Last Updated on: 12th June 2024, 10:17 am
In the right context, I don’t see anything wrong with asking high school students to write their own obituaries. I took a writer’s craft class when I was that age, and I recall more than one assignment that required us to write things about ourselves. It wouldn’t have felt out of place at all if one of them was how would you like to be remembered? Maybe one of them was and I’m just not recalling it. I think Carin took that same class in a different year. She remembers everything, so maybe she would know. If we did have that assignment, I wish I’d saved it. It would be interesting to go back and read it and see what’s changed after 25 years.
But you know what we absolutely did not have when I was in high school? Active shooter drills. That was one of the benefits of going to high school in the 90s and not living in a country full of gun humping lunatics. But if we did have to go through those, I hope that our teachers would be smart enough not to schedule the obituary assignment for the same day. And if one wasn’t, I hope our administrators would step in, question some judgment and then hand down at least a suspension, because lord, what a shitty thing to do.
A Florida teacher was fired hours after he asked students to write their own obituaries ahead of an active shooter drill on campus, the instructor and school district said Friday.
Psychology teacher Jeffrey Keene told NBC News he believes he used proper judgement for the assignment to 11th and 12th-graders during first period Tuesday at Dr. Phillips High School in Orlando.
After being told about the drill on Monday, Keene said he felt the obituaries would help the students reflect on their lives during the school shooter scenario.
“‘This isn’t a way to upset you or anything like that,'” he recalled telling his class of 35.
“It wasn’t to scare them or make them feel like they were going to die, but just to help them understand what’s important in their lives and how they want to move forward with their lives and how they want to pursue things in their journey.”