Candy and Hats Won't Bring Them Back

It's National Teacher Appreciation Day, and my school has this whole week as Teacher Appreciation Week. I very much appreciate the pizza, candy, baseball hats, drawings, and cancelled meetings that I've been showered with this week. It's nice to hear 'thank you'. But this isn't about that. It's about what happened hundreds of miles away, this time in Colorado. Another school shooting, another evening of "thoughts and prayers", and another round of disturbing images of young children with their hands on their heads, trying desperately to get out of their schools alive. At least one student lost their life today, and many students and staff will go back to school with trauma no one should have to experience.

It happens too often

I can't keep track of all the school shootings that have happened since I've been teaching. It's only my fourth year, and already the tragedies all blend together. That's not to take away from the immense loss each one represents, but simply to highlight how frequent these events have become. Wikipedia lists 10 school shootings so far in 2019 in the United States. How can we possibly focus on learning when any day it could be our school, our students?

Nothing has changed

I vividly remember the Sandy Hook shootings, as it was the first school shooting with major media coverage while I was in college as a music education major. There was hope after Sandy Hook, hope that something would finally be done about the easy access to guns that had allowed this tragedy to happen. And there were minor improvements to at least give the illusion of safety. But the dozens of school shootings since have still happened. And every time, we get the same thoughts and prayers of politicians with no real action. By doing nothing, lawmakers have shown that the right to possess a weapon no one in modern America reasonably needs is more valuable than a child's life, a teacher's life, or the mental health of a nation of school children.

It is not normal

The kindergarten teachers I work with have a charming story about a moose about why we practice Shelter in Place and Enhanced Evacuation/active shooter drills. But the reality is so much more sinister, and even my young students are often aware of this. I've had students ask if they would get in trouble if they ran past the edge of the school property if there was someone chasing them with a gun. Kids are often still visibly shaken hours after a drill, because they know what they're practicing for. In an education system when kids are challenged to understand why they're learning something, they get it: they're being asked to learn how to stay alive in case the worst happens.

Real change is needed

I'd give up a lifetime of teacher appreciation gifts and food for the assurance that no more students will die in school. That we'll never see kids being rushed out of a school by police, or kids mourning their friends who didn't make it out. Until thoughts and prayers turn into action and policy, teachers are not appreciated. They're expendable, and so are students. Appreciate teachers by asking your elected leaders to pass common-sense gun control regulation, and do more than pray that this will never happen again.