LETTER: Nouvelle-Alliance gun call illustrates need for support, says reader

BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following is in response to a firearm incident which occurred Jan. 27 at a Barrie high school. 
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While I am on the last few minutes of my shift on the picket line as a teacher, I get a text from my daughter that her high school, Nouvelle-Alliance in Barrie, is on “lock and secure." A student had [allegedly] brought a firearm, unsure if loaded or unloaded, left it there and then fled the school.  

So as I am driving down to pick her up, as I was going to do anyway after her morning exam, it really hits me. On top of all the things that teachers do, I know that school staff are doing their utmost to keep our kids safe; possibly alive. 

We know that beyond the academics, they clothe and feed and buy school supplies, console hurt feelings, battle technology, manage behaviour and, in general, just make things happen when their job is really, purely supposed to be academic. 

I know this because somewhere a kid is wearing a pair of my shoes, another has my Blue Jays gloves and many others have had my breakfast instead of me. Teachers are buying school supplies (basic things like pencils and sharpeners!), asking permission to return hugs, rewriting report cards when the system crashes and the behaviour... Oh, the behaviour!

Ask your kids what they have witnessed at school once in a while.

After I picked up my kids and a classmate, the burning question was: “Could you have predicted this kind of behaviour?” 

And the answer was “yes." It’s always yes. It is almost overwhelmingly and categorically “yes."

One parent states that maybe this is the chance this person needs to get help; an awful way to resort to it.  Were the signs there? Likely. My kids knew it... out of the mouths of babes. Did the teachers have the resources? That night, of all times, the news reported that wait times for child and youth mental-health services had more than doubled in the last two years. Supports are shrinking and demands are increasing.

I'm not a math teacher or a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon; one does not need to be to know that if we don’t put the resources up front that we lose kids to addiction, violence, prison, homelessness. Surely, even a Conservative knows that from a pure economic standpoint that investing in kids at a young age yields huge dividends later. At least admit the value of keeping them alive long enough and healthy enough for them to enter the workforce and to start paying taxes!

Ironically, I was watching a documentary series the day before entitled Why We Hate? They interviewed a reformed bully and asked what turned things around for them. It was when a school staff member asked them, “What’s wrong and how can I help?" 

This should be a prevailing question that guides all of us always. “Bully” or “bullied," this is the question that we not only need to ask, but also need to back up with resources. As teachers, we need the smaller class sizes to devote the necessary time to all students. We need the human contact to get kids off their devices and interacting. We need two adults in a class of 30 kindergarten kids.

School is so much more than academic. Support us so that students can be supported also. It could be so good. No one wants another "I told you so" moment when it comes to a kid losing their way.

Ellen Wolper
Orillia

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