A teacher's gift that is valuable to all

When it comes to teaching, Elgin High School Principal Dave Smiley says Carolyn Gilbert has "the gift."

Those of us who did not previously know her as Smiley does saw this week that her gift extends beyond the classroom.

Gilbert, a career and technical teacher at EHS, lost her right eye after she was stabbed repeatedly by a student in a bizarre attack in January 2008. The assault was hardly predictable. Gilbert had allowed the student to wait in her classroom while she worked alone because she knew he liked her. He would later tell authorities he did it to get attention from his parents.

What greater incongruities could be devised to emphasize just how fragile and unfair life can be? We simply cannot always protect ourselves from bad things happening to us. But, as Gilbert showed and Elgin Area School District U-46 reinforced, we can control how we react to them.

Gilbert's lesson - vividly demonstrated in Daily Herald staff writer Kerry Lester's three-day series of stories this week - is in how she confronted the brutality she suffered and refused to let it define her life.

It took time, of course, and Gilbert is not shy about acknowledging she avoids certain reminders of that horrible day. But as you listen to her descriptions of her job - "I never thought about not going back" and "I'd never pick anyplace else to teach" - and see her interactions with students in the video at dailyherald.com, you see the strength and dedication that stirs such admiration from Smiley.

"I mean you're almost murdered at your job; how do you recover from that? But the amazing ability she has to be at the point she is ... she's a great teacher whose kids love her. As principal, that's what you're looking for," Smiley said.

And Gilbert's response as a teacher isn't the only thing to look for in this story. For the full picture shows a district that had plans in place for dealing with the unimaginable. And it had teachers - like Mike Gannon, the first to come to Gilbert's rescue, and others - who could implement them even under the most traumatic of circumstances.

Beyond that, they also show a staff committed to continuing to search for protections against even the most unpredictable acts of violence. John Heiderscheidt, U-46's security expert, emphasizes how the Gilbert attack made him look for "gaps" and "weaknesses" in the district's security, and "invigorated and motivated me to make sure that our training message is more specific and practical ..."

There is plenty in the Gilbert story to leave us railing against the capriciousness of life and the mindless violence that sometimes marks our time.

But it's not capriciousness and mindless violence that defines us. It is how we respond to them - and, as Gilbert and her colleagues at U-46 have shown, that is often with dignity, strength and determination.

Therein has Gilbert's gift provided a lesson valuable not just to her students but to us all.