10AM

Today, March 14, 2018 at 10:00am, high school students across the country walked out of school for 17 minutes. One for each life lost in the Parkland shooting a month ago. Some will be disciplined. Some won't be. But, these students give me hope for the future.

There was talk about this right after the shooting. So, I emailed the school superintendent. I explained that even though my third grader wouldn't be included, I think this should be allowed without punishment. I also told him I think the police should be there for safety. As they are with any protest or march.

I wasn't the only parent supporting this. This morning I am proud of the students in my town who participated. They had talked about it with the high school principal first. Because of that, they knew they wouldn't get into trouble and the police would be able to be there for safety. If I was a kid, I would have joined them. If Zach was in high school, I would have encouraged him to join them.

To me, it's silly to say these kids would be punished for participating. Parents could sign them out at 10am and return them to school 17 minutes later. Legally pulling them out of school for that time. The common concern was safety. That is why I am grateful that my town planned ahead and arranged for the police to be there. Any town could have done that. Now they risk lawsuits for impeding first amendment rights.

I don't know why 10am was the selected time. The shooting happened at the end of the school day. Maybe because it's the one time every kid in the entire country is expected to be in school. When it reached 10am in your time zone, protesting kids walked.

Common thought, "they just wanted to get out of class". I'm sure some kids thought like that. But, that's why we needed to educate them before hand about what was actually happening. That they would be using their feet to say "I want stronger gun safety laws so I can feel safe at school!" They needed to understand the weight of what they would be doing.

Today, at 10am I was walking around Kohl's for exercise. Lap six, last lap. I saw the time and thought about these kids and how proud I am of them. These are things we should have done after Columbine. I read this morning that Columbine was one of the schools participating with encouragement from their principal.

Today, at 10AM, history was made.