She made me cry when she explained how she told her students she loved them.

You can oppose generous public-sector compensation and benefit packages, support the limiting of union powers (including automatic dues deduction) and want more competition in schools ... and not be in favor of gunning down children or think that teachers are bad people who can't do the right thing.

Seriously, this Manichean bullshit -- us vs. them, angels vs. devils -- has got to END on both sides, left and right. ENOUGH. Red State. Daily Kos. Powerline. Balloon Juice. Ugh.

Wait for it: School Rampage Truthers will reveal that these killings have always been an inside job, to promote teachers unions and take away your guns. Malkin and Huckabee are the "sane ones" you know, so somebody has to out crazy them.

@2 is exactly right. This is textbook straw-man snark.Malkin was using metaphor -- and didn't use phrases 'terrorist' or 'parasite'-- and other attributions are commenters on FreeRepublic. You know damn well you can find equally unhinged examples of anonymous left-wing rhetoric without even trying.

I think the Republicans hit a new low when they demonized teachers during the Wisconsin fiasco. As someone whose mom, grandmother, wife, sister-in-law, and mother-in-law are or were teachers, I found their ignorance of the passion and dedication of the vast majority of teachers to be galling. Not to mention telling of the kinds of arguments they would stoop to in order to achieve their disastrous political objectives.

@2
The problem is that certain Republicans are getting lots of media time to claim that teachers ARE "bad people".
And that those teachers are "using" students to further their goals and those goals are about depriving the children of their education.
Which makes it difficult to laud the teachers for being heroes when they protect the children from being killed.
Cognitive dissonance.

Kaitlin, real American hero. I have a family full of teachers, every single one of them would have done the same for their "kids".

Shaking my head at this. Expect more violence in Sandy Hook, CT, cause Westboro Baptist is coming to town.

https://twitter.com/DearShirley/status/2…

@2 Most people who want the first 3 things you listed don't like teachers - or claim they like teachers but not the unions. Secondly, most people who want the first 3 things you listed are also people who fall for the bullshit that the right-wingers and the neo-liberal elites repeat day after day after day - without proof OR research.

Public-sector compensation is much less than private sector. I've worked both - as have many family members and friends - and all made far less in public sector jobs than in private sector jobs, but stuck to them because they had slightly better benefits or promised more job security. It's a choice most make - private sector= more money but less job security and public sector is less money but more job security. Are there a few overpaid public servants? Hell yes, but there are WAY more overpaid private sector workers, particularly in those upper echelons, like those CEOs pulling in millions of dollars to run a company into the ground and still walk away with their golden parachutes.
As an example - at my education level, I could be making at least $40K more than I do in a public sector job. It's a risk I may take again later in life, but not now. My brother - in the same field as me but in a private company with only a BS degree, is making about $20K more than me. He has more paid time off than me, but otherwise his company has a benefit package that is pretty much on par with mine. However, his company laid off some people about 6 months ago, so he is aware that the probability of a layoff is greater for him. But he is single, does not own property, and is fine with that. I'm not.
As for competition in schools? That's a business-based ideology being applied to schools. There is no research that shows it works to make public schools better, but plenty of evidence that shows the aftermath - more selective admissions in charter schools, more lower-achieving kids being counseled out of charter schools and dumped back into the public schools - usually without the funding since the charter school has pocketed that.
In business, you start with the best components you can afford to make your product. You pitch those products that don't come out right, and you control most of the factors that go into the production of that product. That can't be done in public schools. Public schools start with flawed products - kids who come to school hungry, beaten, hurt, drunk, drugged, neglected - you name it. Then teachers are blamed because they cannot take these flawed products - these kids - and turn them into reading/writing/computing machines that test well and prove to the world that America is superior because of a fucking test score. You see, public schools have to educate everyone, not just the higher achieving upper class white kids that charters love. So the competition bullshit is flawed at it's very premise, but repeated often by those who claim they don't dislike teachers and public education, but want to make it better.
Want to make it better? Look at society. Schools are a direct reflection of society. Look at the number of hours kids spend with their parents as opposed to school, and see who has more influence. Look at how many hours kids spend at home in front of the TV or the computer. Competition - aka charter schools - only weeds out the motivated parents from the less motivated parents. It does nothing to improve education on the whole.

