Well-Meaning, Highly Educated, Right Woman
By Julie Obradovic
Everyday that I walk into my classroom I follow the same routine.
I flip on the lights, do a quick overview of the cleaning that should have taken place, and make my way to my desk. Doing so is a little bit of a dance this year due to overcrowding. All of my classes have over thirty students.
At my desk I put my personal things away, take out my favorite pen from my purse, turn on the computer and log on. I hang up my coat, if I have one, take a sip of my coffee I’ve brought from home, and wait for the computer to get going.
During that time, I scan my lesson plans for the day, quickly remember if I have made all of my copies or not, and settle into my very uncomfortable, creaky, and old desk chair. In spite of a brand new building redo, my room was left with the old teacher furniture. I’m guessing it’s about 30 years old, minimum.
And sometime right about then, immediately after I see the emergency drill poster on the wall, I have the same thought.
Today could be the day. Are you prepared?
I look at the door, the only entrance and exit to my room, all the way on the other side. I remember if I have it on “lock” so that no matter when the door closes, it is locked. I sometimes get up just to check.
I then look around and remember all of our drills. Against the wall, the one a shooter hopefully couldn’t get to, all thirty-plus of us are ordered to gather. Impossible, I think with a sigh because there’s just not enough room, but we’ll do it. We have to.
The checklist rolls on. Turn out the lights. Move the furniture in front to block the entrance if there’s time. Make sure your phone is on, but silenced. Stay calm. Silence and calm the kids. Be their example. Don’t panic. And listen. Listen carefully.
My room has no windows. As I mentioned there is only one way in and one way out. We are an interior room with four heavy cinderblock walls and on one of them, visible through the door window unfortunately, a half wall of cabinets and a closet stand.
If we had to get out of our room quickly and couldn’t use the door, there’s only one other option. Up. We could climb the cabinets, remove the ceiling tiles, and get out. I’ve already checked out where the supports are so that I could tell them where to go once we were up there. Yes, I’ve checked out the ceiling of my classroom as a possible escape.
And if all of that fails, I then briefly address the one last terrible question I have to ask myself.
Am I prepared to die for them?
And although of course I don’t want to die, and of course I think about my own children, it is precisely because of my own children the answer always comes back, yes.
Yes, I would die for any of these children today. If that’s what it came down to, I would do it. Because they are my responsibility. Because they are someone’s child. And I would want my children’s teachers to do the same for them.
I’m not sharing this to be dramatic or invoke some sort of gratitude or anything like that. I’m sharing it because it’s real. This is real. This is what your children’s teachers think about too. Whether you believe it or not. Whether you like them or not. They have been trained to do this. They know this. It’s simply a part of the job these days.
And many days they think, like I do, even if it’s only for a second, this could be the day.
Now thankfully, it’s not. Thankfully the likelihood that something this tragic, this horrific is going to happen is very, very small. But ever since 1999’s Columbine, it’s been a consistent occurrence. And not just in school’s either.
Mass shootings by troubled people with mental health issues who are on dangerous psychotropic medications is not uncommon anymore. And whereas you can’t become paranoid that it’s always about to happen, you can’t pretend like it never could. There has to be a balance.
But as more and more young people are suffering from mental illness…and as more and more of them are being medicated for it…this is a reality all of us must accept. And sadly, teachers are on the front line of that reality.
So as you might imagine, I get just a little bit offended when someone accuses me of being a selfish, immoral, and most recently, schizoid-paranoid conspiracy-theorist who probably doesn’t think the moon landing was real, simply because I have the nerve to question the wisdom and results of injecting humans with mercury for the past 80-plus years, as well as with the most aggressive vaccine schedule in the history of mankind, neither of which has ever been properly or independently tested for safety.
Silly me. I thought I was a mother, a wife, a daughter, a friend, and a teacher consciously planning to lay down her life for her students if it were necessary.
