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Shockingly, that learning continued for schools and their communities when on January 6, 2023, a first grader at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia brought a gun to school and shot his teacher. No matter what we have learned from these tragedies, we still haven’t learned enough. Countless tragedies have occurred involving students and guns.
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Nothing in my education classes, student teaching, or orientation to the school system communicated, “Look out for students who might have a gun.”Īlmost fifty years later, school systems across Virginia and America are dealing with students bringing guns to school. In August of 1975, I started my first teaching job at Martinsville Junior High School in Martinsville, Virginia.
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