On Wednesday, May 25, the secondary staff at the school where I work had our usual weekly meeting. We talked about how graduation went, sent our congratulations to a coworker who had just given birth to her son, and discussed the schedule for the last days of school. We talked about device check-in and who was keeping their laptops over the summer.
At last, the superintendent made a brief announcement. “Many of you are well aware,” he began, “of the shooting in Texas. The administration team will be meeting here after we’re finished to discuss putting out an email to parents.”
My mind was blank
There was a shooting in Texas? Where? When? Tuesday afternoon I’d been running around school trying to finish things up for the end of the year. That evening had been a whirlwind of emergency loads of laundry, soccer practice, and trying to make dinner.
Was the shooting at a school? It had to have been. Otherwise, why would our superintendent be talking about it? I looked around at my colleagues. Many of them were checking email or looking at their phones, getting ready to start their stressful day during the last week of school.
“We may have some students who are feeling some anxiety or fear, so just be aware of that. If students want to talk about it, just assure them that they’re safe. If anyone feels like a student is too upset to learn, please send them to the counselor.”
“Safe?” the social studies teacher next to me grumbled. “They had all the same security measures we do. Maybe even better.”
The bell rang, and everyone hurried off to their classrooms
As an instructional coach, I didn’t have a classroom to scurry to, so I hung back to talk to my principal.
“Hey, uh, so… our counselor isn’t here.” That was the coworker who had just had her baby. “Do you want me to sit in her office and try to help any kids who might need to talk about the shooting?”
“Yes, please. That’s a great idea, thank you,” my principal said.
So I set up shop in the counselor’s office, surrounded by soft chairs and comforting lighting. I left the door propped open and waited for what I thought would be the inevitable tide of our more sensitive students coming in to cry or talk. I rehearsed what I would say to them to try to bring a tiny bit of peace to their minds and hearts.
An hour went by. Two.
Nobody came
Eventually I packed up my stuff and returned to my office. Students were going about their day, excited for the end of school, cramming for their finals and hurrying to finish up papers and projects. I heard a few offhand comments about arming teachers, and that the event was “sad,” but that was it.
At the end of the day, as I was getting in my car, a sick wave of realization crashed through me. I had a moment to myself to really feel what was going on inside, and it was terror and chaos. I was gripped by a horrible knowledge that I couldn’t process.
There have been so many school shootings in this country, so close together, that everyone seems to have gone numb to them
Even many of our students, so young and just starting out in the world, have become completely desensitized to mass shootings, to the horrific deaths of children just like them.
Teachers, as well, seem to have accepted that they might be targeted for murder. We have embraced our helplessness, like these shootings are deadly storms created by our climate that no mortal can control or reliably predict. That they are simply forces of nature.
Let that sink in
Mass shootings in schools that leave dead children and teachers in their wake have seemingly become an accepted risk of existing in this country.
Then tell me again about your constitutional right to bear arms.
