high-stakes standardized tests. Instead of giving educators respect for the difficulty of their jobs and providing them with the autonomy necessary to help kids, we’vedenigrated the profession and chipped away at union protections, pay and benefits.

These are some of the real problems with public schools. When people throw shade at our education system, they are never so specific. It’s the schools that are “failing.” It’s never that they’re under-resourced. It’s the teachers who aren’t doing their jobs. It’s never that they’re being forced to teach to the tests. In fact, the people responsible for eroding our public schools often do so with the same rallying cry – our public schools are failing so let us enact these terrible policies that will actually make them worse!

It’s time we stop the lazy practice of criticizing public schools without also educating ourselves about what’s actually wrong with them.

Dr. Tyson, I love you, but don’t just blame schools. Blame Common Core and toxic testing. Andy, it’s not our schools that produce ignorant citizens. It’s the unfair funding formulas that don’t provide poor children with new books and a broad curriculum.

Public schools in general – and public school teachers specifically – have become oureasy scapegoats, our whipping boys.

It’s about time we realized that such criticisms aren’t helping. In fact, they’re being used by the same people who are destroying our schools as an excuse to destroy them further.

The so-called failure of public schools has been used to justify massive school closures especially in neighborhoods of color. It’s been used to create more privately run charter schools. It’s been used to excuse cutting school funding, and making it even less palatable to be a teacher.

Too many of us believe these are good ideas.

Americans believe a lot of stupid things, but perhaps THESE are the dumbest of them all!

Florida Shooter’s Strongest Ally Was The American Gun Lobby

By:  Steven Singer, Director BATs Research and Blogging

Originally published on his blog https://gadflyonthewallblog.wordpress.com/2016/06/13/florida-shooters-strongest-ally-was-the-american-gun-lobby/

Since Sandy Hook, the firearm debate has stagnated. Most people seem to think if we aren't going to take action after the shooting deaths of 20 little children in school, we're never going to. But after yesterday's mass shooting, the largest yet in our country's history, many of us have been shaken awake. We can't give in to complacency. We must do something to make our country safe for our children. We can have safe gun ownership while not allowing firearms into the hands of the mentally ill and suspected terrorists. That shouldn't be controversial. It's an education issue, a child safety issue, an American issue.

“America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms. You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle, without a background check, and most likely without having to show an identification card. So what are you waiting for?”

-American-born al-Qaeda spokesmen Adam Yahiye Gadahn

Omar Mateen considered himself a terrorist.

He wanted to make that clear to posterity before ending a shooting rampage he initiated in Florida yesterday that left 50 dead and dozens more injured – the worst mass shooting in U.S. history (so far).

During the carnage at an Orlando gay nightclub, he allegedly called 911 to pledge his allegiance to ISIS. He just wanted us to know that.

Now that the shooter’s gone, just as he would have wished, pundits are making a lot of this phone call. Though his family claims he wasn’t particularly religious, media talking heads are seizing upon this one action by an unhinged young man in order todenigrate all American Muslims.

ISIS is a militant organization. Islam is a religion.

By contrast, the KKK is a militant organization. Christianity is a religion.

But never mind that. In Mateen’s case, an entire religion is somehow responsible for the actions of one man. If he had been a white Christian – as most mass shooters are– we probably wouldn’t be seizing on his race or creed. But even though Mateen was born in this country, his family is from Afghanistan, his skin is brown, he was one ofTHEM.

However, there is no evidence that anyone in the Islamic community helped Mateen conduct his reign of terror. He allegedly saw two men kissing several months earlier, became enraged and planned accordingly.

But we can pinpoint one American institution that gave the self-proclaimed terrorist much aide and comfort in his scheme – the American gun lobby.

In fact, firearm powerbrokers are helping terrorists kill civilians all over the country.

No. I don’t meant to say they are working hand-in-hand with international terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and ISIS.

But they might as well be.

Our lax gun laws are the direct result of the lobbying efforts of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and other organizations closely associated with the gun industry. Those laws are being exploited by individuals like Mateen bent on murdering as many American civilians as possible.

Before Mateen opened fire, he had been on a terrorist watch list. In fact, the FBI had monitored his past activities.

You might think someone like that would not have been permitted to buy a gun in the first place. But you’d be wrong.

Just six months ago, the U.S. Senate had considered a law to restrict suspected terrorists from buying firearms and explosives, but it was defeated largely by Republican lawmakers accepting huge campaign contributions from the gun industry.

Mateen might have found it much more difficult to carry out this terrorist attack without the help he received from the NRA and so-called conservative lawmakers.

But don’t take my word for it.

Gadahn (quoted above) was killed in a drone strike in 2015, but he was not the only terrorist praising the efforts of the American gun lobby.

A six-page recruiting pamphlet found in terrorist safe houses in Kabul, Afghanistan, called “How Can I Train Myself for Jihad” instructs would-be terrorists “on the advantages the United States offers for firearms training and advises readers on how to exploit them.”

Maybe that’s why a measure like that recently defeated in the Senate to stop suspected terrorists from accessing guns was strongly supported by the George W. Bush administration.

It’s strange. Bush pushed the PATRIOT Act as an invaluable tool to keep America safe from terrorism despite the concerns that it trampled civil liberties. If lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are willing to weaken the 4th amendment’s provisions against unreasonable search and seizures in order to stop terrorism, then why do they oppose much more reasonable restrictions on the 2nd? What makes the right to bear arms so much more important than other privileges enumerated in the Bill of Rights?

In truth, it’s not a philosophical debate. It’s an economic one.

