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It’s From Japan!!

@teenwhoisintotrees

Em | 18 | theater nerd
Will Roland | DEH | BMC | BOM | Newsies Hamilton | Pentatonix
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I think next thursday is gonna be the best day of my entire life tbh

reblog for next thursday to be the best day of your life

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dopenmind

Reblogging this once more because my mom and I legitimately laughed to tears.

this is my favorite video on the internet

mental health tip: save this video. watch it when you’re sad. it’s the best goddamn thing on the internet

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finehoney

im so ready to be in a relationship so whenever the universe is ready hmu with a keeper

i posted this yesterday then today this cute boy held my hand and now he is sending me memes

Reblog for love

i reblogged this yesterday and my crush kissed me today

life update: i’m not saying this worked but something happened literally the day after i reblogged this

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Hi.

I’m your kid’s teacher, and I would take a bullet for your child. But I wish you wouldn’t ask me to.

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We had an intruder drill today.

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I have shepherded children through a lot of intruder drills. I have also, on one memorable occasion, shepherded children through a non-drill. When I was a children’s librarian in a rough suburb, armed men got into a fight in the alley behind our building. We ushered all of the kids - most of whom were unattended - into the basement while we waited for the police.

During intruder drills, some children - from five-year-olds all the way to high school kids - get visibly upset. At one school, the intruder drill included administrators running down the hallways, screaming and banging on lockers to simulate the “real thing.” Kids cry. Kindergartners wet themselves. Teenagers laugh, nudging each other, even as the blood drains from their faces.

Other children handle intruder drills matter-of-factly. “Would the guy be able to shoot us through the door?” they ask, the same way they’d ask a question about their math homework. In some ways, this is worse than the kids who cry. To be so young and so accustomed to fear that these drills seem routine.

And then there are the teachers. There is no way, huddling in a corner with your students, ducking out of view of the windows and doors, to avoid thinking about what happens when it’s not a drill.

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People really hate teachers. I don’t take it personally. It actually makes a lot of sense: what other group of professionals do we know so well? How many doctors have you had? How many plumbers? How many secretaries?

Over the course of my public school education, I had at least fifty teachers for at least a year each. So of course some of them were bad. You take fifty people from any profession, and a couple of them are going to be terrible at their job.

So I had a couple of teachers who were terrible, and a few teachers who were amazing, inspirational figures - the kinds of teachers they make movies about.

And then I had a lot of teachers who did a good job. They came to school every day and worked hard. They’d planned our lessons and they graded our papers. I learned what I was supposed to, more or less, even if it wasn’t the most incredible learning experience of my life.

Most teachers fall into that category. I’m sure I do.

Looking at it from the other side, though, I see something that I didn’t know when I was a kid.

Those workhorse teachers who tried, who failed sometimes and sometimes succeeded, who showed up every day and did their jobs: those teachers loved us.

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Of course you can never know what you’ll do in the event. That’s what they always say. In the event of an intruder, a fire, a tornado.

You can never know until you know.

But part of what’s so terrifying, so upsetting about an intruder drill as a teacher, is that on some level you do know. You don’t aspire to martyrdom; you’ve never wanted to be a hero. You go home every night to a family that loves you, and you intend to spend the next fifty years with them. You will do everything in your power to hide yourself in that office along with your kids.

But if you can’t.

If you can’t.

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When people tell me about why they oppose gun control, I can’t hear it anymore.

I’m from a part of the country where everybody has guns. I used to be really moderate about this stuff, and I am not anymore.

I can’t be.

Every day, I go to work in a building that contains hundreds of children. Every single one of those kids, including every kid that makes me crazy, is a joy and a blessing. They make their parents’ lives meaningful. They make my life meaningful. They are the reason I go to work in the morning, and the reason I worry and plan when I come home.

Parents usually know a handful of kids who are the most wonderful creatures on the planet. I know a couple thousand. It is an incredible privilege, and it is also terrifying. The world is big and scary, and I love so many small people who must go out into it.

So when adults tell me, “I have the right to own a gun”, all I can hear is: “My right to own a gun outweighs your students’ right to be alive.” All I can hear is: “My right to own a gun is more important than kindergarteners feeling safe at school.” All I can hear is: “Mine. Mine. Mine.”

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When you are sitting there hiding in the corner of your classroom, you know.

