Add this to the list of things that bureaucrats don't understand about teachers' lives.

So here's a situation.

A parent requested a conference with a teacher I know during conference time. This parent began yelling and gesticulating wildly during the conference, until the teacher asked the parent to leave. By the way, the teacher in question is so calm, he's practically a reincarnation of the Buddha. Parent stormed off and went to an administrator and made a bunch of wild claims about the teacher and then stormed out of the administrator's office.

So far, not all that unusual, right?

Here's where it gets interesting: the parent's kid approached the teacher a few days later, accused him of threatening the mother, and then threatened to attack the teacher. This was done IN FRONT OF WITNESSES.

Wow. Makes Race to the Top seem kind of insignificant and out-of-touch, doesn't it?

The assumption that students are all here to learn, that students are all cooperative, sane, and non-violent, is just not a part of the reality of teaching in a public school. That goes for parents, too.

And it's certainly true that the majority of students and parents do not behave this way. But this kind of family is becoming ever more common. There have been more assaults or threatened assaults on teachers of my acquaintance this year that any year that I can remember since I started teaching school back in the 1980s.

Now, luckily, the student has been suspended from school for the maximum allowed time, which is good, since it is known that the family has guns in the house. It is good to know that the administrators took this seriously.

So maybe Arne Duncan has some advice about this situation from his vast well of educational experience? If so, I'd like to hear it.

One week in February: Another cataclysm of gun violence in American schools

This may have been one of the bloodiest weeks for violent incidents at schools within my memory. The sad litany:

February 7: A teacher is shot and stabbed by her estranged husband in an Ohio elementary school classroom.

The man who allegedly shot and stabbed his teacher wife at a Catholic elementary school in front of her students Thursday is dead of what police believe is a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Portsmouth, Ohio, Police Chief Charles Horner said.

The man, whom the chief identified as William Michael Layne, barricaded himself in his home after apparently going to Notre Dame Elementary School in the morning and shooting and stabbing his wife, fith-grade teacher Christy Layne, authorities said.

February 8: A female student at Louisiana Technical College kills two other students and then herself.

A female student shot and killed two classmates and then herself this morning in a classroom at Louisiana Technical College’s Baton Rouge campus, United Press International reported.

Police officers responding to a 911 call around 8:30 a.m. found the three already dead. Twenty other people were in the classroom at the time, the police said. The women’s identities have not been released, but the shooter was 23 years old, while the victims were 21 and 26.

February 11: In Memphis, the second shooting in EIGHT DAYS:

Memphis City Schools administrators and board members pleaded for the community's help in curbing school violence in the wake of the second school shooting in eight days.

A Mitchell High School student was in critical condition Monday night after he was shot multiple times during a gym class in the cafeteria at 9 a.m.

Police arrested a Mitchell student who gave a pistol to teacher and coach Darryl Montgomery right after the shooting, saying, "It's over now."

"We have to answer: 'Why are our kids so angry?' " said Memphis Board of Education president Tomeka Hart. "It's going to take a total community effort."

Board members met Monday night, and after a moment of silence they took up their scheduled business, the new budget.

Corneilous Cheers, 17, a sophomore at the Southwest Memphis school, has been charged with attempted first-degree murder, reckless endangerment, unlawful carrying or possession of a weapon and carrying a weapon on school property.

On February 14, Valentine's Day, we have TWO deadly incidents: First, In California, one middle school student shoots another student in what may be a hate crime:

Ventura County prosecutors charged a 14-year-old boy with the shooting death of a classmate Thursday and said the killing in an Oxnard classroom was a premeditated hate crime.

Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Maeve Fox declined to discuss a motive in the shooting or why prosecutors added the special allegation of a hate crime against Brandon McInerney, who was charged as an adult.

But classmates of the slain boy, Lawrence King, said he recently had started to wear makeup and jewelry and had proclaimed himself gay. Several students said King and a group of boys, including the defendant, had a verbal confrontation concerning King's sexual orientation a day before the killing.

Then, the same day, at Northern Illinois University, a former student opened fire on a geography class and killed 5 others before killing himself.

If there is such a thing as a profile of a mass murderer, Steven Kazmierczak didn't fit it: outstanding student, engaging, polite and industrious, with what looked like a bright future in the criminal justice field.