Even though it continues, I predicted the nasty name-calling would backfire years ago, and I was right. As evidence the recent “well-meaning, highly-educated, and wrong” campaign was born. (Dr. Nancy Snyderman even tweeted it.)
Although condescending, it was meant to be more digestible. It turns out calling people who question vaccine safety selfish maniacs who want to hurt the world by letting it explode in infectious disease didn’t really sit well with most folks. Not to mention, it’s just not true.
But that shouldn’t have been surprising. If you have to resort to using fear, insults, lies, shame, and coercion to get someone to obey you, trust you, or buy whatever your selling, you have clearly lost your way. In fact, correct me if I’m wrong, those are the common traits of abusers.
Which is why I find it beyond ironic that although I’m willing to lay down my life for my students, I’m the bad guy. I think about whether or not my doctors would lay down their lives for my child, and frankly, I laugh. They don’t even have to pay a fine if they kill a child with a vaccine.
But of course, that’s not funny. Not funny at all, now is it?
Nor is this. A medical machine that produced the most chronically sick generation of kids ever brought into this world (and our classrooms), not only profiting from it, but also denying it, refusing to take any responsibility for it, blaming parents for it, leaving parents, teachers, schools and the victims to fend for themselves in the aftermath, and then using emotionally abusive tactics, pretend science (there is not nor has there ever been a study of the vaccinated versus never vaccinated), and questionable science (done at least in part by a wanted fugitive) to silence their critics and defend themselves, all the while insulating themselves from liability.
It’s unconscionable.
I live everyday prepared to die for kids. I also happen to be the mother of a severely mercury poisoned child that recovered. You, Mr. Bully, don’t get to sit behind your computer, your book, or your editorial and pretend to do the same or know the same as I do. You don’t.
I walk the walk. You type it.
And no, I don’t feel guilty for warning people not to poison themselves or their kids. In fact between us, there’s only one of us who believes and adamantly stands by injecting pregnant women and babies with a neurotoxin as a brilliant, completely safe, inconsequential, and responsible idea, going so far as to even suggest there is such a thing as “safe” mercury.
There’s only one of us who defends that ridiculous position with “coincidence” and the science of a wanted fugitive.
And there’s only one of us willing to ignore historical fact because it completely contradicts all that you wish so desperately to be true.
And it’s not me. Well-meaning, highly-educated, right me.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to my lesson planning. I need to prepare my students (two of whom in one class happen to have autism) to be critical, independent thinkers who stand up to bullies even if they are standing alone.
And for the record, of course I would lay down my life for them too.
Julie Obradovic is a Contributing Editor to Age of Autism.
Thank you, Julie, for all your hard work on behalf of children - in the classroom and elsewhere too!
Posted by: Twyla | October 20, 2013 at 03:30 PM
Thank you Julie. Great article.
I too am shocked how sick these kids are these days. It shocks me how busy pharmacies are and who drugs are for as well (as I pick up my sons anti inflammatories and mitochondria support meds.)
I truly wish we could learn why, how and the circumstances why shooters kill in our schools. I know HIPPA has a lot to do with why we don't know.
We need this info to prevent. I know that no sane person would ever do these terrible acts of violence. Something happened. Parents need to know to keep all kids safe WHY.
Bless you for being a great, caring teacher that happens to write well.
Posted by: Lisa @ TACA | October 20, 2013 at 11:25 AM
"Mental illness was around for countless generations before psychotropic meds were invented" ?? Do you have any data to show that mental illness in young people was anything but a great rarity until the industrial revolution began spewing mercury into the air in England, and suddenly people became AWARE of schizophrenia.? I went to a large high school in Seattle for three years circa 1960 and I never heard of a suicide in my school or any other. I am sure that there were a few kids who had some degree of mental illness because those were years when many of us had plenty of dental work done , with a lot of exposure to mercury- but it was at least 10 years after I left high school that we began hearing about manic depressive disorder for the first time. It was ten years till I first read a book discussing whether schiZophrenia in young girls in England was actually a mental illness or a reaction to abnormal home environments. In other words it was fairly early days of schizophrenia. It was much later still that we began to hear about obsessive compulsive disorder and last of all came the teen deaths from anorexia and the school shootings. Just as in the case of autism, it would seem appropriate for scientists to examine case by case and then to try and understand what is going wrong in our environment for teens Sigh, I suppose that's just a dream. Instead we drug the young people and the causes of these disorders must remain as mysteries, except we always get to know that something is "genetic" about them. That is not to say that parents did not worry about their teens in those days. They worried about boys driving rashly and girls getting pregnant, or married too young.
