As a senior, undergraduate pre-service teacher, I am currently busy observing in schools, reading up on differentiated instruction, effective forms of assessment, how to teach students how to close read and how to write academically. Basically, I'm in the midst of wrapping my head around how to figure out how to be a successful English teacher. There is so much that goes on within our government in regards to education that we only hear, not learn about. There is so much talked about, argued and decided that is so far outside of the little things that go into learning how to plan and how to manage a classroom. The bottom line is, education in America is changing and there is no doubt about it. There are new standards for teachers and new and "improved" forms of state exams, however, one of the most important changes to consider are the changes that we see in the student behavior. From violence to the level of bullying, students in some schools are taking things to a whole new level.

Students' actions impact/change the school day and environment more than anything else that happens throughout the day. The way which students act is only within the control of the teachers so much. In the education program at my college, we are taught almost everything that one would need to know about teaching, things like, classroom management skills, which ones are effective and which are not, and how to approach a student who is being disruptive in class. We are told how to deal with bullies and when and to who we should report a student who may be inflicting harm onto themselves. However, we aren't taught one very important thing, that in fact, cannot really be taught: how to deal with violence. Gun violence, physical violence, and both student to student, and student to teacher violence.

In the past year, I've seen one too many headlines that read something like this: "teen sentenced to prison for beating teacher" or "student arrested for classroom attack". Although violence does not appear in the news within schools across the U.S., I think that it is happening more often than we think. Almost every practicing teacher that I've spoken to has either broken up a fight or has witnessed some type of violence during the school day.

The scariest type of violence whether it happens in a school or outside of a school is gun violence. Having studied Columbine in a popular culture course that I took in high school, I never knew that months later, I'd hear of a modern day Columbine: the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in December of 2012.

"On Friday morning, 27 people were reportedly shot and killed at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, CT. According to sources, 18 of these casualties were children. This is the second mass shooting in the US this week, after a gunman opened fire in an Oregon shopping mall on Tuesday, killing 2. ABC News reports that there have been 31 school shootings in the US since Columbine in 1999, when 13 people were killed."

The principal of Sandy Hook Elementary, Dawn Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Sherlach were meeting with other faculty members when the 20-year-old shooter entered the building. One second they were innocently sitting in a meeting, and the next they were merely victims of a horrible calamity. Also killed were four teachers, Victoria Soto, 27, Anne Murphy, 52, Rachel D'Avino 29, and Lauren Rosseau, 30. These teachers were all shot dead while protecting their students. They did not learn how to deal with a shooter entering the building the only thing we are taught is that we should care about our students. Their intuitive senses told them to protect them no matter what because the students always come first.

Everything that teachers do every single day is for their students. Sometimes, it is more than making sure that they are paying attention and learning. My mentor teacher said that one of the most important things that she considers when in the classroom is when students who are disruptive or seem "off" one day may have an issue going on at home. She always refers to psychologist, Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs:

The fact is that some students fall in the red and orange sections. The chart is important because although this is what everyone needs, some students need more. They cannot learn because they need food, water, clean clothes, better health, and to feel safe in order to focus on school. Teachers think about their students safety all of the time, however, pre-service teachers aren't taught how to react in the event that a shooter enters a building. It is intuition and in our violent era, we must always be prepared for the worst.

CNN released an article shortly after the tragedy and the first few lines said:

"Facing down a gunman, placing yourself in the path of flying bullets, forfeiting your life to protect innocents. It's a job description fitting for a soldier or police officer, but for a school teacher -- an elementary school teacher at that?"

This made me think. Should we be licensed psychologists as well as licensed teachers of our particular fields? Are teachers at risk? Is violence in school more prevalent than ever before? Why are students acting out? What can be done to reduce or stop these disheartening headlines about student to student and student to teacher violence? Most importantly, I want to know what should teachers know or what can they do to help?