First, I am holding you in my heart. I applaud your ability to channel all this into fierce words and your ability to keep showing up for the kids. As a parent, I know teachers like you are what my child of 18 shows up for at school. He has to surrender his phone, go through a metal detector, have his bag and person searched to start every day. I never wanted showing up at school to be an act of courage for my kid or his teachers. I never wanted it to feel even more like a prison. He is different than his sibling a decade older and different than us. I believe Covid and a school career based in fear and profit for testing agencies and gun makers has educated him in ways only teachers like you can really understand. He wants to help people when he graduates. He wants to be the person who is in control of a dangerous situation and who can fix it. I cannot help but wonder how much of that comes from a lifetime of feeling like he has no real control or real sense of safety in that public space. Thanks for all you do and for sharing this.
Thank you so much for reading and commenting, Emily. It's so heavy for us as adults, and I don't know how kids like your son (and my kids not far behind him) have absorbed this in such formative years. So interesting that you have metal detectors and searches in your community. We do not have that yet, and part of me - like you said - hates the idea of a prison-like atmosphere. But then when something like this happens, I don't even care about any of that and just want to be safe. I think a lot lately about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Education only works when that bottom of the triangle is stable. How can they even learn in a world like this?
I really have no words that are an appropriate response to the raw emotional power of your little box, opened. I just want to squeeze your hand and say “I see you—and your students and the little tiny children.” We, as a people, have failed, utterly, in a most basic cornerstone for a civilization—to protect and nurture our children. But you have not failed. You have persevered despite grave risk and continued chronic trauma. Thank you.
This comment made my eyes well up, Stephanie. Thank you for this -- for hearing what I had to say and recognizing what teachers are facing everyday and what it takes to keep going.
It takes more than I have, absolutely. It's like going to a war zone. Since reading your piece I've realized I need to do more, and have signed up with Everytown for Gun Safety (https://www.everytown.org) I found myself reflecting why I hadn't done this sooner and realized that every school shooting is another traumatic event. We are all numb with terror. Reading your piece somehow broke through and inspired action on my part. I am in your debt.
Thank you for adding the link to the Every Town.. I’ve not heard of it before but now that I know, I know. AND, now I have a responsibility to act on that particular knowledge. The worry never ends…my own kids got out of high school in 2000 and 2004 and I thought (foolishly) they would be safer at college. Now I have elementary grand girls that I can barely stand the mere thought of something like this happening to them. Maybe that’s what’s keeping many of us from action like joining forces with the group you mentioned. Fear can be paralyzing. We have to move. I have to move. If I’m not a part of the solution I’m part of the problem. Onward, soldiers. My gratitude and respect to Katie Mitchell and ALL of you who have joined this conversation.
Thank you for reading and for sharing, Sara. I considered forwarding it to them soon after I wrote it, but then I got busy with teaching and mothering and all the things. This essay really felt like I was just crying into the void, so to speak. I'm grateful to see it resonating with so many people on Substack and to know that I was heard.
This hit me really hard. It’s one of the best, most powerfully written pieces I’ve ever read. But writing aside, it’s just…gutting that it has to be said at all. My eldest is a second grader and the first day she came home from kindergarten and told me about their code red drill, I cried.
Thank you for this, Sarah. I can't believe we are doing this to little ones, the constant feeling of threat and what that must do to our nervous systems both individually and collectively. It's so hard. Thank you for reading and for sharing with others.
It’s almost as though we are teaching our children to compartmentalize. As a former first grade teacher who retired just before Sandy Hook, I remember being completely gutted by that event. Every school shooting guts me but I know what you mean when you say it’s the posture of the boy or the age of the child (yes the “gunman” is a child himself) that triggers the unraveling, the opening of the box that we can no longer shut. Thank you for articulating all this so honestly.
We are teaching them to compartmentalize for sure which, as we all know, can only take you so far before it breaks down and overflows - or the body keeps the score and the fear you compartmentalized manifests in other ways. Is it any wonder these kids have sky-rocketing rates of anxiety?
This was such a touching article. Thank you for being so vulnerable and for sharing what this feels like for you. I really resonate with the way we keep our grief locked into a “little locked box” and it escapes sometimes, and then we pack it down again instead of taking right action to express the dream of a better world. You have inspired me.
Sometimes we have to pack it all back in the box to move on with our day and the business at hand. But it's always there underneath it all. I'm so glad this resonated with you, and thank you for reading.
Katie - this exploded like a bomb from your little locked box. Thankyou for bravely writing - you clearly show the truth of this poor world.
Here in Oz - we don’t have the guns. We stand on our soapboxes and self-righteously look down our noses at USA gun laws and lawmakers.
But we have the same problems.
Here the kids use fists / knives / steal cars. Here disadvantage speaks the same. Looks the same.
And ideologies prey on the vulnerable.
I hear you Katie - I applaud your bravery - in turning up at work, in thinking, in writing, and in parenting.
And I also hold you in my heart.
And hope that this world can find its way out of the mess of rampant capitalism - where money and power cruelly trump compassion day after day. Where people seek escape however they can find it.
Thank you for this, Sarah. Fists and knives and stealing cars sound far less frightening than our news reel here, but you are right that it's all the same root cause. Thank you for reading on the other side of the world and sharing my work and commenting here.
