Dangerous Disregard
So, the Thousand Oaks shooter was described as a “ticking time bomb” by high school faculty. Let me tell you why that’s not a surprise.
Teachers like me aren’t licensed psychiatrists or psychologists, but we are on the front lines with around 150 kids each year, and, depending on our school, we can be in daily interaction with over 2,000 kids. We see things, and we know things. We should be listened to.
Ask any teacher, and he or she will tell you about that kid. The kid who was spooky. The kid who wasn’t just weird but disturbing. We may not see them every year, and they may not be in our classrooms, but they brush by us in the hallways. We overhear what they say in the lunchroom. We know that our other students, and even our colleagues, are scared of them.
It’s the kid who gouges out the crotch of the picture of the girl on the front of his workbook until there’s only a tattered hole left. It’s the kid who mutters racial slurs. It’s the kid who calls his female classmates bitches and complains about how they’re all a bunch of cock teases. It’s the kid who talks about hurting animals. It’s the kid who gets belligerent and hostile when told that he can’t read Mein Kampf instead of To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s the kid who says he wants to kill everyone or himself, or both. Or maybe it’s just the kid who sets off his teachers’ internal alarms without any overt…
