What would you do if there was an emergency at your school?
Decide on a type of emergency (fire, flood, terrorist attack, etc.) and write a step-by-step emergency / escape plan. Step 1: ______________________________________________________ Step 2: ______________________________________________________ Step 3: ______________________________________________________ Step 4: ______________________________________________________ Step 5: ______________________________________________________ Step 6: ______________________________________________________ Step 7: ______________________________________________________ Step 8: ______________________________________________________ Step 9: ______________________________________________________ Step 10: ______________________________________________________
Prepositions
4
Fill in the missing prepositions (according to the article).
When teachers return ____________ a new school term they can carry guns ____________ the classroom small rural town ____________northern Texas help ____________ an emergency
it is very near ____________ a major highway to kill all 150 ____________ us
15 people died ____________ a Colorado high school the sort of plan that makes people laugh ____________ Texas • • • • • • • • at x2 in x2 for of to into
2 Key words
1. authorities 2. staff 3. defend 4. rural 5. armed 6. dozen 7. licence 8. ricochet 9. horrified 10. disaster 11. unapologetic 12. controversy3 Summarizing
1. A small farming town in Texas, USA 2. Guns
3. 30 minutes away 4. More than a dozen / 12 5. 33
6. No (they think it’s a disaster waiting to happen)
4 Prepositions
for; into; in; in; to; of; at; at Teacher’s notes: Internet tasks:
Ask students to check the school’s website: www.harroldisd.net
What kind of school is it? Can they pinpoint it on a map? Ask them to discuss other ways to protect the pupils in the school from possible attack.
Write Harrold Texas into the search field in YouTube to see TV reports about the controversy.
•
The school where teachers carry a pen, a ruler and... a gun
Level 1
Elementary
NEWS LESSONS / The school where teachers carry a pen, a ruler and... a gun / Intermediate
•PHOT OCOPIABLE
•
CAN BE DOWNLOADEDFROM WEBSITE
© Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2008
The school where teachers carry a pen, a ruler and... a gun
Level 2 Intermediate
Warmer
1
Key words
2
Match the key words from the article with their meanings. The paragraph numbers are given to help you.
An organization or institution that controls something, often a public service: ____________________. (para 1) Containing bullets: ________________________. (para 1)
Mad people carrying weapons: ____________________________. (para 2) Far away from any other cities or towns: ________________________. (para 3)
Methods for dealing with extremely difficult situations: ____________________________. (para 6) A person who is the prisoner of someone who threatens to kill them if they do not get what they want: ________________________. (para 6)
A method of going into a building using a plastic card: ____________________________. (para 8) The process of checking someone to see if they’re suitable for something: ________________________. (para 8)
Carrying a weapon (usually a gun): ________________________. (para 8)
To hit a surface at an angle and immediately move away from it at a different angle: ________________________. (para 8)
Not sorry / show no regret: ________________________. (para 13) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.
a) What teaching equipment is always in your classroom?
b) What additional equipment do you think your teacher needs to carry in his/her teaching bag?
armed loaded hostage unapologetic ricochet
remote crisis management authorities
•
The school where teachers carry a pen, a ruler and... a gun
Level 2 Intermediate
The American school where teachers
carry a pen, a ruler and... a gun
• Teachers in Texan town allowed to carry guns • Remote location could make it a target, say localsAndrew Clark August 18, 2008
School authorities in Harrold, Texas, say loaded guns in the hands of trained teachers will make its students and staff safer.
When teachers return for a new school term in the tiny Texas farming town of Harrold, they can bring an extra piece of equipment alongside books, pens and worksheets. To defend pupils from any gun-toting maniacs, they can carry loaded guns into the classroom.
With barely 300 residents, the remote rural community in northern Texas has shocked groups in favor of gun control by becoming the first place in the US to allow its teachers to carry guns.
Harrold’s school board says that the plan is necessary because the town is 25 miles from the nearest sheriff’s office, which makes it hard to get immediate help in an emergency. They also say that its location just yards from a major highway, America’s north-south Interstate 287, makes it a possible ‘target’ for armed maniacs.