And yet on Thursday, the 27-year-old Kazmierczak, armed with three handguns and a brand-new pump-action shotgun he had carried onto campus in a guitar case, stepped from behind a screen on the stage of a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University and opened fire on a geology class. He killed five students before committing suicide.

University Police Chief Donald Grady said, without giving details, that Kazmierczak had become erratic in the past two weeks after he had stopped taking his medication. But that seemed to come as news to many of those who knew him, and the attack itself was positively baffling.

Why are guns so readily available for those who are unstable? And more important, why don't we have the will to declare an end to the madness?

WHY does this little creep get to own a gun?

Guess who THIS is?

A federal jury convicted a 23-year-old man on an obscure weapons charge Tuesday, apparently unaware that 10 years ago he and another boy killed four classmates and a teacher in a schoolyard ambush.

Mitchell Johnson faces 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced in the next 45 days on a count of possessing a firearm while being a drug user.

Johnson was arrested on New Year's Day 2007 after police stopped his van and said they found a bag of marijuana in his pocket and a 9 mm pistol and a 20-gauge shotgun in two bags. Police said they stopped the van after getting an anonymous tip about drugs in the vehicle.

In 1998, Johnson, then 13, and 11-year-old schoolmate Andrew Golden opened fire as students and teachers left Jonesboro Westside Middle School after Golden pulled the fire alarm. The boys killed English teacher Shannon Wright and four students ages 11 and 12. They wounded 10 other people.

Government lawyers did not bring up Johnson's violent past. The only clue during the two-day trial came during jury selection, when potential panelists were asked whether Johnson's name sounded familiar.

Mitch Wright, the widower of the teacher killed March 25, 1998, watched Tuesday's court session along with his son Zane, who was 2 at the time of the shootings. The boy "wanted to see what this person looked like," Wright said during a break in the trial.

State courts sent Johnson and Golden to a juvenile prison until their 18th birthdays. Federal prosecutors then got them locked up until they turned 21.

Johnson left prison with an "adjudicated" record — meaning he could own firearms.

Read the whole thing.

One of the first posts on this blog was over the release of this little shit from prison here at this post. At the time, his mother claimed he was sorry, wanted to become a minister, and would be leaving Arkansas to go to college.

Right.

What the HELL were they thinking giving him a record that allows him to own guns?!?

Well, by all means, let's give him another chance at killing someone with a gun. Let's forget that he and his friend killed five people and wounded ten others. Let's forget that he left a two year old without a mother, and four other sets of parents with a gaping wound in their hearts.


****UPDATE! And he's been arrested yetagain.

School bus driver assaulted

Once I had a principal who thought it would be a great idea if I and some other teachers got our bus driver's credentials to save the school district some money on field trips. I refused to even consider the idea, since driving a multi-ton vehicle down freeways while kids shout and goof around behind is not really my cup o' tea. This report reminds me why that was a good decision:

(TULSA, Okla.) April 27 - A Tulsa school bus driver is recovering at home after being attacked by a student.

Paramedics say the driver suffered a concussion this morning outside East Central High School.

On the way to the school, the bus driver says some students were acting rowdy and he asked them to move to the front of the bus.

When they arrived, one student started arguing with the driver about what happened.

He asked the student to leave the bus, that's when she turned around and hit him in the head with a perfume bottle.

School officials say the bus has a camera on board but they're not yet sure if it was recording.

Officials say the driver from this morning should be applauded for his conduct and his professionalism during the incident.

Officers are still investigating the case, so no word on any charges.

Officials from the school say they will handle the issue according to the Tulsa Public Schools' code of student conduct.

District officials call this a "rare case."

Bus drivers are trained to avoid conflicts with students or parents, including strict rules on not fighting back.

And by the way, I'd like to thank district officials for publicizing the fact that Tulsa school bus drivers are sitting targets who must take being struck on the skull with glass objects. Great decision.

In memory of those at Virginia Tech

Well, another crazed freak exercized his Second Amendment rights yesterday, and 32 people are now extinguished. Plus the gunman is dead. You know, "gunman" is an interesting word.

Let us all remember the victims and their families in our prayers.