What Happens When A Kid Who Brought A Gun To School Comes Back: A Teacher’s Real Experience
7 a.m. at the Walmart off Main Street, self-checkout beeping, I’m fumbling with a bag of ice for my 10-year-old’s soccer cooler, and someone holds the exit door open for me. “Ms. Henderson? Haven’t seen you since I was at Westside.” I blink, because the last time I heard that name attached to a face at Westside High, the whole school was on lockdown. It’s Jax.
Jax was 16 when he brought an unloaded hunting rifle to school, back in 2011 when I was teaching 10th grade English there. He’d failed 9th grade twice, lived in a trailer on the edge of town with his mom and a stepdad who drank most weekends and hated having Jax around. That morning, they’d fought because Jax’s hound dog nipped the stepdad’s prize hunting beagle, and the stepdad threatened to shoot the dog before Jax left for work. Jax grabbed the rifle off his truck rack, drove to school, and just sat in the parking lot. He told me later he didn’t have a plan, he just couldn’t make himself go home, and he didn’t know anyone who would let him crash on their couch that early. A parent dropping off a kid saw the rifle in the rack, called 911, and by 8:15 the whole school was on lockdown, sheriff’s SWAT was on the football field, and parents were lined up at the fence screaming for their kids.
Jax got expelled, sentenced to a year in a youth rehabilitation program, moved to central Oregon to live with his aunt after that, got his GED, and became a mechanic. Last week was the first time I’d seen him in 12 years. We leaned against my minivan in the Walmart parking lot and talked for 10 minutes. He told me he moved back to town six months ago, bought a small trailer, has a 3-year-old daughter named Lila. He said he thinks about that lockdown day at least once a week. “I was just so stupid and so scared,” he said, kicking a piece of gravel. “I never wanted anyone to panic like that. I just didn’t know what else to do.”
Word got around he was back pretty fast. I’ve seen the comments on the local parent Facebook group. People saying he shouldn’t be allowed around kids, saying the rec center shouldn’t let him join the adult softball league, saying the library should ban him from story time. A lot of parents cross the street when they see him walking Lila to the park. I get the fear. That day was terrifying. I spent three hours with 150 kids huddled in the dark supply closet, passing out gum to calm them down, and I still have a little jump in my chest when I hear an unexpected fire drill. Fear is normal. But what I’ve learned from this, that most people don’t talk about, is that kids who make these terrible, scary choices aren’t monsters. Most of the time, they’re just kids who’ve fallen through every crack we have, and when they grow up and make amends, we don’t have to carry their mistake forever.
First, if you’re a parent or teacher dealing with this in your own community, don’t let rumors fill in all the gaps. After that lockdown, our admin just sent home a one-sentence note saying “we had a security incident today, everything is fine.” That was it. So rumors spread that Jax had planned to shoot up the gym, that he’d hurt other kids before, that he got off easy because his mom was friends with the sheriff. None of that was true, but it stuck for a decade. If your school has an incident, ask for clear, age-appropriate facts. If you’re a teacher, share those facts with your kids instead of leaving them to guess. That takes away a lot of the fear that feeds on the unknown.
Second, if a kid who made this mistake comes back to your school or community, don’t default to kicking them out. When I was still teaching at Westside, we had a 15-year-old who brought a knife to school after three years of being bullied so bad he missed 20 days of school a year. He served his time, and we created a low-key safety plan that didn’t involve locking him out: he checked in with the school counselor for five minutes every morning, he had a pass to leave class any time he felt overwhelmed, and all his teachers knew not to yell around him or make sudden movements when he was already stressed. That plan worked. He graduated, joined the navy, and still sends the counselor a Christmas card every year. It doesn’t take big, expensive programs. It just takes small, concrete adjustments to help the kid avoid getting into another crisis.
Third, don’t punish kids for their parent’s mistakes. Jax told me most of the other moms at story time move their kids away from Lila when she sits down to play with blocks. That’s not fair to her, and it doesn’t make anyone safer. I went to story time last Wednesday with my youngest, and I just sat down next to Jax and Lila and let my kid play with her. It’s a small thing, but it matters.
I don’t tell this story to say everyone should trust Jax, or that every kid who makes this choice will turn out fine. Some do, some don’t. Jax still struggles to find better work because of his felony record, and there are still days he gets nervous around cop cars, and most people in this town will never give him a chance. I still lock my car doors when I see someone acting erratic at the grocery store, same as anyone else. Fear doesn’t just go away because someone says you should get over it. But I do wish more of us would remember that 16-year-olds do terrible, impulsive, stupid things when they’re scared and alone. Most of them grow up. And we don’t have to carry their mistakes for them.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » What Happens When A Kid Who Brought A Gun To School Comes Back: A Teacher’s Real Experience