My first teaching position was in an old high school in Michigan. This was the type of school that had slid past complacency and into complete ruin. I'm not sure how this happens, because I always enter onto the scene after. For example, in the 60s, there were race riots in the school, and some brain trust decided it would be a good idea to chain and lock some of the side exterior doors. By the time I came on the scene, in 1992, the lock had been lost and no one had the energy or the desire to cut the chain. How symbolic is that?
My first faculty meeting was in the library. Come on, my mentor teacher said, you'll want to see this. It was after school, on our "own" time. The principal wasn't present. In fact, I had never spoken to the principal, nor did he ever enter my classroom. A teacher ran the meeting. He started by saying that he had counted 43 students in the hall without passes during his prep time. These students were late to class and instead of going to detention, they decided to roam the halls. There was no consequence for this.
Backing up for a minute...when the tardy bell rang, we were to close our doors, which were always kept locked. Students were to show up to the detention room for the period. As far as I could tell, there was no way to know if a student was absent, or detention, and there was no penalty for having too many detentions or absences.
The teachers decided that from now on, they would take shifts on their prep periods and make lists of students who were in the halls without a pass. Those students would need to show up to detention immediately, or be listed on the next morning's announcements by the principal that they had a day of suspension. That'll teach them!
So here I was, in a school that was limping along. This school had decided that it would be good for the students to watch the news everyday. There were monitors mounted on the wall that played Channel One news every morning. It was 10 or so minutes for the students to do absolutely nothing.
One day something caught my attention on the screen. This young man, certainly the same age as myself (and I wasn't even out of college) was reporting from Sarajevo. He was being shot at, and my students could care less.
The reporters who were talking from the safety of the US were asking him the most inane questions, like was it dangerous. You could literally hear the sniper fire as he was speaking. He would stop talking sometimes and duck down and was obviously in great danger. Anger welled up inside of me that this company would send a young man into harm's way to report to children that weren't even watching. Each time he finished his report, they would tell him to be careful. No kidding.
Each time he finished his report, I would worry that that would be the last time that I saw him. I never stopped wondering about this young man. Did he die? What happened to him??
Almost 15 years later, I was watching Oprah. She was interviewing Anderson Cooper. I was interested in this show because Anderson seemed to come out of nowhere and arrive on CNN. When I first noticed him, he had some risky assignments, but I didn't worry about him. But, there was something about him that I liked. A sense that he was genuine.
Oprah played an old clip of Anderson's early journalistic days, and that is when the world stopped. There he was! It was that young man from Sarajevo, and it was Anderson! I could have cried just thinking about it, that he was safe, and that certainly because of those early career risks, he enjoyed a prime position with CNN. The situations filmed in those clips were just as dangerous as I remembered.
Here's a clip of the show:

I have watched Anderson regularly ever since that Oprah show. He could say anything in the world, and I would sit and watch and listen. I love knowing that he came out of that situation alive. That's why I'm a Cooper girl!