Posted by: Cherry Sperlin Misra | October 19, 2013 at 03:47 PM
Thank you for this article, and for what you do every day as a teacher.
Posted by: parent | October 19, 2013 at 03:47 PM
"And so many of them are just SICK all the time - coughing, runny noses, etc. - despite the fact that this generation of kids is the most vaccinated in the history of mankind. Or as most of us know, because of it."
Children in the US are ranked 45th in childhood mortality world wide. How can a nation that "vaccinates" three times as much as average; how can a nation that spends more on "health care" than most of the world combined, support these pathetic numbers?
There is only one way folks; "health care" has been turned into a WEAPON to be used on we the people. IMO get most of your "health care" from a person you can TRUST.
YOU! This involves mostly reading instead of taking a toxic pill.
Posted by: Lou | October 19, 2013 at 12:55 PM
Vicki -- TaxiMom said it best but this is near to where I live that I had to put my two cents worth in too.
I know what you are trying to say - that we can't blame drugs for the rise in mental illness.
And really some might actually be helping us in the mess we are in, if they are the right ones.
Except of course in when it comes to Lariam!
Except for of course when it comes to Vaccines!
My brother-in-law's step son just got home from Afghanistan last week, he shot and killed himself yesterday - I think at the barracks. The family is thinking it is the stress of war.
He has only been in the army for 6 years. He leaves a wife and two little kids.
But even that medicine they say - they have to have brain injuries right??? I doubt that. Black boxed a couple of months ago -- on it for years and the rest the family don't have a clue. There should be some kind of emergency warning system when something is black boxed --- cause there is a lot of clueless people out there just going along munching on the grass.
And we would not be on this websites if not for the vaccines!
But as Vicki is saying mental illness has been around for hundreds of years.
Stories going back through the ages, of those that go into psychosis and eat their family thinking they are eating deer, or skin themselves alive, thinking thier skin is as soft and nice as a seals or Walruses and such. Horror stories - esp since they were true.
What we have now, right now in this country is an increase of mental illness.
They are mentally ill with out taking any drugs-- the psyco drugs. That is a fact -- according to the CDC.
More bipolar and that is a fact too..
So what to think.
We have got to understand that Bipolar can masquerade as just depression when it is not just depression. Having the wrong diagnosis makes giving the wrong drugs dangerous, as in bipolar the medical people are giving just antidepressants.
Bipolar cycles between bipolar and a mania. Manias don't have to be really high and crazy --a low mania is a time of feeling good, the life of the party, - a time of creativity. But if they are cycling between depressants and low manias; what happens when they are given an antidepressant - the manias gets higher, crazy high.
And depression - that is not always recognized for what it is either. In our teens -- it is a known fact there is an increase of depression and suicides - so says the CDC.
.
Depression is not just sitting around in a dark room starring at the wall, and trying to hurt themselves, trying to commit suicide .
Depression can manifest as a smart kid sitting in their room just reading all the time, or a lazy kid that just wants to sit in their room and watch TV or playing video games , or an irritable kid that can't stand a parent darkening their bed room door, or most common being angry or resentful, or ill tempered - for no reason. I had to explain this to a neurologist nurse practionier- less than a month ago, about her 30 year old son that he too had Kawasaki as a child. That is the true face of depression.
