Fuck you, random Free Republic douchebag, and your pissing and moaning about teachers making too much money -- and for the charming picture of teachers with photoshopped pig faces. Because preparing and training for sudden mass violence is now part of the fucking job:



Schools nationwide have increased security measures since the shooting at Columbine. Many have installed metal detectors, developed detailed crisis plans, implemented policies to keep doors locked and accessible only by buzzer, and put teachers and staff through training on how to recognize and deal with threats.

Maryrose Kristopik said she barricaded herself in to the closet with the nine and 10-year-olds while gunman Adam Lanza, 20, reportedly battered on the door screaming: ‘Let me in! Let me in!’

... Asked about the incident itself, Mrs Kristopik said that you could ‘hear a lot’ of what was going on - and denied that she was a hero. She said: ‘I called the police, I dialled 911 and they said they had reports of shots in the school, so that's when I had to tell the kids there was a bad person there because I didn't want them to talk. ‘I did what any other teacher would have done and I know there were others like me doing the same. They were doing whatever they could."

Janet Vollmer, a kindergarten teacher at the school, says she locked her classroom doors and – to keep her students calm – read them a story until the police came. Vollmer, her 19 students and the adult helpers in her classroom were not injured. "You could hear what sounded like pops, gunshots. Of course, I’m not going to tell that to 5-year-olds, so I said to them, ‘We’re going over in a safe area,'" Vollmer told CNN's Anderson Cooper. "And we read a story and we kept them calm, did a lockdown drill, closed the doors, locked (them), covered the windows, and kept the children with us.”

Many Michigan schools are closed today as hundreds of teachers converge on the Capitol in Lansing to protest Michigan right-to-work legislation which was just passed by Republicans and is headed to Governor Snyder's desk.

... Remember: it's all about the kids.

Another quick-thinking member of staff was Kaitlin Roig whose ''happy'' morning meeting with her 14 students was suddenly interrupted by the unmistakable sound of rapid gunfire. Ms Roig, 29, said she leapt up, closed her classroom door and then ushered the children, aged six and seven, into the adjacent bathroom. It was so tight some of the pupils had to be balanced on top of the toilet so they could all squeeze in. She then jammed a wheeled storage unit in front of the door and hoped for the best. ''We all got in there. I locked us in,'' she told America's ABC Network. ''I don't know if [the gunman] came in the room … I just told them we have to be absolutely quiet. ''If they started crying, I would take their face and tell them, 'It's going to be OK,''' Ms Roig said. ''I wanted that to be the last thing they heard, not the gunfire in the hall.''

Can we get rid of the myth once and for all that school teachers, anymore, are these average, ordinary (as Obama wants to say), next-door neighbors who are just doing everything they can to further the educational experience of your children? That's not who they are. They are left-wing activists, active members of unions who are oriented first by a political agenda, second by their own well-being, and your kids come last.

In the library, Yvonne Cech, a librarian, locked herself, an assistant and 18 fourth graders in a closet behind filing cabinets while the sound of gunfire thundered outside. Diane Day, a school therapist, hailed the school's unnamed ''lead teacher'' as ''our hero'' after she was shot twice while barricading a lockless door with her body to keep Lanza out of a classroom occupied by staff who had been in a meeting before the shooting. Ms Day told The Wall Street Journal that, after the school principal, Dawn Hochsprung, and school psychologist Mary Sherlach had run out of the room to see what was happening, the shooter arrived and tried to force entry. Lanza was thwarted by the teacher who was wounded in the leg and arm as he opened fire through the door. Ms Hochsprung and Ms Sherlach did not return and were later confirmed dead. The Stamford Advocate reports the brave principal had, crucially, managed to activate the school's public address system before she was killed. In alerting the rest of her school that a killer was on the rampage, the principal's last courageous act almost certainly prevented further bloodshed.

Fuck you, Chris Christie, for threatening to freeze teacher pay , among other things. Does this teacher make too much Fuck you, Rod Paige, for calling the NEA a "terrorist organization." Here is just one of the souls to whom you refer:Fuck you, Katie Pavlich, and your snide remarks about Michigan teachers just this week:Yea, it actually is all about the kids And fuck you, Rush Limbaugh, always and forever, for calling teachers parasites and doubling down with this Here are a few more of those self-serving parasites, demonstrating their selfishness, their utter disregard of the children entrusted to their care:Fuck the whole lot of you. You don't deserve to breathe the same air as our public servants. Would you risk death to shield a child ? No, if the security of your gated world failed you, you'd all be running for the door trying to save your own asses and pushing anyone who got in your way to the ground.

Let me conclude with a passage from an angry rant I posted directed to Rush Limbaugh after comments he made about Elizabeth Edwards' battle against breast cancer. That's a personal issue for me because I lost my own sister to breast cancer. I concluded the post with this with this:



Rush, I'll never get people like you. You don't understand suffering. You don't understand kindness. You don't understand love and support, whether between two people or among a community. You seem to understand nothing but your ego and your own ignorant sense of self importance. But for as much as I don't get about you or your kind, there's one thing I'm pretty sure of: When you try to check in at the pearly gates, it'll be my sister who's going to kick your fat ass straight to hell.

Ditto, and that goes for the rest of the hate-mongering crowd.

Update: Via DisNoir36 in the comments:



This is Victoria Soto, and although I didn't know her, she is my hero. I don't know too much about her, but I know a lot of people who do know her and she's amazing. Victoria was a Stratford high graduate and only 27. She was killed today after she hid her first graders in closets and cabinets and told the shooter they were in the gym. He killed her and not one of her children were harmed. I have never been more proud to be from Stratford or to be a teacher. God bless Victoria, her family and friends, and all of those who were involved today in anyway. Victoria is a true hero.