Anyone else notice a correlation between thinking teachers are grossly overpaid and not thinking evolution is real, bad at math (at least as regards taxes) and general historical ignorance?

Maybe they are speaking from experience? Maybe their teachers really were?

@12 You ASSume that principals are competent evaluators. You ASSume that good and bad teachers can be weeded out by a TEST. Your assumptions are wrong.
Merit pay was used in the past, then dumped because it is ineffective. That is why they oppose it. How do you judge the monetary worth of a teacher who teaches PE vs a teacher who has gotten a loaded class of difficult students? Who is worth more - a special Ed teacher or someone whose classroom is full of kids from Laurelhurst and gets great test scores? Test scores have a direct correlation to socioeconomic status, less so to teaching,
In Utah, the Mo teachers got the merit pay. Or the male teachers. They were definitely not the best teachers. But then, who defines who the best teacher is? A teacher may be great for one kid, but not so great for another. Does that mean they are a good teacher one year and a bad teacher another year?

And then there's this: http://eyeoned.org/content/the-worst-eig…

@11 Haha I was just about to say that :D
Against evolution and thinks that the best way to create quality teachers is to strip them of any protection and the right to get paid.

I think it's criminal the way the right wing shouters demonize teachers. Teachers get stuck, these days, with teaching kids all sorts of things their parents should be teaching them, along with the curriculum. Parents have come to expect a seven-hour babysitting service, with no penalty to the student for antisocial behavior, inability to focus, low attention span, or any of the other deficits a child may have. In return, they bloviate about teachers being parasites, overpaid, and yadda yadda. The receptionist at my last office made more than a grade school teacher, and she was barely able to transfer a call to the correct person. Teachers obviously don't go into the classroom looking to get rich; you have to love kids and love teaching to put up with the kind of abuse you get as a teacher, from the kids, the parents, and the community at large.

@2 I get it, you don't like the us v them thinking. I agree wholeheartedly. But you need to be more discerning upon how it operates. As fairly.unbalanced points out, you offer a false equivalency. People are mad at the hyperbole that is offered by Fox News & on other major media channels. There is no equivalency on that scale, in any public arena, anywhere else in America.

And calling bullshit on bullshit is *not* continuing the 'us v them' dichotomy.

If these teachers were in a charter school, would your umbrage be as passionate?

Dan. Glad your married in Seattle and all now, but why are you putting up this? Not very persuasive. Blond teacher strikes me as somewhat self-absorbed and proud of herself on account of her luck that her classroom wasn't in the crosshairs. Clip edits notwithstanding, teacher seems sort of fake. Less than hours after the massacre but she shows no despair, no sense that actual death happened in the same building. Video was edited (clearly) to eliminate some of that. But mostly, she looked like an average actress.

#19

I wasn't there. I have no idea of the agony. But...I agree. I saw the interview with her and it was one that disturbed me.

There were a few others...and I guess it was that even for people who were there they seemed rather distant from it. She almost went into a kind of teenage "yeah, it was brutal man, but you know what..." sort of rap. That kind of narrating on events one was participating in as if they were having an out of body experience and watching it happen to themselves on YouTube! I encounter it many tomes, especially with "young people" and it frightens me.

I was not really seeing emotion...human emotion...and I realize that there is shock...until I saw the father of one of the victims crying.

The reason these OOB reports bother me is because I see that attitude...that way of going through the world, as possibly what lead the shooter and others like him to be able to commit these crimes.

Recently scientists met at the UW to discuss the question Are We Living In A Simulation...like the Matrix. I cannot say. But more are behaving..as if so.

The demonizing of teachers is all about unions and corporate America's desire to rid this country of unions. It is as simple as that. And anyone who follows the news - the real news - knows it. It is no secret except to those who follow the propaganda promoted by those who have hated unions and labor and FDR's New Deal since it began. Thus the assault on all the programs that benefit those of us who work for a living. It is easy to start with women. Mark my word: it will be nurses next. Then firefighters and police. The Heritage Foundation and it's members hate all organizations that benefit the working people.

Teachers and public education are the first victims. Well, not really the first. Just the first in public service. When are we going to stop it and take our country back?

It's so nice to see my fellow sloggers critiquing television interviews with victims, and opining on how the people ought to be responding, especially when their reaction would have probably been to sell the kids out to try to score points with the killer. And it's always fun to see the troll so agitated.

