Thoughts on a School Shooting

Luck. What else can you call it? What else could it be but luck that day that I survived the LCO school shooting yet twenty children did not survive the Sandy Hook shooting? I, who have lived years beyond their own young lives. Lives that are now shortened with futures unfulfilled. It must be luck.

It’s what I think now as I get messages from people telling me that they are thinking about me. It’s difficult not to imagine how things could have turned out so very differently three and half years ago when you see the worse case scenario splashed across every news station. I can’t help but think that I survived for some reason. A reason that I may run out of time to fulfill. As if it will be taken away if I don’t use it the right way. Survivor’s guilt, I suppose. But how else do you explain the lives of twenty beautiful, innocent children being taken, but not my own.

Ashamed. As I watched my social media feed fill up Friday with debates on everything from gun control to God in our schools, this is what I felt as the shooting played out on television. On the very same day of a terrible tragedy, political rants began. A day when the only thought that should have occurred was mourning for the loss of the innocent lives to the evilness that lived in the heart of one individual. Instead of an outpouring of support for the victims, my social media “friends” argued over whether or not if teachers were armed, would the deaths have been prevented.

No one backing down from his or her point of view, of course. No listening to each other. Just the refusal to give up or give in.

Truth. When bad things happen, we search for reasons why. Our hearts and minds need a reason as comfort. Each person finds their reason based on what they perceive to be wrong in the world. I tell myself that everything happens for a reason, but even I have difficulty finding reason in the death of all those innocent children.

When tragedies such as this occur, we look to blame someone or something. But the issues around incidents like this are polarizing. Everyone refusing to budge. Gun activists cite the second amendment and those for gun control cite incidents like these to support stricter control. Both having valid arguments, but arguments that are also flawed. The constitution hasn’t always been right. If it was, only white men would still be able to vote. The writers of our constitution could not fathom guns being used to commit mass murder of innocent children. But then again, if gun laws are stricter does that mean they aren’t available? Of course not. Drugs are illegal, but people still use them. Making something illegal doesn’t make it go away. It makes it more valuable.

And then there is the God argument. The argument being that God is not in our public schools. But isn’t He? My students say the pledge each morning: “One nation under God.” They have the opportunity to pray at weekly BASIC meetings. They carry their faith with them wherever they go in our school. It doesn’t leave them as they enter our halls to be picked up when they exit the building. It is part of who they are. Do we teach religion? No. But isn’t it also our constitutional right to have freedom of religion? The freedom to practice whatever religion we please and not be forced to learn about whatever the dominant religion is? It doesn’t mean that the students’ beliefs aren’t acknowledged or present when they are in the halls and classrooms of our school.

I’ve seen many of my social media “friends” contradict themselves by claiming it’s their constitutional right to have firearms, and then claim that what we need in schools is God. These are both constitutional rights. Who gets to decide which one of our constitutional rights is more important?

Guilt. This is what we should feel. Because of our polarity, our unwilling to cross the divide of our own opinions, nothing changes and more incidents continue to happen.

What changed after the LCO school shooting? Only the locks of all our classroom doors. They automatically lock now. But teachers and students become frustrated waiting for them to be opened, so they leave cracks in them. Cracks where bad things can get in.

Because time passes and people forget why that little detail of an open door matters.

It’s easy for some, I imagine. For our mental health, we wrap ourselves in a bubble and convince ourselves that tragedy only occurs elsewhere. Until incidents like Sandy Hook happen and we are confronted by the reality that violence can happen to anyone. But then the same media we blame for publicizing it stops covering the tragedy, and we let it go. It becomes a reference and a statistic. Something too difficult to believe possible again.

Hope. Personally, I don’t blame the gun that fired at me or a school that doesn’t teach religion or the fact that my door didn’t lock. I don’t blame the media or video games or bullying.

It comes down to a person who made a choice. In each of us there is good and evil. We are all capable of so much more than we believe possible, in good ways and in ways that are terrible.

There is wrong in the world and none of the blame we throw around faces the fact that the terribleness does exist inside of people. And the solution to that does not fall under our constitution or in our social media debates or any of the other places that we seek to blame and divide ourselves. It falls under our ability to love and reach out to one another. Hostility and hate and denial will not deliver the changes our schools or even the world need.

But I hope that what is clear to us is that the tragedies will not go away unless we do things differently. There is a of favorite quote of mine that says that if you always do what you’ve always done, than you will always get what you have always gotten.

We can’t afford to keep doing the same things. What’s at stake, the lives of our children, is too high.

Thirty Eight Seconds

On May 18, 2009, a student walked into my classroom brandishing a gun and spouting profanity at a classroom full of seventh graders. The clock on my podium blinked 8:52, and it was the middle of my first period class. Until that moment, I’d been thrilled how the end of school was going, and that the students loved their end of year projects.

Thirty-eight seconds can feel like a lifetime, and even after when I was asked how long he remained in my room, I said a few minutes, for we’d like to believe that the events that alter the course of our lives at least amount to minutes, if not hours or days. How could it only be seconds?

In the seconds he remained in my room, not a single student moved. Their innocent and fearful eyes remained on me, waiting for me to show them what to do. I stared at this pale teenage boy in camouflage shorts, and thought that this had to be some security drill, for how could it possibly be real? My mind formed a loop of It can’t be real…Is this real? It can’t be real…

He yelled and cursed and told us to get down, but his words were background noise. I stared at that gun and thought it had to be a toy. Didn’t it look fake? Wasn’t it something to be bought in the toy department? When he attempted to shoot at the dry erase board and the gun didn’t fire, my brain offered it up as proof that it wasn’t real. When he played with the gun’s safety feature, I actually shifted from behind the podium considering a motion to move forward, but then he turned the gun on me.

