There are a multitude of moments in one’s life where you have the inevitable realization of how overwhelmingly desensitized you have become to the immense peril the world surrounding you is in. You are quick to come to a rash and rather upsetting conclusion to become angry at yourself because you are at the very least, a decent person, and you think to yourself: “how in the world can I be so happy in my life, taking practically everything for granted, and caring so little about the tragedies occurring everywhere and everyday?”
Well, for starters, you must understand that you are not the only one who is inclined to feel like this, so many of us are. We have moments where we watch the news or those tragic films that are based on a true story and we feel so undeniably helpless that we remain speechless awhile or break down into a river of tears and wonder to ourselves how the world could possibly be this evil or how a person could do something so dehumanizing or violent or devastating to another human being (I often get this way every single time I watch "Schindler's List," don’t even get me started on the little girl in the red coat or the “I could’ve saved more” mental breakdown scene- my heart).
Our brains have this innate armor (I’m not a doctor, pardon my lack of knowledge on the technical terminology) that enables us to become desensitized to a large array of the tragedies in our world because if we truly felt all of that pain from every single awful thing we heard about, we wouldn’t survive, we are far too fragile and that much emotional pain would simply be too much.
Last Wednesday, February 21st, 2018, I felt that way. I was leaving my interpersonal communications class, trying to distract myself from how overwhelmed/stressed I am due to my insane amount of coursework by pondering my future as an educator, imagining the happy day in 2021 when I get my teaching license and my B.A., as is a good thing to do when you get the “why am I doing this?” feelings in college and you need to remember what exactly the light at the end of the tunnel is.
Then I received the text: “Don’t want to worry you, but the school has been on lockdown for the last hour and 15 minutes. I AM SAFE! Love you!”, from my mom, a paraprofessional. That certainly put a damper on my Wednesday. Turns out, a high school student who was inspired by the recent Florida school shooting had devised a plan to shoot up an unspecified school in the district my mom works in (all the schools are connected). The students spent about five hours in total on lockdown with FBI agents and local police personnel surrounding the buildings and it was hours before students and staff were granted access to food, water, and restrooms.
This initiated an agonizing sense of helplessness within me, but it also ignited a fire. I grew angry at the world, perhaps why I am so reflective now. This perhaps is the single most frightening thing about becoming a teacher in this era, the prospect that I might one day be faced by a situation where the lives of my students, innocent children who, because they are legally obligated to attend school, where they should feel comfortable and safe always, might be threatened or endangered in some way.
It sickens my heart beyond belief, beyond my ability to measure with words that this could be my reality if we can’t come together and make serious progress happen.
There are so many things we can do, so many ways we can better our society to make certain that no institution of learning in the United States ever experiences such turmoil again. Why is this situation, this same news story so commonplace now? We need to enact change, this cannot be a new reality. Students should be focused on discerning why objects in motion tend to stay in motion or the beauty of language in Shakespeare’s plays, not afraid to come to school because they could be killed or injured.
When I was elementary school-aged, bullying was perhaps the most prominent issue in schools, since then, we have implemented thousands of different programs, opportunities, and options to prevent bullying in our nation’s schools and we continue to improve upon it today, yet for some reason, we can’t take measures to end the threat of violence in them? In what world is that okay or does that make sense?
To the students and families all over who are fighting to fix this problem, never give up, keep fighting until you make change happen. And to those who are paying taxes to keep our schools up and running, do something so that your hard-earned tax money isn’t going into a school whose population might decrease because of tragedy, do something so you can be confident that your taxes are supporting safe schools where students can be enriched with the knowledge they need to become the leaders of tomorrow.
Your child could be my student someday, and I want them to always feel safe, comfortable, supported, and excited about learning not only in my classroom but in their school, and this will most likely be three and a half years from now...let’s make sure that this problem simply does not exist by then. #neveragain.
