We duct-taped textbooks in double layers to create shields

and other topics related to Teacher Appreciation Week

It’s almost time again for the annual bullshit of Teacher Appreciation Week. Getting right to it, my problem with Teacher Appreciation Week is this: If you really care about teachers, you should do something about it beyond the coffee or $5 gift card. One year my principal stuck a Lifesaver candy in each teacher’s mailbox. No note, just a single tiny ring of brightly colored candy. The implied message was “You’re a lifesaver to our students,” but the gift was so understated that it had an ironic effect: “You’re kind of valuable, but also totally replaceable, and actually not that important, as a lifesaver to our students.” Not the intended message, but still. Do better.

Teacher Appreciation Week reminds me of the land acknowledgements that An Irritable Métis has written about: bunch of talk, no action in the context of something that is harmful. For tribes, this “something” is extended land theft, assimilation practices, genocide. For teachers, Teacher Appreciation Week is of course nonviolent, but it is harmful nonetheless. Why so? 

Because schools are fraught with strife, and teachers are generally unappreciated. Here we are in the season of celebrating the impending close of another school year, during which many parents have worked hard to launch their children into the world via the K-12 school, and the children have trundled off to this school, many with sadness that Captain Kangaroo¹ must end until the morrow, and teachers have daily gathered up their heavy teacherbags and maneuvered themselves into this same space of physical, mental, and emotional vulnerability. This is the timing of the hated (by me) Teacher Appreciation Week, but all that came before sets additional context.

We duct-taped old textbooks together in double layers to create shields.

As schools repeatedly become awful targets of horrific violence,² educators are routinely asked to put their bodies in harm’s way to protect children. Teachers are trained in active shooter response, where they are expected to fight back…somehow…or run. In my old school, in the event of a trapped-in-a-classroom situation, we practiced pushing furniture against the doors, which opened outward anyway. We also duct-taped old textbooks together into a double layer and set them within reach, because we were told they could stop a bullet. Yes, that’s right, we made 9” x 12” shields out of textbooks³ – but don’t tell the county, because school districts are supposed to retire all outdated equipment and materials through a public auction process before taping it together to create armor.

This is an image of the exact textbook I taped to its twin as a bullet-stopper.

We also developed elaborate protocols that involved methods of escaping from classrooms and heading to community safe spots. There were backpacks to carry with student rosters,⁴ phone communication steps, child-counting operations, traumatic bleeding protocols, and more. As manager of a safety grant we had landed from the Department of Justice, I convened many community meetings to determine the best courses of action in every possible situation⁵ which, as you might guess, is impossible. I don’t argue this is the correct order of operations; of course it is. But the fact that teachers have to do this at all is an entirely different conversation, one we continue to have fruitlessly in this country and which I will not belabor here. Is combating violence in the workplace teaching? No, but it’s part of education.

During my first four years as a teacher, I experienced the suicides of two students I was close with. Then, from 2016-2017, the community where I lived and worked was rocked by numerous suicides in a terrible period of 18 months. We adults all experienced caregiver fatigue, particularly difficult when we were teachers without training in counseling (if we had wanted to become counselors, we would have studied that instead of teaching). I wrote about this experience here. Enduring extended, broad-based trauma, is it teaching? No, but it’s part of education.

In 2019, at the end of my classroom career, I had an interaction with a student who chose not to do an extracurricular activity he had committed to. I relied on him to fulfill his role, so when he quit, I replaced him. Days later, his mother emailed me, wanting to know if he could resume his place. I said no, we were too close to the culminating activity, and I’d already replaced him. She replied, “No wonder kids are committing suicide, with teachers like you.”⁶ 

I told very few people about this when it happened, because I was mortified and ashamed. What if the student harmed himself as a result of being denied the activity? (He didn't.) What if the mom was right, and I was an uncompassionate teacher and a horrible person? I started to believe it. That was my last year in the classroom. I found many other reasons to say I was leaving but in reality, my awful experience with that mom, along with being assigned to teach out of my subject area with four days to prepare,⁷ were the final extinguishers of my teaching flame. Is being bludgeoned by parents (and sometimes administrators) teaching? No, but it’s part of education.

Adding some levity to this heavy newsletter with a misspelled grocery store cake. I also happen to be a huge fan of that excessively sugary frosting.

I am not against appreciating teachers. Giving your child’s teacher a gift card or buying them some donuts is thoughtful, during Teacher Appreciation Week or any other time of the year.⁸ But what this week of joy actually generates is a sense that if we just give these teachers some flowers and a charcuterie spread one day in early May, we can absolve ourselves of having to do something meaningful such as lobbying for gun control or higher teacher pay/benefits or better working conditions. They’ll be reminded, ironically, that they are actually martyrs, and be encouraged to find satisfaction in that role. After all, they chose this life with its known strife: the violence, the low pay, the parental and public abuse, the community trauma. A latte is just salt in the wound.

1. I am sure we don’t watch this anymore, but as a GenXer I am compelled to include it.

2. Just in the past couple of weeks, Hellgate High School here in Missoula has experienced not one but two lockdowns complete with police-with-guns circling and swarming the school. It’s absolutely terrifying.

3. Where do I hold my textbook shield? In front of my face? In front of my heart? In front of a student? Better hope I guess right, and that they only shoot once, hit the shield, and then give up!

4. Lengthy discussions ensued about how to ensure these lists would be up-to-date not only as rosters for which kid is in which class at which hour, but also which kid is there TODAY. Could we use online resources for this? Yes, but only if the district invested in the latest upgrade for our database AND only if teachers had Verizon-based cell phones, because AT&T didn’t work in our valley. I mean. It was a whole thing, just figuring out these fucking rosters.

5. Active shooter, train wreck with spilled chemicals, earthquake/fire, generalized other threat

6. Later she apologized, but the damage was done.

7. If you aren’t a teacher, you may not know what this means. What this means is, I was an English teacher. I was not a Spanish teacher, but I am somewhat kind of proficient as a Spanish speaker. Four days before the new school year, our Spanish teacher quit and I was told to fill in. Teachers generally spend months preparing to teach a new course within their discipline, let alone an entirely foreign (please excuse the pun) subject. I had four days, the last four days of summer. I’m still mad.

8. In elementary schools, good gift days particularly include Halloween and Valentine’s Day, and adjacent days. In high schools, consider homecoming week and testing weeks. In all schools, the last day before any vacation — and the first day back, too. And you know, any other day, just because you never know if that teacher spent Sunday afternoon MacGyvering chainmail out of discarded educational materials.