Open To Love

Dear Elementary School Principal,

Thank you for making efforts to ensure my child’s safety at school.  I don’t want my child to experience a violent death or to see his friends and teachers die violently.  It is one of the most terrifying things I can imagine.  Unfortunately, the reality of this kind of violence is already here with us in the world.  Our children are too young to understand a lot of what we are feeling since the Clackamas Town Center shooting and the shooting at Shady Hook Elementary in Connecticut.  However, I do believe that they can feel our fear in our actions, and in some of the sudden changes in rules concerning safety since our return to school after the winter break.  Specifically, that all classroom doors are to be locked from the inside during school hours.  

When I am afraid, I also want lock my door to keep my children safe.  But then, I take them back out into the world and show them that the world is what we make of it.  I do this out of the love I feel for my child and for every person with whom I come into contact each day.  Though we are not the people of Newtown, Connecticut, we can feel what they are feeling.  Our loss of trust is palpable.  We brought our children back to school with the hope that they will be safe.  But, our locked doors are showing them that they are not.  

This letter is in regard to how one particular safety precaution has changed my son’s experience at school.  

This week, he told me about some new rules regarding access to the restroom.  This is how he explained the change.  Upon returning from the restroom, the children must knock on the door or window to the classroom, wait until the teacher or a classmate comes to see that it is someone from class or someone who was in his teacher’s class the year before, then the door can be opened.  He suggested that the rule should be that the children pound loudly on the door because the teacher doesn’t always hear them at first.

I opened the letter explaining safety precautions this morning.  It said nothing of the locked classroom doors.  I had to hear that from my son.  I understand what this rule means and why the school district has instituted the change.  My child does not.  I’m not sure I want to tell him that we are all afraid that some person (it could be anyone, including a child), will walk into the school with a gun, go into the class room, and shoot six to ten bullets into his classmates bodies until they die.  I can’t even fathom how we have arrived at such a place in history.  He has known no other way.

I do think that Ollie and his classmates feel the impact of the changes in other ways.  Consider the message we are giving them.  They are being protected from some unknown assailant.  Their school and classrooms are unsafe places to be.  (These are kids who are still having a hard time getting used to being away from caregivers, parents, or a daycare they have grown to love and trust.) They may feel they are no longer safe in the halls when they are locked out of their classrooms and the door is not answered when they knock.  I wonder how they feel when someone is looking at them and deciding whether or not they belong behind the door through which they are requesting entry.   Our children are left to wonder why they are not given a weapon with which to protect themselves from danger.  They may feel like they are vulnerable when before they felt strong and capable.  I wonder if they are thinking about what this dangerous person will look like.  Will they look at everyone as a potential killer?  Will they begin to suspect that anyone who would hurt them must be different from him or her?  Will the children develop new ways of protecting themselves in this now unsafe environment?  Will they recall how they practiced hiding in the corner in the dark?  Will they notice that even the adults are feeling fear? 

There was a time in our not too distant past, when not all citizens of the United States were welcomed into all of the buildings and classrooms of our public schools to get an education.  Today, there is access.  We have swung the door wide and we are working hard to keep those doors open to all who would pursue an education.  We do this because we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  We do this because we are all human beings and we are all connected in our fear, striving, joy, love, discovery, and want for success.  I would like to see our doors remain open both physically and symbolically. 

I love my community, my neighborhood school, and all of the children, educators, administrators, custodians, and lunch servers in it.  It is a testimony to love and hope for the future to work in our public schools.  I am humbled and I have the utmost respect for what you do in your role as principal at Vernon Elementary and Middle School.  This must be a very challenging subject for you and your staff.

I have a vision of what our public school could be like.  It has less to do with test scores, however, and more to do with loving, open, compassionate friendship, where all of the children are learning in a safe, open environment.  It is a place where our children know that the world is what we make of it.  We have the power to protect by unlocking the doors.  Unlocking the doors to the classrooms is opening to one another, to our potential for compassion.  It is being open to a different way of raising our children.  Do we teach them to obey with threats of consequences or violence?  Or do we love them when they are making mistakes and listen when they are crying out for help? 

I think we can find ways to teach safety without locking the doors to our classrooms.  It could be a place where a child could go for help to any classroom or to any student or educator.  I would like to see a public school system and a community where voices are heard and access to help is available.  If we can begin by demonstrating to our children and to ourselves that we feel safe and strong, maybe we can prevent more violence from happening. And maybe all of the adults in this world will start setting down our weapons one by one until the last nuclear missile is dismantled and the armies are called in from the playground. 

I would like to leave you with a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr..  It is an excerpt from Beyond Vietnam, A time to Break Silence, delivered on April 4^th, 1967 at Riverside Church, New York City.

            “When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response.  I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh.  I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life.  Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door, which leads to ultimate reality.  This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate –ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another, for love is God.  And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.  He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.”  “If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.’  Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.” 

Thank you for your time and consideration on this subject.  I look forward to your response to this matter. 

Sincerely,

Mother of a six year old child in the United States of America