There are teachers, who never were. And lessons yet to be. There are those we refuse to see and perhaps, the memory of these lingers. In 2013, there was one – the person, the personification, and her position. Antoinette Tuff was the mentor who never was and could be. She came into our collective consciousness in August. Aptly, Ms Tuff was found in a school; she is about education.
Differentiated instruction, whole child connectivity, wrap-around programs, interactivity, and empathy, these we can see
We might recall what could stand out in our minds but doesn’t. Mired in instant messages and immediate gratification we miss the masters, the mentors, and often our own mission. We ask, “Why am I here? What is my purpose? How am I driven?” We reflect and particularly at the end of the year we resolve, but then what do we do and when, why, how…and with whom?
We battle. There is combat in Congress, contention on the streets. Poverty incites war, and principles compete. There are conflicts in the classroom. Parents and teachers too take up metaphorical arms. Yes, there are issues. Testing is a threat. A lack of funding for education evokes fear. What do we do? How do we engage? There is exigency. Empathy? Will we choose battles?
Consider this; Antoinette was scared, as was her assailant. As National Public Radio’s Audie Cornish surmises, “Over the course of the 25-minute 911 call, Tuff doesn’t simply communicate for Hill, she bonds with the gunman.” Listen and you too might hear the teacher who never was and the lesson that could be.
It’s gonna be all right, sweetheart. I just want you to know that I love you, though, okay? And I’m proud of you. That’s a good thing that you’re just giving up and don’t worry about it. We all go through something in life.
~ Antoinette Tuff speaking to Michael Hill during the ordeal.
I for one cheer. I thank you Antoinette Tuff for being my teacher.
Antoinette Tuff’s 911 Tape: What We All Can Learn About School Shootings
Don’t feel bad, baby. My husband just left me after 33 years. … I’ve got a son that’s multiple disabled.
Displaying a calm and strength that she later said she didn’t feel, school bookkeeper Antoinette Tuff used those words yesterday to talk 20-year-old Michael Brandon Hill into surrendering to police at the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy, an elementary school near Atlanta.
In a 911 transcript that I can’t listen to without crying, Tuff (“Her name… says everything about her. Tough,” her principal, told CNN) treated the clearly troubled gunman gently. She shared her own troubles. She told Hill that she was proud of him for not hurting anyone. She told police that the young man needed to be taken to a mental hospital. Over 22 agonizing minutes she talked Hill into setting down his “AK-47 type” weapon and his 500 rounds of ammunition, then lying on the floor to wait for police.
“It’s going to be all right, sweetie,” she said. “I just want you to know I love you, though, OK?… We all go through something in life…You going to be OK.”
She talked to him the way you talk to a child. She talked to him the way you talk to YOUR child. She saw him as a human being, not a monster, and she tried to help him.
You can’t help but run through the alternate scenarios in your head: That Tuff fled and Hill moved from the emptied office into the classrooms before she had a chance to trigger the alarm that alerted teachers to clear them. That she riled Hill up rather than calming him down, and rather than shooting a few rounds at the floor and wounding no one, he aimed at live targets and killed many.
Mostly I find myself wondering this: what if there had been an armed guard at that front door, ready to return fire with fire — which many believe is the answer in the school safety debate. None of us can know whether that would have ended or escalated the threat. And playing “what if” with any single school shooting incident (actually playing “what if” with any one kind of incident at all) does not sane, comprehensive policy make.
But it is important and instructive to add the latest lessons to the conversation about guns in schools:
That shooters are almost always a failure of the mental health system. As Hill told Tuff, and she repeated to the operator “he should have just went to the mental hospital instead of doing this because he is not on his medication.”
That training for emergencies is essential. School staff have regular run-throughs of scenarios like this one and Tuff was one of three staff members who were specifically trained to handle shooters. In fact, “the training is so often and extensive,” a district spokesman told reporters, that Tuff “thought it was a drill” at first.
That it just might make all the difference to treat the shooter like a human being.
That none of us know what we are capable of until we are called on to do it. “Let me tell you something, babe, I’ve never been so scared in all the days of my life,” Tuff told the operator when the SWAT team finally took Hill away. “Oh, Jesus.”
Indeed.
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