There is simply too much money being made by gun manufacturers – and thus being funneled into political campaigns – to allow for sane firearm policy.

Take the AR-15, one of two firearms used by Mateen yesterday. The same semi-automatic model he used was illegally modified and used to kill 14 and wound 21 in the San Bernardino shootings in late 2015. In 2012, it was also used in the murder of20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.

It’s the most popular rifle in the country, and the weapon of choice for mass shooters.

As such, there have been calls to reinstitute the federal assault weapons ban from 1994 – 2004. Some claim that the ban was ineffective, allowing too many loopholes. Others say despite weaknesses it resulted in less people being killed by these types of weapons during the time of the ban.

Though several attempts have been made to reinstitute the ban, it has been stalled by the gun industry largely because of wordplay and minutiae.

They claim the term “assault weapons” is inaccurate at best and propaganda at worst. (Never mind that it was coined by the gun manufacturers, themselves, to increase sales.)

 
Rifles designated as “assault weapons” are not easily distinguishable from other kinds of rifles, they say, so banning them would lead to a slippery slope of banning all guns.

The most basic difference is the firearm’s ability to expel multiple rounds quickly. Because of this, the rifles included under assault weapons bans are usually semiautomatic – a new round is automatically reloaded into the chamber but is not fired until the trigger is squeezed again. The weapons also have detachable magazines, allowing them to fire 10, 20, 30 rounds or more without the need to reload.

However, bans often include “military style” rifles that are not necessarily semiautomatic. Gun advocates claim these rifles are similar to firearms excluded from bans except for cosmetic features to make them appear more militaristic.

Those could include features like a pistol grip, designed to allow a weapon to be fired from the hip; a collapsible or folding stock, which allows the weapon to be shortened and concealed; a flash suppressor, which keeps the shooter from being blinded by muzzle flashes; a muzzle brake, which helps decrease recoil; and a threaded barrel, which can accept a silencer or a suppressor. Bayonet lugs or grenade launchers are also sometimes included.

But are these features truly just cosmetic? Or do they actually make these rifles much more dangerous? No one needs a grenade launcher to hunt for game or protect their home.

When people call for gun regulations, they aren’t necessarily calling for a ban on all guns.

People want a degree of safety in public spaces. They don’t want to be cut down by one or two gunmen causing exponential carnage in seconds.

That seems a reasonable expectation.

Gun industry surrogates claim safety is best assured if everyone is packing heat – an endless stalemate.

In point of fact, there was an armed police officer working security yesterday at the gay club when Mateen sprayed the crowd with bullets. Though he traded fire with Mateen, he was unable to stop the carnage.

It’s absurd. The people who initiate mass shootings rarely survive them. They don’t care about being killed. They only care about spreading death and terror.

Moreover, adding more guns to public spaces only increases the chances of more shootings, many of which would probably be accidental.

The rest of the world has figured this out. There really is no argument to be made here. Polls show that most of the public wants some kind of gun control.

But it won’t happen so long as the gun industry is allowed to buy our lawmakers.

It won’t happen so long as we allow gun industry trolls to drown out all reasonable discussion with their circular zombie arguments.

Mateen couldn’t stand the sight of two men publically expressing their love for each other.

The gun lobby can’t stand the idea of reduced profits.

And together those two aims make up the twin pillars sheltering American terrorists everywhere.

BATs, The Network for Public Education, and Save our Schools Coalition for Action Statement on Orlando and LGBTQ Community Support

Our thoughts are with the families and friends of the victims, as well as all members of the LGBTQ community and their allies. The echo of these shots have been heard across the country and around the world. It is a sound that will not soon be forgotten.

The recent tragedy in Orlando, Florida has highlighted the deprivation of tolerance that still exists in our society. The intersectionality of education with our societal issues is one that can not be ignored as we call upon fellow educators to recognize and embrace our role in shaping future generations towards creating an inclusive space that will be safe and free of oppression.

To provide an inclusive, safe environment in which all students can learn, it is imperative that the rights of members of the LGBTQ community be recognized and protected at all levels, student, educator, or school staff professional. As bullying initiatives have highlighted in recent years, safety is the number one right of all within a school. However, in spite of these efforts, members of the LGBTQ community are still being intimidated and harassed.

To strive for an environment that is inclusive for all students, we urge all educators to:

• Include activities and lessons that teach and promote tolerance.
• Work to make school bullying policies include language that specifically protects gender nonconforming students.
• Create/build/support a GSA club at school.
• Offer students the support they need to make their preferred gender identity known. Use their preferred pronoun and name while also respecting their privacy rights and possible need for confidentiality.
• Advocate for diversity training for all members of the staff and administration.
• Work to make sure all after school activities and events are inclusive.
• Advocate for the designation of gender neutral restrooms.

To strive for an environment that is inclusive for all staff, we urge all educators to:

• Advocate for diversity training for all members of staff.
• Advocate for a review of the district’s workplace harassment guidelines to include language that protects members of the LGBTQ community.
• Know the procedures for reporting workplace harassment and intimidation within your district, and make others aware of these procedures.
• Use a person’s preferred name and pronoun.
• Act to designate gender neutral faculty restrooms.
• Speak with legislators and work to eliminate any laws that allow for the dismissal of employees that identify as a member of the LGBTQ community as well as any laws that are discriminatory of members of the LGBTQ community

It is through education that our future society can become one that is tolerant and inclusive of all people. It is our responsibility to become purposeful and intentional in our profession to build towards that goal.  Once again, we offer our sincere thoughts of peace to all those in the LGBTQ community who are suffering at this time.