It Doesn’t Have to be This Way

My kids on their first day of Middle School and High School.

It has been a busy week. I have been pulled in about 25 different directions, with pretty much every part of my day planned down to the minute. I was looking forward to today. It was the one day of the week where my schedule was light. I finally had time to sit and write my blog….one of my favorite things to do.

I had a relaxing morning all planned for myself. I woke up early before my family and did a nice workout as I watched the sun rise. I got everyone up, prepared breakfast, and even took a minute to watch out the window as my kids walked down the street to the bus stop. I very rarely have time to watch them when they don’t know I’m looking. I don’t know why I love to do that sometimes….I enjoy getting a glimpse of them in their “natural habitat.”

I poured myself a nice cup of coffee and went to take a shower before I sat down to begin my day. While I was getting ready for my shower, I heard voices downstairs. So I went to check it out.

When I got there, I found a friend of mine visibly shaking and on the verge of tears. My husband was talking on the phone with my son (that I just watched walk to the bus stop).

I was confused. What was going on?

An active shooter alarm had just gone off at our local high school. My friend, also a teacher there, heard the alarm, saw the police cars, escaped from the building, and came home. Both she and my husband were trying to get a hold of the kids on the bus to tell the driver to NOT go to the high school for morning arrival. My husband was talking to my son, a freshman at the school that was currently being surrounded by our local police.

I immediately got a text from my daughter, who although is a middle school student, rides the same bus with high schoolers. She texted, “Is everything OK? What’s going on?”

Immediately I got on the phone with her to tell her that things weren’t safe at the high school and to help get the bus driver to stop the bus. My son was already on it, bravely standing up, telling the driver what he knew, and asking her to stop the bus.

I was in shock.

My kids were confused.

My friend was scared.

All I could do was hug my friend and wait. I knew my kids were OK. I knew that the entire bus of students they were riding with weren’t going to walk into danger. 

But worry set in.

Was everyone at the high school OK?

I wanted to cry but I couldn’t.

I felt stuck.

I felt numb.

I just wouldn’t let my brain imagine what was happening inside the high school at that moment.

Although it felt like a lot longer, I think it was only a few minutes that passed with all of these big, unpleasant, and high energy emotions running through me. I immediately felt relief when, on the phone with the kids, I heard the bus driver announce that the active shooter alarm was not real.

It was a false alarm.

When we got a confirmation email a few moments later that an alarm had accidentally been triggered, I felt relief wash through me.

No one with a gun was hunting children and teachers in our local school.

Every single person involved in today’s incident was OK.

Thank God.

But my friend was still shaking and now she had to go back to school and go on with her day. The kids that were at school early that morning for AP testing had to put their feelings aside so they could do their best. My kids had to walk into their school with a new understanding that this can happen to them at any time. And even though I’m sure they already knew that, it became very real to them….and to me….

False alarm or not.

I feel like active shooting tragedies happen daily around the world. I don’t watch the news anymore because I just can’t bear to see it. Everytime I watch these tragedies and heartbreaks unfold on TV, it becomes too real. It feeds my anxious fears and I just won’t allow that to happen. So now I choose what I want to read, not watch. I’m not putting on blinders….I’m just deciding where I want to focus my energy and I’d rather read my news than watch it happen before my eyes. It is the exact reason why I’d rather not watch scary movies. 

I am well aware of every single school shooting that has happened in the last 20+ years since I’ve been in education. Back in 2000 when I started my career, I was only 22 years old. I started teaching in Los Angeles, California, just a few months after the attacks at Columbine High School. My first year of teaching and I was already aware and on alert that my school could be attacked. This fear became real when I experienced my first (and only) real lock down. 

Our classrooms were connected in pairs and in separate buildings connected by an outdoor hallway. We learned through a phone call to our classrooms, that there was an active shooter in the neighborhood and because most of our school “building” was outside, we were asked to lock the doors to our classrooms. At this point, lockdown drills weren’t quite a “thing” yet, we didn’t carry cell phones like we do today, and we weren’t totally sure what to do. Was this real? Should I be worried?

There wasn’t a shooter on our school grounds, but they were close. So we locked down. There was no way for kids to use the bathroom. We didn’t have any access to our lunches. And we were locked in our classrooms from about 10am until 4pm, well past dismissal, when they finally apprehended the active shooter. 

Six hours with about 50 kids and two teachers. All of us were scared. I couldn’t even imagine how my students’ parents felt. We could hear helicopters, police cars, and gunshots. There was no way we were going to go on “business as usual” while all of that was going on outside our doors. 

So we got creative. We braided our hair. We ate the snacks and water that we all had in our classrooms in case of an earthquake. We played games and read books. We turned on music to drown out the sounds from around the neighborhood. And when we needed to use the bathroom, we set up a boys and girls bucket in our closets to use if needed. We did our best to make this really awful situation feel “normal.”

That’s not OK.

It is not normal for teachers to lock their students with them in a classroom with active shooting happening outside their door.

When we were told we could leave, staff and students were all escorted by police officers from the school grounds so that we felt assured that we were safe to get home. I remember the police officer asking me if I was OK. I honestly answered, “yes” because I thought I was….

It wasn’t until I got home and pulled into my driveway that I started to shake. It was the shake of adrenaline leaving my body. I was holding it together all day for my students and I didn’t allow myself to admit that I was scared.

I was 22 years old, across the country from my family, and afraid of my job.

It didn’t have to be that way.

I cried a lot that night. I remember drawing myself a warm bath and bawling my eyes out. I was crying as a way to process my fear, but also as a way to express my relief. I told myself I was OK. My students were OK. And the “bad guy” was gone.