The alternative would be unthinkable.

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We live in a country where children are acceptable casualties. Every time someone tells me about the second amendment I want to give them a history lesson. I also want to ask them: in what universe is your right to walk into a Wal-Mart to buy a gun more important than the lives of hundreds of children shot dead in their schools?

Parents send their kids to school every day with this shadow. Teachers live with the shadow. We work alongside it. We plan for it. In the event.

In the event, parents know that their children’s teachers will do everything in their power to keep them safe. We plan for it.

And when those plans don’t work, teachers die protecting their students.

We love your children. That’s why we’re here. Some of us love the subject we teach, too, and that’s important, but all of us love your kids.

The alternative would be unthinkable.

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When you are waiting, waiting, waiting for the voice to come on over the PA, telling you that the drill is over, you look at the apprehensive faces around you. You didn’t grow up like this. You never once hid with your teacher in a corner, wondering if a gunman was just around the corner. It is astonishing to you that anyone tolerates this.

And the kids are nervous, but they are all looking to you. You’re their teacher.

They know what you didn’t know, back when you were a kid, back before Columbine. They know that you love them. They know you will keep them safe.

You’re their teacher.

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If you are a parent who thinks it’s totally reasonable for civilians to have a house full of deadly weapons, and who accepts the blood of innocent people in exchange for that right, it doesn’t change anything for me. I will love your kid. I will treat you, and your child, the same way I treat everyone else: with all of the respect and the care that is in me.

In the event, I will do everything in my power to keep your child safe.

I just want you to know what you are asking me to do.

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When the Nazi concentration camps were liberated by the Allies, it was a time of great jubilation for the tens of thousands of people incarcerated in them. But an often forgotten fact of this time is that prisoners who happened to be wearing the pink triangle (the Nazis’ way of marking and identifying homosexuals) were forced to serve out the rest of their sentence. This was due to a part of German law simply known as “Paragraph 175” which criminalized homosexuality. The law wasn’t repealed until 1969.

This should be required learning, internationally. 

You need to know this. You need to remember this. This is not something to swept under the carpet nor be forgotten. 

Never. Too many have died for the way they have loved. That needs stop now. 

Make it stop

I did a report on this in my World History class my sophomore year of high school. It was incredibly unsettling.

My teacher shown the class this. Mostly everyone in the class felt uncomfortable. 

I have reblogged this in the past, but it is so ironic that it comes across my dash right now. I a currently working as a docent at my city’s Holocaust Education Center (( I say currently because I’ve also done research and translation for them )) and out current exhibit is one on loan from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ((USHMM)). This is a little known historical fact that Paragraph 175 was not repealed after the war and those convicted under Nazi laws as a danger to society because they were gay were not released because they had be convicted in a court of law. There was no liberation or justice for them as they weren’t considered criminals, or even victims for that matter. They were criminals who remained persecuted and ostracized and kept on the fringes of society for decades after the war had been won. Paragraph175 wasn’t actually repealed until 1994. And it was only in May 2002, that the German parliament completed legislation to pardon all homosexuals convicted under Paragraph175 during the Nazi era. History has forgotten about these men and women — please educate yourselves so this does not happen again. Remember this history. Remember them.

@mindlesshumor ok how the fuck did I miss this when I’ve studied The Holocaust like nobody’s business??? wtf

Because the history we have left regarding it is literally the contents of this first hand account.

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It is a thin little book.

When I first opened it, I wondered why it was so thin.

Why there wasn’t other books like it.

Other first hand accounts.

By the time I finished it, I didn’t wonder anymore.

Further reading:

Branded By The Pink Triangle by Ken Setterington

Bent by Martin Sherman (fiction; however, it’s often credited with bringing attention to gay Holocaust victims for the first time since the war ended)

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gemfyre

This is one of the memorial sculptures in Dachau.  It was erected in the early 60s and is missing the pink triangles.  Because in the early 60s, homosexuality was still a crime in most of the world. Our tour guide explained why the pink triangles have not been added later - if they were, then folks would assume that they had always been there.  This way people ask “why aren’t there pink triangles?” and somebody can explain why - because in some ways, the rest of the world was as bass-ackwards as Nazi Germany.

can i just say i was literately in a genocide and holocaust class and i didnt even learn this

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