Last updated on March 21, 2018
How many advocates for arming school teachers have seen a teacher go nuts in the classroom? Not “cut loose and act crazy” nuts, but in the pathological sense. Show of hands? Nobody? Let me tell you about Sister Mary Nowhere.
I call her “Sister Mary Nowhere” to protect her privacy, assuming she’s still around. She was a real person, a Sister of Charity who taught at a parochial high school. Her meltdown came in a room filled with nature’s most fidgety, frustrating and unforgiving creatures: high school sophomores. Sister Mary Nowhere was thrown to the wolves.
Mental illness can come on gradually and it’s not easy to determine the point at which the ore cart is shoved into the Crazy Mine, but I think I know when Sister Mary Nowhere was shoved: during Sophomore English class. She was walking between a row of desks and the outside wall with windows when she spied an object she didn’t recognize in an unoccupied desk. She reached down, picked it up, turned it over, turned it over again, raised it to a higher angle to get a better look. She was the only person in the room who didn’t know what it was. Initially shocked when Sister Mary Nowhere began to physically examine and fondle the object, some students began to giggle. Most of us did our best to keep from laughing out loud, although we teared up from the strain. Sister Mary Nowhere detected a disturbance in the force.
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