Well, here is a creative alternative to arming teachers, which most teachers oppose.
“The Utah Association of Public Charter Schools recently brought on YouTactical founder, Dave Acosta, to conduct training sessions around the state, centered around a program that teaches educators to, among other things, defend their students from active shooters with their bare hands…
”Friday, roughly two dozen administrators and teachers gathered at Thomas Edison Charter Schools South, in Nibley, to learn from Acosta.
“How many people can a bad guy shoot in 5 minutes if nobody interferes?” Acosta asked the group. “If nobody interferes, it’s a lot of people. Let me just say that.”
“The educators also watched and practiced techniques to disarm would-be active shooters in scenarios that featured handguns and AR-15 rifles.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Gives a whole new meaning to “arming” teachers.
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The best advice I’ve seen is, if one can’t escape from the area, to barricade the class door. If the perp tries to come through have everyone throw books, shoes, whatever all at once at the perps head. It will cause the perp to be a bit disoriented during which time someone (teacher probably) should attempt to take out the knees of the perp.
That said, until this country as the leading purveyor of death and destruction around the world and the media, film and other sources that glorify death and destruction, cease to have hold of the imagination of the willing idiots, we will continue to have such incidents.
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I have seen some looney tunes, but that is the looniest. You cannot stop a determined shooter with bare hands. “Kung fu” does not beat “Gun Fu”.
I know two men who can beat any martial arts champion. Their names are “Smith and Wesson”.
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There has never been a major school shooting in Utah, at least with any deaths or injuries.
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And who is paying for this absurdity?
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The state of Utah, of course. We now have a special property tax levy that is specifically dedicated to charter schools, and charters get the same per pupil expenditure as public schools in the state.
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Now, that’s grit !
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That’s what Trump would do. I heard that somewhere.
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Trump would fight them with his bare tweeter.
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I saw the training video on ‘Vice News,’ and all I could do was laugh. It showed 110 pound females trying to overpower a male assailant. Some of them were attacking from the front! That’s the tombstone technique. If a female can come from the side or back, she stands a chance of disrupting the attack so some students can run. However, most likely she will get killed when the perp regroups.
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retired teacher: can you (or someone else) post a link? It seems I always miss the “Vice News” episodes I most want to see & manage to catch the ones that don’t interest me.
Thanx!
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Reminds me of drop and cover drills advocating protecting your head with your hands we had to do in third grade as we were 40 miles from an air force base that would be nuked by the Russians. Almost as effective as my dad’s bomb shelter! Will the 50’s never end?!
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This is insane. Even in the Marines, we were not trained to fight bullets with our hands.
I’ve also taken martial arts classes (and broken bones sparring) and all of the instructors emphasize that no matter how skilled we are, the odds are against us if we are stupid enough to think we can move faster than a bullet.
Who is the ignorant, stupid fool that thought this up?
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“…if we are stupid enough to think we can move faster than a bullet.”
Didn’t you ever watch Superman?! 🙂
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But Superman is only one fantasy film character. The rest of us 8-billion humans are much slower than a bullet. And if Superman was real, Trump would just tweet out a storm of kryptonite. Trump is a real clown and not a fictional joker.
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Aw, shucks, LLoyd, you mean I can’t pin my hopes on Superman? How about Mighty Mouse? Isn’t he supposed to “save the day”? Actually, Trump strikes me as an archetypal representation of one of the villains Batman has faced.
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SMERSH?
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How about the X-men — like Wolverine?
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Oy!
We have schools/school districts expecting teachers to fight off active shooters by throwing rocks at them or hitting them with baseball bats (districts in Pennsylvania) and now we have a Utah charter school bunch of idiots expecting teachers to use martial arts against a shooter?
Excuse me, but this is getting beyond absurd. Son Zorba is a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and Brazilian jujitsu, plus he has trained in Thai kick-boxing and comoeted in mixed martial arts. So, he is well-trained in the martial arts, way more than they expect teachers to be trained, but he has said that it’s just Fantasyland to expect anybody to go against an active shooter armed with a semi-automatic rifle.
They refuse to acknowledge that the problem in this country is the availability of such weapons. G-d forbid that we institute some reasonable gun controls. Instead, let’s expect teachers to go up against armed intruders with rocks, bats, and their bare hands.
Oh, and while we’re at it, let’s arm the teachers with guns as well, although they will have hand guns versus a semi-automatic. And let’s hope that they don’t leave their handgun in a restroom or that they aren’t overwhelmed and disarmed by students who are violent.
They are not paying teachers nearly enough for this type of sh!t. Besides having to teach to the stupid tests, having inadequate resources, over-crowded classrooms, not enough support personnel, they are also suggesting that teachers become some kind of combination of Duane Johnson, Vin Diesel, and John Wayne.
Give me a break.
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Love your last paragraph!
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Zorba, as I read your comment, I recalled the scene in the first Indiana Jones film where Jones confronts a big bad guy with a large knife, which he ominously twirls. Jones takes out a gun and shoots him dead.
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LOL!
This:
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Thanks, Zorba, that is a great scene.
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PS. Diane, don’t give them any ideas or they’ll be issuing swords to teachers, as well.
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When do they start issuing whips? The whips can also be used as jump ropes during recess.
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Or that a teacher doesn’t put a gun in an unlocked desk in front of her homeroom (reference to a comment I’d made on an earlier arming teachers post).
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The stuff that could go wrong with regards to arming teachers just boggles the mind.
Tragedies waiting to happen.
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I know charters prefer to hire young, energetic alt-certified teachers than those LIFO’s, but I just don’t think they’ll pay them enough to incentivize attacking a shooter with their bare hands, not even with a bonu$.
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Welcome to Utah, people. Where funding is rock-bottom and we are expected to do all for ourselves. Where we are literally expected to sacrifice our money, time, and lives for our students. Teachers here won’t strike because they are told that we are, “hurting the kids,” and that we should do everything, “for the kids.” Our pay isn’t quite as low as some, but our class sizes are ludicrous, buildings are falling apart, and infested (we have a HUGE mouse problem in our building), but the new buildings have every technological bell and whistle (the most recent high school cost 99 MILLION dollars).
Utah. Land of hypocrisy. But come for our national parks. They ARE pretty cool!
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Sounds like it’s more important to train teachers in Utah how to trap mice.
They could give merit pay based on how many you trapped.
PS: I live next to a 40 acre woods and have mice come in every fall and have found that the best traps are live traps.
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The best “traps” are a couple of cats. Our kitties (indoor only) keep our home mouse free, and we also live in a wooded area.
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We had two cats at one point and still had mice. In fact, I never saw the cats with a single mouse. The mice would all be safe and sound up in the ceiling and walls where you could hear them at night.
And the cats would be asleep on the couch.
But they would bring in chipmunks and rabbits from outside and leave the innards on the kitchen floor.
Personally, i prefer the traps.
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& to expand on dienne77’s comment at 11:02 AM (TAGO!): gives a whole new meaning to homophones “bare” & “bear,” as in, this idea must have originated w/Betsy DeLoss’ statement that teachers may need guns to fend off grizzly bears.
No, teachers can just use their “bare” arms, or they can attack these frequent bear visitors “bare”-handedly.
Grrrr.
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Oh–also want to know–will this ability be included as a part of a teacher’s evaluation?
Would a teacher unable to adequately deck a test assailant be rated “not proficient?”
Could this be a part of V.A.M. (one of the values added)?
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I believe that would be a KUFAM ( Kung Fu Added Model )
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As per usual, great one,SDP!
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