The Courageous Classroom. Jed Dearybury

The Courageous Classroom - Jed Dearybury


Скачать книгу
partly sticking out from under his black trench coat.

      Lowe could have too.

      He did not.

      Keanon Lowe made the decision to grab the shotgun from the young man. At the time, Lowe was unaware that the student, upset over a failed romantic relationship, had recently been diagnosed with depression. They wrestled around the classroom, clanging on blackboards, and ended up in the hallway banging against the metal lockers. Miraculously, Lowe was able to grab the shotgun while keeping the young man in a strong grip. Lowe breathlessly tossed the shotgun to another teacher while screaming at him to call 911.

      Putting the young man on the floor while waiting for the police to come, the student was agitated and upset, tearfully shouting, “Nobody cares about me!”

      Keanon Lowe did the unthinkable.

      He looked into his eyes and said, “I care about you.” Lowe continued saying, “I do bro, That's why I'm here, I got you buddy.” As the police swarmed in and took the student into custody, Lowe was spared. The student was arrested and later released to a hospital for mental health treatment.

      Fear. Keanon Lowe used courage and caring to transform his fear into the energy of compassion.

      According to the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative (TLPI), a collaboration of Massachusetts Advocates for Children and Harvard Law School,

      Not only is academic performance hindered, but classroom behavior and peer to peer relationships are negatively impacted as well.

      The trauma of childhood abuse can have long-term effects that continue to shape your sense of self and the world around you in adulthood. Often, one of the most tragic consequences of such trauma is its impact on your interpersonal relationships; by disrupting healthy development in your formative years, childhood abuse can deeply compromise your ability to form and maintain the healthy bonds that nurture us throughout our lives.

      Childhood trauma is a dangerous or frightening event that a child between the ages of infancy and 18 years of age experiences personally or witnesses. Three hours in a hallway with a textbook over your head while not knowing if a tornado is going to destroy your school at any given moment, possibly injuring you or taking your life is most certainly a traumatic event for anyone, especially a child who is away from their parents as it all happens. It makes me wish that districts had just cancelled schools that day.

      School shootings today create similar fears and feelings for students and their parents. There is a constant 24-hour exposure to news across a variety of platforms. Smartphones capture terror in real-time and are easily shared in case one missed it. Between actual exposure and drills for a shooter, children report that the majority of US students worry that a shooting could happen at their school, and so do their parents (Graff 2018). In How the Mind Works, Steven Pinker writes, “Fear is an emotion of anticipation that is triggered when a situation that is at risk for our safety and or the safety of others is perceived. Emotions serve a variety of functions. Our desires and beliefs are information for our brain.” He continues to say that, “Fear is the emotion that motivated our ancestors to cope with the dangers they were likely to face” (Pinker 1999).

      As important as fear is, surprisingly, we don't experience it as often as we might think (Whalen 2007). Think of how many times you have literally been “scared to death” not just afraid. It's probably not that many. Our experience has been that when people feel afraid in a situation, they are not always in touch with their own feelings of fear and may act defensively or angrily. For example, when we see a young person who is frequently agitating others and engaging in behavior that some would consider as aggressive or taunting, we see pain. Our first inclination is not to label, judge, or punish the behavior but to question, “What is driving it?”

      Stopping at the first of many checkpoints is an intimidating process. You are held captive by a non-smiling officer, and asked for proof of identification, including an up-to-date car registration. Small talk is usually not reciprocated and any attempts at banal chatter is usually met with stone cold silence. I attended a thoroughly chilling orientation about how to think and act while a visitor, working at Rikers Island, making me worry if my presence there was worth it. Honestly there were many days when I wondered why I was. But deep down I knew.

      Over my career, I have always worked with folks who have been marginalized. Being at Riker's taught me about the impact of trauma on behavior, and how trauma contributes to feelings of fear, anger, and hopelessness. My role, I would learn, was to unleash the individual potential and freeing power, for individuals involved in criminal justice to acknowledge past trauma and openly speak about their pain. Many of these patients of mine had never disclosed their pain, suffering, and trauma to anyone. Their behavior patterns would be labeled as criminal deviance without adequate understanding of the underlying root causes.


Скачать книгу