Letter to the Editor

Your view: Trust is needed

Friday, October 13, 2006

I have seen so much about school shootings on TV and in the paper.

I was a school nurse at Sikeston Junior High for 13 years. Many of the students would come into my office on their lunch break to talk. I always told them that they could talk to me about anything.

One day on lunch break a student came into my office and asked if he could talk with me. I told him to shut the door. He told me that a certain student was going to kill a certain teacher seventh hour. I told him to go to class and keep quiet about what he had told me, and I would take care of it.

I went to the vice principal's office and closed the door and told him what I had been told.

He went to the lockers and the gun wasn't there. He went to the classroom. The student who had brought the gun to school didn't have it on him, but a friend had a fully-loaded .38 revolver in his coat pocket.

The vice principal came back to my office and pulled it from under his jacket.

I told him, "See what always being there for the student means."

Children always need someone they feel like they can trust to say anything to.

This happened before any of the school shootings started.

Patricia Johnson

Sikeston