[blueerica]

I actually think the kid, at 13, is barely old enough to know the implications of a Columbine massacre, just as I wasn't ever old enough to understand that school shooting by Brenda Ann Spencer in 1979. Sure, I was 1 when that shooting happened and he was 4 (?) when Columbine happened, but I just don't think he's going to have the same grasp on the situation as adults, particularly his teachers and counselors.

Unfortunately, school shootings and mass murders have been a part of our lives for well beyond our years. I don't say this to take it lightly, but it's pretty clear to me that in the last 80 years that we, as citizens, they as education professionals, haven't learned an effective way to manage these problems. As these events become more sensationalized, it seems as though teachers, administrators and counselors know how to deal with it less and less, instead of more and more. There's something very backward, to me, about how we - as a country - deal with our youth.

Adolescence is a time where children need as much or more guidance than they did as babies and toddlers. That doesn't mean treating them like babies and toddlers, but to recognize that the buck stops with each and every one of us to solve the problems around us. Whether it was the 1st, 2nd, 10th, 20th time this kid drew a gun on his homework, it just sounds like that kid's school passed the buck onto someone else.

As a collective, we're handling these situations worse and worse each and every time. Of course, we're only hearing about the egregious situations - not the times when a kid was pulled aside and talked with.