Friday we go into Code White, a lock-down. Not a drill. Some kid was apparently bringing a gun to school, planning to kill some other kid. I spent a few minutes afterwards comforting a security guard who was unraveling because she had realized that a number of students, including the intended victim, had known this might happen.

“What was he thinking?” she said. “He knew this was going to happen and he came to school.” The guard’s eyes were filled with as-yet unshed tears. I told the guard what the lunch lady told me when I collapsed in the lunchroom last week: “Hand it to Jesus.”

I was in gym when the lockdown occurred, picking up straggling students. Then I got to spend a long hour trying to quiet students in the gym, often without success. The students had all been expecting a championship soccer game and they were thoroughly amped up.

We have had too many drills, too. Code White has lost most of its credibility. I nonetheless got a few bodies out of line of the doorway, since my take was an intruder might start shooting there, taking advantage of the cover provided by the stairs and dumpsters.

Finally, the drama was over and we were released from lockdown. Afternoon activities were cancelled. I called off my three afterschool detentions for tardiness. I couldn’t coordinate with students since not all my kids were in gym, so no one ended up with weekend homework.

Academics lost this week.

One reason the world should be kind to teachers is that this job is far tougher than most people realize, especially in poor and urban school districts. I watched almost no recreational TV during the last school year, cutting sleep sometimes in order to be ready for the next day. Lesson planning happens in the evening, grading happens, and phone calls home may punctuate these efforts. High school teachers sometimes have more than 150 students to manage and that management takes skills that only develop with time, time that some would-be teachers never receive. Excessive flexibility doesn’t work in a poor or urban school because the kids generally need a great deal of structure — but, without flexibility, the challenges that these schools and their students pose can prove overwhelming.

I remain amazed that I survived my first couple of years. They walked on me like I was the family room rug. Fortunately, we liked each other. I survived, but many don’t.

Almost half of teachers leave the field after just five years, according to the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. After having dedicated years to the teaching dream, these teachers walk away, abandoning their chosen career despite the many thousands in college tuition that someone paid toward their degree(s). In some cases, the career abandons teachers as supervisors write negative reviews and destroy any possibility of being rehired.

Eduhonesty: This career can be one of the most stressful careers on the planet. A teacher’s performance reviews are based on the behavior of children. Behavior in schools has become steadily more distressing over the last few decades.

I think I like having a top-secret blog. I may have to reveal its location to someone but I’ll get around to that later. In the meantime, science fair work is almost over. Zombieland has zombie rules. I think I’ll create some Science Fair rules:

1) No forcing food into the blindfolded student’s mouth.
2) Be gentle when putting clothespins on noses.
3) Don’t even think of trying to open the spotty petri dish.
4) Try not to leave what you are supposed to observe in the classroom over the weekend. Some things rot.
5) If you are supposed to bake cookies, do not bring Soft Chewy Chips Ahoy cookies.
6) If I have to microwave the Soft Chewy Chips Ahoy cookies, you have to eat them. We have to do something to these cookies so you can write up your “experiment.”
7) You can’t have a sharp knife at school. Cut the apples at home. If you don’t, don’t whine about the plastic, serrated butter knife.
8) If you test the effect of a hot and cold room on classwork performance, you have to remember which assignment you gave on the cold day and which assignment you gave on the hot day. It’s important.
9) I will explain and re-explain this mysterious thing “the conclusion,” but at a certain point you just have to wing it.

I am told the average ACT score for the high school in the district where I work is 15.2.  Ummm… I think you get twelve just for breathing. So many bodies parked in so many desks for so many years  — What went wrong?

This is where the blog begins. It started on another site and has just been moved during this summer of 2013 to its own website. I have blogged mostly for stress relief without regard for an audience. It’s time to share, though. It’s a mess out here. I believe I may be watching the beginning of an educational apocalypse.

That said, if any reader decided to start at the beginning of this blog, I’ll note that some posts that follow are actually rather funny. Teaching is often funny. Teaching is often fun. I live teaching. I only think about the lurching bodies of mindless students in the dark of  night, mostly after another administrative demand sucked still more of my students’ lives away.

Eduhonesty: After a decade of furious government intervention, we have screwed up America’s schools so thoroughly that the whole Marvel League of Superheroes probably cannot rescue us.