What Crosses My Mind

  • Why School Shooting Awareness Matters

    Recently, our high school (not Kentucky) went through a serious protocol called A.L.I.C.E. as a national preventative for school shootings. The word is an acronym for the following: Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate (ALICE). While as a teacher I have gone through many safety initiatives over the last twenty years that evolved from the Columbine…

  • Our Violent Humanity

      It would seem we haven’t had enough, Watching our neighbors fall to the sword, The world around us eschewing the evil Of a nation lost in a swirl of self-pity. – No one to blame but ourselves, Yet that never comes into play, We are soon to discover some outlet, Easy to say we…

  • Haven’t Heard

    I listened only long enough to fear, the easiest emotion, that moment when suddenly confusion, our lives, becomes less about being in control, far more about wanting to run away. I want that, more than anything else in the world, I don’t want to be there when it happens. I don’t desire definition. Whether we…

  • When Fear Steps Aside

    The brutal truth that piece of stark reality seldom heard, inside the whines, the cries, the lies. When life steps on a figurative land-mine we do explode inside. We rant, we act-out, wielding weapons of words to suggest how wrong YOU are, how sweet life might be if THEY step away. Yet in the quiet…

  • Victims of Violence

    They look like all of us, do you ever wonder when the dust settles if they feel the same way as you when their loss becomes real. Victims of violence those directly in the face of pain but more indirectly the family, brother, sister, cousin, aunt, friend, colleague They all eventually will look like you…

  • Days Like These … (on bullying) prose

    I often wonder about my passions in life. I know I became a teacher for a reason, but that isn’t always enough to satisfy my curiosity. I love my job, I love the students I work with, and love all the challenges that come with my classroom and the stage work that occurs after the…