If they were one of mine
Their names are Billy Lucas and Tyler Clementi, and they could have been my students.
---
We all froze for a moment on Tuesday, me and the other teachers at the school. The shooting at UT ended up being one person's tragedy, but we didn't know that at the time, and any one of us has dozens of former students at the main campus - especially the honors teachers. And there's that moment when you think, are my kids okay?
Because that's what they are - our kids. Not "former students," not "alumni"; they're our kids, the ones we worked with and struggled with, maybe fought with, maybe triumphed with.
None of mine died, and the one that did doesn't seem to have left much evidence of why he thought taking a Kalashnikov to a college library was the best response to the world he lived in.
Other kids died this week for whom we know why.
Their names are Billy Lucas and Tyler Clementi, and they could have been my students.
---
I lost a kid my first year teaching ever. It was effectively a suicide - he stepped out of the back of a moving bus - although it's never been clear if he intended to die, or if he just didn't understand physics, didn't realize it would be fatal. Ultimately, it didn't matter. It left us all in shock, especially his friends, of course, but the whole school. He wasn't bullied any more than normal, didn't seem to be under any particular pressures. We never knew why.
He was a year older than Billy Lucas.
The school being blind to the bullying Lucas was suffering - yeah, I believe it. Fundie teachers somethimes turn a blind eye to this sort of thing, and those of us who do intervene can't always be there. Worse, before it gets physical, sometimes we only see a tiny slice of what's going on - not enough to stop it, barely enough to offer the kid a safe space. This does not always help, either, since they eventually have to leave. And the kids themselves sometimes beg us not to do anything - they don't want their parents to know; taking refuge with us makes the other kids act that much worse when we're not around, and "teacher's pet" gets added to "fag" or "dyke".
When I was teaching Geometry those first two years, how many kids like him drifted through my class and never showed anything? He could have been one of mine.
---
The bullying doesn't always happen in school. There's not much a teacher can do to stop bullying by text, by e-mail, on Facebook.
Tyler Clementi got it via Twitter, via webcam. Expectations of privacy are different for Millennials than they are for 13ers, but they'd still assume that a closed door was a reasonable indication that This Is Private. Why his roommate thought what he was doing was okay, I don't pretend to understand.
Clementi was a freshman in college. I teach seniors; because of what I teach, I teach an unusually large proportion of band geeks, orchestra nerds, and theatre geeks. A violinist for theatrical productions? He could have been one of mine, one of the ones I teared up for as he crossed the stage in May.
Another one of him could be sitting in my class right now.
---
At least someone is trying to use the Internet for good. It's only YouTube, but - they need to know. They need to know that it gets better, that the Hollywood ending of the dead gay isn't what lurks in their future. They need to know it gets better.
I try to tell them. It would be easier if I could be out to them, if it wasn't mildly freaking me out to make a work-related post public, if it didn't possibly mean my job. But - it gets better, kids. It does. We love you. Hang on.
---
We all froze for a moment on Tuesday, me and the other teachers at the school. The shooting at UT ended up being one person's tragedy, but we didn't know that at the time, and any one of us has dozens of former students at the main campus - especially the honors teachers. And there's that moment when you think, are my kids okay?
Because that's what they are - our kids. Not "former students," not "alumni"; they're our kids, the ones we worked with and struggled with, maybe fought with, maybe triumphed with.
None of mine died, and the one that did doesn't seem to have left much evidence of why he thought taking a Kalashnikov to a college library was the best response to the world he lived in.
Other kids died this week for whom we know why.
Their names are Billy Lucas and Tyler Clementi, and they could have been my students.
---
I lost a kid my first year teaching ever. It was effectively a suicide - he stepped out of the back of a moving bus - although it's never been clear if he intended to die, or if he just didn't understand physics, didn't realize it would be fatal. Ultimately, it didn't matter. It left us all in shock, especially his friends, of course, but the whole school. He wasn't bullied any more than normal, didn't seem to be under any particular pressures. We never knew why.
He was a year older than Billy Lucas.
The school being blind to the bullying Lucas was suffering - yeah, I believe it. Fundie teachers somethimes turn a blind eye to this sort of thing, and those of us who do intervene can't always be there. Worse, before it gets physical, sometimes we only see a tiny slice of what's going on - not enough to stop it, barely enough to offer the kid a safe space. This does not always help, either, since they eventually have to leave. And the kids themselves sometimes beg us not to do anything - they don't want their parents to know; taking refuge with us makes the other kids act that much worse when we're not around, and "teacher's pet" gets added to "fag" or "dyke".
When I was teaching Geometry those first two years, how many kids like him drifted through my class and never showed anything? He could have been one of mine.
---
The bullying doesn't always happen in school. There's not much a teacher can do to stop bullying by text, by e-mail, on Facebook.
Tyler Clementi got it via Twitter, via webcam. Expectations of privacy are different for Millennials than they are for 13ers, but they'd still assume that a closed door was a reasonable indication that This Is Private. Why his roommate thought what he was doing was okay, I don't pretend to understand.
Clementi was a freshman in college. I teach seniors; because of what I teach, I teach an unusually large proportion of band geeks, orchestra nerds, and theatre geeks. A violinist for theatrical productions? He could have been one of mine, one of the ones I teared up for as he crossed the stage in May.
Another one of him could be sitting in my class right now.
---
At least someone is trying to use the Internet for good. It's only YouTube, but - they need to know. They need to know that it gets better, that the Hollywood ending of the dead gay isn't what lurks in their future. They need to know it gets better.
I try to tell them. It would be easier if I could be out to them, if it wasn't mildly freaking me out to make a work-related post public, if it didn't possibly mean my job. But - it gets better, kids. It does. We love you. Hang on.