And if ignored then we have self medication.
In my neck of the woods it is a common occurrence that some one climbs into a sub station or high powered electric lines to strip the copper wires off to sell them for drugs and gets killed. . When they do this -- I am pretty sure they are taking meth - this helps with depression, but not the manias when they cycle into them.
At the time they are stripping the electric wire and getting electrocute they are in a high crazy mania, in which they are invincible and can do anything. Just a step above creativity.
Everyone says they are a druggies, one less, good enough for them, just a bunch of thieves and robbers and maybe worse.
Middle America is going to hell in a hand basket -- and the CDC puts all the data that belongs to the America people under the domain of some company set up to keep us from seeing it -- at the tune of 195 million dollars.
I am paying to keep this hidden from me.
No mental illness or psych drugs are involved in this kind of behavior. When Jesus comes back -- there is some people that are going to be in a lot of trouble -- of course they don't believe in a higher power -- how else could they be doing what they are doing.
Posted by: Benedetta | October 18, 2013 at 03:49 PM
@vicki hill: Family members and neighbors of Adam Lanza reported that he had been on medication. The official toxicology report that said that no traces were found can mean one of two things:
1) he had gone off his meds a day or two before the shooting (many shooters do this in order to have a "clear head")
or
2) the toxicology report lied.
If 1) is the case, that would make sense, because suddenly going off psych meds can cause psychosis.
But 2) wouldn't be a surprise, either.
You are correct, psychosis has been around long before psych meds. So have guns.
But mass shootings of innocent people did not happen before mind-altering drugs--legal and illegal--made their appearance.
Posted by: Taximom | October 18, 2013 at 02:19 PM
Mercury tooth fillings are an understudied source of mental illness. Think of all those free dental clinics for underprivileged children and adults... dentists prefer amalgam, saying it sets up quicker than composite.
The Minamata Convention on Mercury treaty was just signed by 91 nations and awaits ratification. Though medical mercury from tooth fillings was recognized as a health hazard, so far it is only being partially phased out.
http://www.timesonline.com/news/world/un-sees-mercury-use-phase-out-within-decades/article_975219fc-b214-5ed8-a38c-ce9f87fa7851.html
http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/121-a304/
Unfortunately due to pressure from industry-protective government agencies, vaccine mercury (Thimerosal) was declared exempt... so it can continue causing health damage worldwide.
Public health policymakers allow the continued use of mercury in medicine -- and yet they wonder why a vulnerable subset of unsuspecting consumers become mad as hatters. Apparently money talks louder than honest science or common sense.
Posted by: nhokkanen | October 18, 2013 at 01:58 PM
Excellent article, Julie. Thank you.
And, oh, how true is this poignant statement of yours: "I think about whether or not my doctors would lay down their lives for my child, and frankly, I laugh. They don’t even have to pay a fine if they kill a child with a vaccine."
Enough with all of the Big pHARMa fines...time for serious jail time...well past time, actually. Same for the doctors who refuse to properly research the now highly-controversial vaccines they continue to pump into people with blinders on, or worse, with some level of knowledge of what they are doing. Serious jail time for their complete and utter failure to offer fully informed consent to parents and patients (as if they even could since the science is NOT there to properly explain the different short and long-term health and development outcomes for the vaccinated vs. the unvaccinated).
Wonderful article!
Posted by: Laura Hayes | October 18, 2013 at 01:26 PM
Bravo! Well said!
Posted by: channa brennon | October 18, 2013 at 11:52 AM
oh, I have gone through the same thing. I had two exit doors and had to plan around that, Since I also did a lot of long term subbing many times with elementary, a teacher may feel more protective of them, and feel if anything happens, a teacher has to stay alive to direct her little ones to safety. a high As a high school teacher you think about just buying your students time to get away. The elementary teacher's position is more stressful for that reason.