So I showed up the next day, and the day after that. I went through the rest of my time in that position carrying a little bit of fear everytime I stepped on campus.

Would it happen again?

Would I hear gunshots?

Would there be another lockdown?

Fast forward twelve years later…….

The Virginia Tech Massacre had already happened (about 5 years before). During those twelve years, not only did I see countless news stories about school violence, but I continued my career despite it all. I taught health, fourth grade, and fifth grade in three schools and two different states. I moved back towards home, got married, and was pregnant with my second child. People talked about having teachers carry guns for safety. Schools were installing metal detectors at the doors. A lot was happening in my world and a lot had changed! 

During the 2012-2013 school year, I was sitting in an IEP meeting when an alert went off on my phone. There news was breaking that an active shooter at a school in Connecticut called Sandy Hook Elementary School.

I was an elementary school teacher and this was very real to me. I remembered how it felt to lockdown in Los Angeles twelve years prior. I was glued to the news, crying along with the families that were interviewed. And worrying that this just became way too real for me….for the world. 

That was not OK.

It didn’t have to be like this.

It took me 10 years before I could read Scarlett Lewis’s book called Nurturing Healing Love. She is an incredible woman who lost her son Jesse in the Sandy Hook school shooting. She now runs the “Choose Love Movement,” that I follow very closely. She took her grief and turned it into something that her son would want everyone to do….to choose love rather than hate. And she’s encouraging schools, educators, and students to do exactly that. I am in awe of this woman and I hope to meet her someday.

Through every single year that I taught in a public school classroom, we learned about lockdown drills. They changed several times as law enforcement learned about the best ways to save and protect lives through every school shooting tragedy the world experienced throughout the years. 

Every single year, I practiced with my young students what to do if someone was trying to kill us.

I locked the door.

I drew the shades.

I asked the kids to be quiet.

I listened to police in the hallway practicing with us, stomping their big boots, and jiggling our doors loudly to make sure we did our jobs and locked the doors.

I told the kids to have something nearby to throw at an intruder if they got into our classroom somehow.

But you know what? The whole time, I knew perfectly well that I wouldn’t sit in my classroom with these kids if I heard gunshots in the building. I would get the heck out of that school as fast as I could and we would run.

I told the kids we would run to the neighbors.

I promised them I would do my best to get them to safety.

A promise that I wasn’t totally sure I could keep.

Today, my friend did exactly that. She was alone in her classroom when the alarm sounded so she ran for her life and she came to my house to be sure her child and my children were safe. She got the heck out of a building that she thought contained someone that would try to kill her.

And today, I felt helpless because I couldn’t be totally sure that I could keep my kids safe. I thought my children were on the way to a place that I imagined contained someone that would try to kill them.

I am grateful it was a false alarm. There wasn’t an active shooter. No one was hurt or killed. I wouldn’t be that person that was interviewed on the news, recounting the fear I felt for my kids and my community. I wouldn’t attend funerals for teachers, friends, students, or friends. My life and the lives of those around me didn’t change forever.

We got an email shortly after the incident, assuring families that the school was safe and it was only a “false alarm.”

The email said….

“There is no cause for concern.”

But I do feel concerned. I feel concerned that we live in a world where we have fear about sending our kids to school. I have concerns that a life-changing alarm was accidentally triggered, sending kids, parents, and teachers into a justifiable panic. I feel concerned that I am being told not to feel concerned!

But then the email went on to say….

“The incident occured before the start of the school day, and there were very few students in the building.”

Does it matter how many people experienced this fear? Those few students, educators, and staff mean something! No matter how many people are involved, they are loved by parents, friends, grandparents, community members….and they matter! I also feel concerned about that statement.

And finally, the email ended with….

“We anticipate the remainder of the day will proceed as normal.”

….as normal. 

Those “few” students and faculty members were very shaken. My friend literally ran for her life. My kids felt scared when my husband and I called them to tell them that there was an active shooter at the high school. 

There is nothing “normal” about that.

How about we work to process the emotions that we may have felt about this “unfortunate incident?” Nothing about that was mentioned in the email. Nothing was expressed about the collective trauma that may have been felt among the school community. There was no assurance that our kids and their teachers would be taken care of if they went through the school day feeling upset in any way. I was lucky that I could sit here, write my blog, and express my emotions in a healthy way. I gave myself time to do that!

But my kids and my friend and the rest of our local high school?

They were sitting in classrooms trying to teach and learn, no matter what transpired that morning.

They weren’t given time to process their emotions.

Life just went on as “normal.”

It didn’t have to be this way.

We need to do better……for our kids, our families, and our communities. Imagine a world where we don’t feel scared to send our kids to school? Imagine a world where we didn’t have to make promises to our children and students that we aren’t sure we can keep? 

We need to teach the world that their emotions matter. We need to stop minimizing our unpleasant feelings….telling each other that we shouldn’t be concerned and expressing that we just need to get back to normal. We have to stop telling ourselves not to feel. It isn’t human. We are meant to feel emotion! And in order to feel the pleasant emotions, we need to be given time to move through the unpleasant ones.

Emotions are the one thing that connects all of us no matter where we were raised, our income, our heritage, or the color of our skin. We all feel angry at times. We all feel ashamed. We all feel scared. But we have to stop using our emotions as weapons and excuses for our behavior. And we need to stop dismissing our emotions so that we can “move on.”

Because I’ll tell you what….none of us are moving on! And the actions in today’s world are evidence of that.

None of this is “normal.”

And it doesn’t have to be this way.