“The sheriff’s office is 30 minutes away”, said Harrold’s school superintendent, David Thweatt. “How long do you think it would take to kill all 150 of us? It would be a bloodbath.”
Carefully selected teachers are to be trained in crisis management including dealing with hostage situations. Thweatt said: “When you have good guys with guns, the bad guys do less damage.” More than a dozen mass shooting tragedies have hit US schools over the last ten years, including the Columbine massacre in which 15 people died at a Colorado high school in 1999 and last year’s Virginia Tech massacre which left 33 people dead. Like many places in America, Harrold’s school already has tough security including card-swipe
entry for rooms and screening for visitors. Armed teachers must get a state gun licence and the bullets will be of a type less likely to ricochet off walls or desks. But teachers’ unions in Texas have expressed horror.
“It’s a disaster waiting to happen,” Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers said. She described it as the sort of plan that makes people laugh at Texas: “It’s one of the worst ideas in the history of education.”
Ken Trump, an Ohio-based security specialist, suggested it would be more sensible to hire security guards than to give guns to “minimally supervised, minimally trained” teachers. “You could have a gun accidentally taken away, or a gun could be accidently fired while a teacher’s breaking up a fight in the cafeteria,” said Trump.
Harrold’s gun policy was praised by the pro-gun nationwide Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Its chairman, Alan Gottlieb, said the town’s school buildings would be safer: “Allowing armed staff and teachers will provide a last line of defence if other security measures at the school fail.”
He argued that teachers would be able to respond faster to a classroom shooting than a security guard: “Officers can’t be everywhere and in an emergency every second counts.”
Harrold’s school board is unapologetic about the controversy. Thweatt said the thick brick walls of Harrold’s school protected pupils from tornadoes – and the school authorities had a duty to protect children from human attacks.
“When you hear about these shootings, the reports always start out with ‘this is a sleepy little place, nobody thought this would ever happen here’,” said Thweatt.
© Guardian News & Media 2008 First published in The Guardian, 18/08/08
2 1 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 11 12 13 8 14
NEWS LESSONS / The school where teachers carry a pen, a ruler and... a gun / Intermediate
•PHOT OCOPIABLE
•
CAN BE DOWNLOADEDFROM WEBSITE
© Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2008
The school where teachers carry a pen, a ruler and... a gun
Level 2 Intermediate
According to the article, are these sentences True (T) or False (F)?
School authorities in Harrold, Texas, are allowing selected teachers to carry guns in the classroom. Teachers’ unions are in favor of this plan.
Harrold is a small farming town in Ohio.
The school’s superintendent thinks that the sheriff’s office should be moved closer to the school. Up to now there has been no security at Harrold’s school.
The school’s superintendent says tornadoes are a bigger problem than guns. There have been more than 12 shooting incidents in US schools in the last decade. A security specialist thinks that arming teachers is not the answer to the problem. The teachers will not need a gun licence.
Thweatt says the threat of shootings is greater in big cities. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Comprehension
3
Background: Gun violence in US schools
April 1999 Students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 12 students and a teacher at Columbine high school in Littleton, Colorado, before shooting themselves
February 2000 Six-year-old Kayla Rolland is shot dead at Buell Elementary School near Flint, Michigan, by a
six-year-old boy
May 2000 13 year-old Nate Brazill kills a teacher at Lake Worth school, Florida, after being sent home March 2005 16-year-old Jeff Weise guns down five students, a teacher and a security guard at Red Lake High School in northern Minnesota before killing himself. He had also just killed his grandfather and his grandfather’s companion
September 2006 15-year-old student kills his school principal in western Wisconsin
October 2006 Charles Roberts kills five girls at a one-classroom Pennsylvanian Amish school April 2007 Cho Seung-hui kills 32 students at Virginia Tech university
•
The school where teachers carry a pen, a ruler and... a gun
Level 2 Intermediate
Group task: In case of emergency...
5
What would you do if there was an emergency at your school?
Decide on a type of emergency (fire, flood, terrorist attack, etc.) and write a step-by-step emergency / escape plan.