MARINETTE, Wis. – Employees and students at Marinette High School must have shuddered when they heard about Friday’s tragic shooting at a Newtown, Connecticut elementary school, which resulted in the heartbreaking loss of 20 small children.

 They narrowly avoided a similar tragedy on Nov. 29, 2010.

Samuel Hengel, a 15-year-old sophomore at Marinette High School, shocked everyone by entering his sixth-hour social studies class with two semi-automatic handguns and holding 24 classmates and his teacher hostage for about five hours.

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No hostages were hurt in the incident, which ended when Hengel shot himself in the head as police entered the classroom around 8 p.m. He died the next day.

Like Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old who forced his way into Sandy Hook Elementary and killed 26 people Friday, Hengel seemed an unlikely candidate to act in such a manner.

His family described Hengel as a quiet young man who was “active in the Boy Scouts, Tae Kwan Do, loved his iTouch and was an avid outdoorsman.”  He was said to love hunting and fishing and any activity that included his family.

Nobody suspected Hengel of being particularly angry or capable of acting violently toward anyone, news reports said.

In a statement, his family said they “wished they knew and could provide the insight to what led Sam to take these drastic acts. There were no indicators to make us think that something was wrong.”

“He’s the one person who could answer the ‘why’ question,” Marinette County District Attorney Allen Brey was quoted as saying. “We’ll all speculate. We’ll all wonder. Were there any warning signs? The one guy that could give us those answers is gone. We may never truly know why this happened.”

It all sounds so eerily similar to the Connecticut story. Thank God it had a far less tragic ending.

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A teacher saved the day

 

Valerie Burd

There’s another striking similarity between the Connecticut tragedy and the Marinette hostage situation: Teacher heroism.

In Newtown, numerous teachers are being credited with herding their small students into bathrooms or closets to block them from the shooter as he stalked from classroom to classroom. In several instances they gave their own lives to save the kids.

The principal and school counselor were also killed when they lunged at Lanza in an effort to stop his deadly march through the school.

In Marinette, the hero was social studies teacher Valerie Burd, who remained incredibly calm while detained with her students by Hengel for five long hours.

She remained on the phone with police when Hengel refused to talk, diverted students arriving for later classes to a nearby library where they were safe, and encouraged the other hostages to make small talk with Hengel about hunting and fishing, according to media reports.

“She saved the lives of many students with her calm demeanor,” Marinette High School Principal Corry Lambie told ABC News. “I made her aware of how proud I was of her. Her leadership in that classroom was the calming attitude that the students needed to get them out of there safely.”

“I can’t say enough about the dedication of the teacher who was really instrumental,” Superintendent Tim Baneck added.

School reformers respect K-12 teachers

A lot of signs hanging around Newtown, Connecticut are urging residents to hug and thank a teacher. We enthusiastically second that motion.

Because we are school reform advocates, many have tried to paint EAGnews and similar organizations as being “anti-teacher.” To drum up support, union leaders try to frighten their members into believing reformers want to take their jobs and close their schools.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

We are critical of the role of teachers unions and collective bargaining in public schools. We know there are thousands of outstanding teachers in Wisconsin, but many have been held back by their unions from reaching their full potential.

The union way is to treat all members as equals, with the only differential in compensation being length of service and the number of graduate classes completed. That prevents many outstanding teachers from being recognized and rewarded for doing a superior job.

Studies have shown that many great young teachers around the nation have left the profession because they make the same as their mediocre or poor colleagues. That should never happen.

A new era of teacher accountability is on the horizon in Wisconsin. Statewide standards for evaluating educators, with student achievement a key measurement, will soon be implemented across the Dairy State.

The new standards will likely underline what most Wisconsin residents already know – that the vast majority of the state’s K-12 teachers are quite good. Some will be immediately recognized for their effectiveness, while others may need a kick in the pants and a little dusting off.

In the end we doubt that many teachers will lose their jobs due to ineffectiveness. The vast majority are more than capable of rising to the new standards and excelling.

Why? Because most are high quality individuals who care a great deal about children and their communities. They give new meaning to the term “public servant,” and they deserve all the respect we can possibly give them.