We were parked on the freeway, stuck in construction traffic, so I reached for my phone. I wasn’t at school; we were on our way back from U of M hospital and James was already on his phone, looking at Google’s suggestions for alternative routes around the delay. I read two text messages and then saw the notification pop up on my phone. It must have alerted him as well, because I had hardly even read the headline before I heard him say, “Don’t read it. Just put your phone down.”
At that point, the news only knew that three children had died as well as one adult, and that was all of the headline I read before I comprehended his warning and set my phone back on the dash. This was not the first time he had tried to protect me from knowing about a school shooting. And as I sat in the driver’s seat, remembering how many have occurred in my memory, I prayed to God Himself that this would please, please be the last.
Many in my generation (and certainly others) cite the twin towers as our “Where were you when…” moment. And while I remember that day vividly, it does not provoke the same deeply emotional – tangible – response in me as the memory of where I was when I heard about Sandy Hook. James warned me that day, too. He had texted me while I was teaching my second graders, saying only, “Don’t read the news. Don’t even look.” But whispers abound in the teacher’s lounge and despite trying to wait until I was home to absorb what had happened at that elementary school in 2012, I knew just enough that I struggled to get through the rest of my day, just enough that I kept hugging the kids, just enough that I kept looking at my classroom bathroom and wondering if I could, in fact, fit all of us in there if I had to.
Maybe that’s what makes this different to me. Maybe, if these shootings, these absolute massacres, happened repeatedly in gas stations, or retail stores, or corporate offices, or wherever everyone else works, maybe they would understand what it is like to be a teacher in these moments. We don’t just read about the event, we don’t just watch it on TV, we feel it in our very bones.
I was awake late into the night last night and early again this morning. I cannot shake the tragedy. I cannot make myself stop thinking about it. I absolutely ache for those parents, those families, those teachers. But my mind also keeps running over and over and over and over the unknowable variables and how I would try to protect my students. This morning I just kept thinking about how I would get my students out the windows. I ran it over and over and over and as I pulled in to school, I was sobbing because I know that no matter how much I think about it, no matter how much I analyze and prepare, no matter how many goddamn “inside threat” drills we run, we can never ever prepare ourselves for these situations. They are unthinkable. The decisions the teachers in Texas had to make in a split second are unimaginable.
My entire day today was filled with such thoughts. There is no escape from it when you work in the same exact environment. And it is never, never once, about a fear of dying or a worry that I might get hurt, or anger that my life could be taken by such senseless violence. It is always and will always be an absolute immeasurable panic that despite training and drills and conversations and thinking- endlessly analyzing- I could never possibly protect all those beloved children in my care from such trauma. And that thought haunts me.
I came home tonight and sat with my husband out by our garden, overlooking the pond. We talked about this and that and all the frustrating things going on in our lives that we cannot control and it wasn’t until later that I finally let all the tears roll and cried while I tried to explain, again, how helpless and terrified I feel that this keeps happening. By quick count there have been 14 mass shootings at K-12 schools since Columbine, killing nearly 200 students. I do not know how to live in a world where this happens. I do not mean this as hyperbole. I genuinely do not know how to live in a country where the answers are too political to ever become solutions. Where our children’s safety is less of a concern than the individual right to bear automatic weapons.
Despite the fact that I teach fourth graders, ten year-olds are still afraid of tornadoes and the thought of fire burning down the building. Each and every time we have these drills, I show the kids the cinder block walls, the multiple layers of walls between us and a tornado, the special windows that won’t shatter, the fact that the room couldn’t burn if it wanted to. I tell them every time, “Believe me, if there’s a tornado or a fire, I want to be right here. This is the safest place to be for a fire or tornado!” But, when we do drills for any kind of human threat, I know I cannot make that promise. I cannot tell them that school is the safest place to be. We can talk about all the measures we have in place, and our district has many, many precautions and procedures and we continue to add and improve, but still. It only takes a headline like yesterday’s to remind me that despite all these steps, despite all the training, all the drills, we haven’t stopped the shootings.
And I have no idea how to face that reality anymore. How can I, when tomorrow, I will walk back into my fourth grade classroom, full of ten year-olds – just like Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas – just like Eva Mireles did on Tuesday. How can I not tangibly feel this tragedy? How do any of us let this be a reality any longer?
Teaching at 3am 