by Judy Molland October 30, 2014 4 Heroic Teachers Who Went to Great Lengths to Protect Their Students “Rotten Apples: It’s nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher,” reads the cover of Time magazine for the week of November 3. As a high school teacher, I am frankly sick and tired of the attempt to degrade teachers and place all of society’s ills at our feet. There are myriad, complex issues in play that contribute to low achievement rates and children going down the wrong path. The fact that 25 percent of children in the U.S. live in poverty is just one of many factors contributing to poor grades and distracted students. For every “rotten apple,” there are countless teachers who put their students first. I’ve been teaching for around 30 years, and I can tell you that most teachers work really hard, care deeply about their students, and love their job. Tonight is a really good example: after I finish writing this blog post, I will grade the papers from my first period Spanish 1 class, before preparing tomorrow’s lessons. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to sleep by 11 p.m. Doctors, lawyers and marketers don’t get blamed for all of society’s problems, so why should teachers? In defense of us teachers, here are four teacher heroes that I am so proud of. Who Can Believe What Happened Last Friday? Last Friday, October 24, 2014, a teacher at a Washington high school tried to stop a gunman who opened fire, killing one girl and wounding four others. Another girl has died since then. The alleged shooter, identified as Jaylen Fryberg, 14, opened fire in the crowded cafeteria at Marysville-Pilchuck High School, according to CBS News. High school teacher Megan Silberberger, aged 24, ran into the cafeteria and confronted the shooter. (See photo above.) “She just grabbed his arm,” said Erick Cervantes. “She’s the one that intercepted him with the gun. He tried either reloading or tried aiming at her.” “I believe she’s actually the real hero,” added Cervantes. Cervantes told KIRO-TV that Silberberger grabbed Fryberg’s arm, spoke to him calmly and tried talking him out of shooting more students. Fryberg fired another shot, though, killing himself, Cervantes said to KIRO-TV. Sandy Hook and Victoria Soto If we are looking for teacher heroes, Sandy Hook is an obvious place to start. It was here that a young teacher displayed astonishing bravery on December 14, 2012, sacrificing her life to save as many children in her first grade class as she could after she came face-to-face with gunman Adam Lanza. Victoria Soto, 27, had worked at Sandy Hook Elementary for five years. Her final moments were spent ushering her students into a closet, trying her best to shield the children from the gunman, when Lanza entered her classroom. “She took her kids, put them in the closet and by doing so she lost her life protecting those little ones,” Soto’s cousin, Jim Wiltsie, told ABC News. “Put Down Your Weapon!” With a sawed-off shotgun pointed straight at him, a New Mexico social studies teacher calmly talked a 12-year-old student into putting down his weapon last January, thereby stopping this school shooting from being something much worse. Two students had already been hurt: an 11-year-old boy shot in the face and a 13-year-old girl, who was shot in the shoulder. The shooting stopped when John Masterson, a social studies teacher at Berrendo Middle School in Roswell, calmly talked the boy, identified in court documents as Mason Campbell, into putting down his 20-gauge pump-action shotgun, police said. Teacher Donates Kidney to Save Student‘s Life How many of us, teachers or otherwise, would go this far? U.K. resident Ray Coe stepped in to rescue Alya Ahmed Ali, 13, after learning she was desperate for a donor. Alya, from Stratford, east London, suffered from renal failure. She also has hydrocephalus (water on the brain), which has resulted in her having severe learning difficulties. When Coe learned that Alya would be absent from school as she had to have kidney dialysis, he asked what he could do to help her. The pair went on to have blood tests and discovered that, against all the odds, Cole was a match. He donated his kidney to the 13-year-old. The successful transplant went ahead at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital last February. Both Coe and Alya are recovering well. Clearly, it’s not just teachers who go out of their way to be extraordinary, but can we please stop knocking teachers at every possible opportunity? Read more: care2/causes/4-heroic-teachers-who-went-to-great-lengths-to-protect-their-students.html#ixzz3Hk6WW1ys
Posted on: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 16:57:46 +0000