The conservative mindset (such as that is) loves victimhood, and loves the idea of being a victim, but only on their own terms. Dead soldiers and civilians are the best, because they can ascribe thoughts and positions to them and not be held accountable. Plus, monuments make great backdrops.

They love the first responders, and the people on the front line, until those people ask for some help in dealing with what they've been through - then they just become ingrates.

The truth is that teachers are villainized and portrayed as lazy and indifferent by the right, and have been for years. Their thought leaders do it because they are cynical, and know it will appeal to their idiot followers. The idiot followers buy into it because, well, they're idiots.

Thank you for this Dan. Myself and other teachers are absolutely distraught for our colleagues in Connecticut and are still figuring out how to talk to our students about this on Monday.

Your correlation between the right wing's demonization of teachers as lazy and self-interested as compared with the heroic actions of the teachers in Connecticut is spot on. I've experienced multiple lock-downs in my career (usually due to a shooting in the neighborhood) and in every classroom you would see children huddled in a corner with their teacher in front, protecting them with her body. So yes, I'm exceptionally offended by those who say we don't care about our students because we want fair wages for what we do.

And to those criticizing the traumatized teacher being interviewed by the media- fuck your noise.

#19, you are terrible. You are dissecting an interview with a teacher who was saving her students' lives?

@25

We've all seen how self-absorbed and empty of compassion and empathy that particular segment of the population is.

As a member of a family of teachers, the RRR's demonization of teachers and the public school system really pisses me off. There is not a teacher I know that isn't dedicated to their students, their learning and in many cases the home life of the kids, as a means to understand how better to teach them. The pay ANY teacher gets is pathetic. I remember taking classes at college while working for high tech as a lowly network administrator. Posted positions for experienced teachers were offering 1/2 of what I was making, and that was at a college level. ONE HALF! Yet these scumbags say teachers are being greedy for wanting a living wage. GRRRR!

@19 and 20 (NealB and Supreme Ruler of the Universe)--

Please don't look at someone who just lived through a massacre and complain that she "shows no despair" or "seemed rather distant." That is an absolutely common, standard, and even healthy reaction to trauma. People who have been through something too frightening or violating or terrible to stand usually dissociate from their feelings-- mentally put all the terror, grief, and fury aside, because they need to function. They need to think rationally enough to, say, hide their students and lie to gunman about their whereabouts-- and you can't do that effectively while you're experiencing feelings as intense as what you're actually feeling. So the emotions get locked down, and they don't necessarily all come out the second the experience is over. For really severe things, it can be years until people let themselves feel the fear, anger, and sadness of terrible experiences.

So, yeah, you're not seeing people look upset. But that's probably because what they went through upset them more than it upset people who didn't go through it, not less. They'll (hopefully) show that later, when they're sure they're safe, not right now, hours after the event, with television cameras in their faces.

Also, maybe you could try not being an asshole to people who just lost friends and colleagues, and nearly died horribly?

@19 @20

First of all, critiquing people who have just been through a tragedy for the way they come across is an extremely low, asshole thing to do. There is no "correct" way to respond to stress and trauma.

And second, I have no idea what you're talking about. She's clearly barely avoiding busting into tears at every second, almost breaks down a few times, and wipes away tears throughout. What on earth do you think traumatized people are supposed to seem like?

@19 and 20: You guys are assholes. Have you ever BEEN through a terrible situation? Because if you had, you'd know that people in mourning go through their day like everyone else, except that random things make them cry. Things can still be funny, they can still explain stuff- but certain things will trigger their feelings and they'll start crying. Constant crying is not a thing that happens.

What a heroic, brave and gallant person she is. When called upon, she gave it her all. She has that mental gift of disipline under duress. She truly loves those children. She made me, 66 year old charliebickle, cry!

I am a teacher, and I know for a fact that I would do the same thing. I'm a little lady, and I once blocked a 6'3" non-custodial parent from taking his son off campus. He wasn't armed, but I didn't know that. He body-checked me, but he didn't get my student. I would do it again in a heart beat.

The demonization of teachers is equal opportunity. I do believe Arne Duncan (Obama's minion) supported the firing of a whole high school staff. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-6…

Yes, because one instance of a "minion" saying something is equal to 75 years or so of organized campaigning by the GOP.

Hasn't that soft spot on your skull closed up yet, dear?