Geraldine Richardson remembers vividly the day a frightened youngster at the school where she teaches eighth grade dropped a gun from under his coat.
The Sacramento, Calif., teacher had been standing on a school balcony when she heard a commotion. She saw the child break and run from an assistant principal. She saw the weapon fall to the ground."I didn't even think," said Richardson, a delegate to the National Education Association Convention in San Francisco. "I just grabbed him and I talked to him."
No one was injured, and the boy told Richardson he had brought the gun to school for protection from other students who had threatened him. He was frightened, she said.
Some teachers say that because of a growing number of such incidents in the nation's schools, they fear for the safety of their students, their colleagues and themselves.
"I worry about it because we're all in this together," said Josephine Smith, an elementary school teacher from Iberville Parish, La.
The rising incidence of school violence prompted Education Secretary Richard Riley to announce last month that the Clinton administration would ask Congress to approve a $175 million grant program to help school districts buy metal detectors, hire security guards and train students in the art of conflict resolution.
Under the administration's plan, some school districts with a history of violence could receive up to $3 million each over two years.
A survey by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 1991 showed that about 3 million incidents of theft or violence occurred on or near school grounds every day.
The survey showed that 20 percent of students carried a weapon on a regular basis and 6 percent of high school seniors were threatened with a weapon at school. Eight percent of public school teachers were physically threatened by students and 2 percent were actually attacked, it found.
The issue of violence is so prominent in the minds of teachers that three resolutions calling for stronger measures to combat it were introduced at the NEA convention.
Teachers say acts of violence in the community also affect the atmosphere of the classroom.