I gave him one of my looks. My students called it “you’ve really said something stupid” look. I taught seventh graders and used the look often. They’d always back track and correct themselves. I waited for him to laugh, to say that it was a hoax. For how could this be real? He told me to pray to Marilynn Manson which made it even more unbelievable, since I had long stopped praying to anybody. Why would I need to pray for a hoax?

It wasn’t until the gun fired and plaster splattered through the air onto me and the students near me, that my brain wavered in its conviction that it was some elaborate safety drill or prank.

I whipped around to see the gaping chunk of plaster missing, and my brain stopped all thoughts, everything became sharper. The disgusted sound he’d muttered after, the stroll to the back of the class, his attempt to take another student from the room with him. Though I couldn’t speak through the paralysis that had overtaken me, I maintained eye contact with my student, pleading with my eyes for him not to go. My students looked to me, and I was powerless to stop whatever might happen at that moment, in what felt like eternity, but was only seconds.

In the thirty-eight seconds he remained in my room, fear never overcame me. Fear required time to think, and it was during the walk to the door he’d left open behind him as he ran out where fear coursed through me. I needed to lock that door, but what if he returned before I made it to the door? What if he waited for me on the other side?

The hours that followed in that darkened classroom were what I thought were the longest of my life. I was wrong.

Inside those four walls each person in that room had seen the same incident. We were relieved to be unharmed, and we didn’t judge how anyone reacted in the aftermath. We could laugh and not worry what the outside world would say upon our exit.

There was a brief moment during those hours, that the fear nearly gripped me. The bullet had ricocheted off the wall and landed near the feet of a student. When he handed me the bullet with shaking fingers and fear clouding his brown eyes, I held it in the palm of my hand and shook with the realization that it had been meant for me. But even then, I didn’t have time to give into fear because my students called to me, needing reassurance that it was over, that he wasn’t coming back. They needed me to be strong. I would not give into fear. Though I have qualms about what I could have done differently, I’ll always know that I showed them how to exhibit strength and calmness during a crisis.

Fear did not come until I was separated from my students. When I was removed from everyone and had to watch children being evacuated with their hands in the air with SWAT looking down from the school’s roof. When I had to watch his sister being told about her brother. When others gave me looks of sympathy. That’s when I took deep breaths and told myself that I wasn’t going to cry. It had happened to me at my school, but I sat there unharmed and my students were okay. After my interview with the detectives and the Sheriff, I was given the choice to remain alone or return to my students. I returned to my students. Calmness could return when I could look in their faces and see that they were still okay. It meant that I could be okay, too.

During the interview, one of the detectives told me that I could go home and curl up in a ball and cry. I didn’t. I generally only spark with anger when upset, refusing to give into tears. It wasn’t until the Saturday morning six days later, when I received a call that the student had died from his self-inflicted gunshot wound, that I cried.

I didn’t understand my tears that day, because the only emotion I’d allowed into my self-imposed numbness was anger. Anger that it had happened to me. I felt raw and vulnerable. Two emotions that I never allowed myself.

It wasn’t until months later, when no one asked how I was doing anymore, that I understood the tears. He’d died, and I’d never know why. If he’d believed I was a bad teacher, had treated him unfairly, had spoken unkind words then I could find a reason in the randomness. A reason that I’d done something that I should have been punished for. But I didn’t know him or ever teach him. I didn’t even know if he was a student at our school the day he walked into my classroom. I’ll never know why he chose me except for my proximity to the restroom, which seems insignificant for the life changing effects of how that incident has affected me.

Most people thought I wouldn’t return to teaching. Most people who know me know that I never planned on being a life-long teacher. Sheer will and a need to be there for any student who returned to my class propelled me to school the next day. Eleven of the twenty-three returned to my class the next day. Sheer determination kept me returning for the remaining two weeks of school as one by one they returned to me searching for assurances. I believed I’d be okay.

Then a new school year dawned, and I had to begin anew with a group of students that I didn’t know, all strangers like the shooter had been. That first day felt like my first year of teaching even after eleven years. I searched their faces, wondering about the thoughts behind those faces. Could I trust them? What pain did they hide from the world?

Luckily, I had a wonderful group of students who taught me just as much as I taught them. Most days I could enter my classroom and focus on what mattered, and that was being the person who listened when they needed me to, and taught them to open their eyes to the world through literature and writing. Most importantly, they taught me that I still wanted to be a teacher .

Most days I can pretend I’m safe, as long as I avoid the stairs, as long as my door is locked, as long as the lights don’t go off, and the list goes on. It’s a delicate balance that I hope one day to forget that I’m walking.

At the beginning of a new school year, I was always thrilled for the chance to start fresh. Now I can’t wait until I know my students, and my fears can rest as I walk into my classroom.

A student will always ask. Some brave soul who’s heard rumors about the shooting and has courage enough to want to know the truth. I’ll always be honest, but I’m also the teacher. If we don’t open the eyes of the people who can change things, we may not prevent it from happening again.

Because as my son said, “If he didn’t hurt anyone, then he didn’t deserve to die.” Maybe next time that someone will know to ask for help if he/she knows someone is listening, and that’s all we can ask for.