Yes it is on all our minds and it was there way before Columbine, for it was happening way before. It is just Columbine had two of these damaged kids getting together. So how many are out there when two are in the same school. Also Columbine was planned for a long time and a bit different than the rest that mostly seem a descent into some sort of psychosis.
Posted by: Benedetta | October 18, 2013 at 11:19 AM
Vicki Hill-re Adam Lanza. I read those reports also. Still, I doubt them. There are many ways the powerful can play with words and official reports to cover up uncomfortable facts. Also, it is entirely possible that Lanza stopped taking the drugs, which then triggered his violence. I have read how very difficult it is to withdraw from these drugs and aggressive thoughts and behaviors are one of the consequences. If he did stop them, that might account for not finding any in his body. Don't discount the dangers of these drugs because of that report. Just look on line at the list of mass shootings....almost all of the perpetrators were taking some kind of mood altering drug. It cannot be a coincidence that mass violence began appearing with increasing frequency at the same time that doctors began prescribing these drugs to children, teens and young adults.
Posted by: Gerry Gillung | October 18, 2013 at 11:04 AM
Julie -
You hit the nail on the head! There are so many things educators now have to deal with as part of our daily routine that just didn't exist a few decades ago.
Growing up in the 60's, my siblings and I all got the measles, we all got the mumps, we all got chicken pox, etc. And we all now have lifelong immunity to those once-routine childhood illnesses. They were no big deal (except for my mom, who sometimes had 5 sick kids at once!).
Today, even at the preschool level, there are so many damaged kids. Kids with allergies, kids with violent rages and outbursts, kids who rock and stim, kids who are incapable of sitting and paying attention for even a couple of minutes, kids who are already on meds because doctors simply play Russian roulette with a cocktail of behavioral drugs instead of looking at what's going on INSIDE the child that can be fixed! These same doctors are unwilling to connect the dots between what THEY did to this child and the harm that resulted from it.
And so many of them are just SICK all the time - coughing, runny noses, etc. - despite the fact that this generation of kids is the most vaccinated in the history of mankind. Or as most of us know, because of it.
So I agree with you 100% that it is unconscionable that:
"A medical machine that produced the most chronically sick generation of kids ever brought into this world (and our classrooms), not only profiting from it, but also denying it, refusing to take any responsibility for it, blaming parents for it, leaving parents, teachers, schools and the victims to fend for themselves in the aftermath, and then using emotionally abusive tactics, pretend science (there is not nor has there ever been a study of the vaccinated versus never vaccinated), and questionable science (done at least in part by a wanted fugitive) to silence their critics and defend themselves, all the while insulating themselves from liability."
Posted by: PJ Carroll | October 18, 2013 at 10:42 AM
You mention mentally ill people on psychotropic meds as you talk about school shootings. There is no evidence that Adam Lanza was on any psychotropic meds. From what I have read, police indicated that no such meds were found in his body and none were found in the home.
Mental illness can happen independent of psychotropic meds. It was around for countless generations before psychotropic meds were invented. I really wish it were as easy as equating mental illness with the meds, but psychosis has been around for a very long time. For some people, those meds are their only chance to regain sanity.
Posted by: Vicki Hill | October 18, 2013 at 09:50 AM
Thank you Julie.
Less than 30 years ago doctors were killing patients with high level mercuric chloride poisoning. See http://www.bmj.com/highwire/filestream/293432/field_highwire_article_pdf/0/96 .
Today it seems they are just as clueless about low level mercury poisoning from Thimerosal preserved flu shots, even though it was agreed to remove heavy metal mercury from vaccines way back in 1999.
“…the Public Health Service, the American Academy of Pediatrics and vaccine manufacturers agree that thimerosal-containing vaccines should be removed as soon as possible.” See http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dockets/04p0349/04p-0349-ref0001-05-Tab-03-Joint-Statement-Thimerosal-AAP-PHS-vol6.pdf .
Posted by: Jim Thompson | October 18, 2013 at 08:09 AM