I asked my fifth grader if they’d had an active shooter drill yet this school year. “Oh yeah, of course. We know to break the window, look out for glass, and jump out of the intruder is inside. Otherwise we will hide in [teacher’s] closet. But we won’t all fit, so I don’t know what we’d do then.”
I hate how “common” this has all become. Thank you for writing this.
katie- thank you for your request to read this essay. There were active shooter drills that I had to be a part of implementing when I worked in college mental health. I hated them and found them terrifying, not to mention that our students with trauma histories were really undone by these drills. So, I am no stranger to these scenarios. There were a few public safety incidences involving gunmen on our campus while I worked there. My own children are 20 and 23 so I didn't hear much about the drills when they were little. I am parenting my 4 yo granddaughter and as I read your essay I had a moment of panic about her being unsafe. Even given my experience at the university level, I had not thought about the day to day experience of todays youth and educators regarding the constant sense of threat. My little one has so much trauma, a safety drill would put her right over the edge. I combed our public schools website to find any information on drills. There was a bare mention of it accompanied by the short powerpoint they show the kids before the drill about having to hide, be silent and then the principal says its over and they can go back to having fun. No acknowledgement that this is terrifying for all involved or any mention of what they are doing to keep students and teachers safe. I am really grateful for this vulnerable piece. I can't imagine walking into that environment every day as a teacher and I am now wondering how children learn in an environment where they are being told they may have to hide from a "bad person" who is trying to hurt them and their friends. I consider myself an empathic person so have given school safety a lot of thought however your essay helped me to imagine feeling threatened every day. It's an awful feeling.
I applaud this writing, heart, and bravery, Katie — to dig deep and paint a very clear compelling picture that is heart wrenching, really? 'Close the box, move and, and pretend it has not happened and will not happen.' A relatable and transferable story. Thank you!
I think your box is a perfect metaphor for how we compartmentalize because we must or we would completely break down, unable to move, to parent, to teach, to be. I also understand how compartmentalizing that way over and over again takes its own toll and finally doesn’t work anymore.
I appreciate that you offer the stories inside you as a teacher, and from your students without moving to any simple solutions, since there aren’r any. That story of the kindergartener in the bathroom will haunt me as to students carrying their dying teacher.
Thank you for your vulnerability and braveness and sharing it so the box too . Finally, I love the rhythm of your writing in this prece. If this makes sense, it feels like you are carrying this grief along with you in a river.
Oh, Katie, this hit deeply home for me, a fellow school teacher. You’ve captured so eloquently many of own thoughts and feelings. Thank you for putting that out there. 🌷
As a teacher (also in Georgia) and a mother, I stand with you and am in awe of your eloquence and grit. The grief gets tucked away, but the truth will continue to echo in our hearts and minds until there is, at last, change.
Katie, this was beautiful, evocative and frightening, all at once. I reposted on my Facebook page and I hope that’s okay. And I hope you’re ok, too. Sincerely Dave Murray
Yes, that's ok to share it! I don't mind at all. I've been posting here on Substack to a small following, and this essay was just sort of an outpouring of grief in that moment when I needed to write it down. But I think so many people are oblivious to what it feels like to teach in this climate, so I'm grateful others are listening.
What a beautiful essay, thank you for your words. I feel as if this essay needs to go viral. It’s easy to get caught up in the political nonsense of guns and gun control but the humanistic effect needs to be felt by others. As a pediatric provider I agree with your assertion that adults are letting kids down. I often remind people that children have zero control over the context in which they are born and raised. Those children born into less fortunate circumstances really do need the power of schools and community to provide them role models, safety and opportunity. We all owe an enormous amount of gratitude to the teachers who so selflessly provide for children and who are very much on the front lines for children. I agree our society is judged on how we treat our children. Again, thank you for your words and my sincere hope is that we can change the conversation around guns and school safety without the solution of militarizing schools.
YES. Of course I just want to be safe, especially every time another shooting happens. But are metal detectors and no backpacks and increased police really the only solution? It changes the whole dynamic of the experience for kids. And teachers. Militarizing is the exact way to describe these solutions.
Katie, thank you for this exquisite writing. I just retired from classroom teaching after 29 years. The other day, I admitted to my husband that the one thing that I really will not miss is the constant worry that I would not be able to keep my students safe. As a theatre teacher, my last school classroom was the “crossroads” of our school. I taught in a large open multi-purpose space with windows on three sides located right next to the front entry. the building was locked with the security person at the front. Nevertheless, it was the first time in my teaching career that I always carried my keys on my body so that I could unlock the only the safe space, a storage room, for my students if they needed to hide from an armed intruder.
When I shared this same thought with my husband, he confided, “I worried about your safety every day.” Thanks for writing in a way that will help people to understand the stakes.
First, I am holding you in my heart. I applaud your ability to channel all this into fierce words and your ability to keep showing up for the kids. As a parent, I know teachers like you are what my child of 18 shows up for at school. He has to surrender his phone, go through a metal detector, have his bag and person searched to start every day. I never wanted showing up at school to be an act of courage for my kid or his teachers. I never wanted it to feel even more like a prison. He is different than his sibling a decade older and different than us. I believe Covid and a school career based in fear and profit for testing agencies and gun makers has educated him in ways only teachers like you can really understand. He wants to help people when he graduates. He wants to be the person who is in control of a dangerous situation and who can fix it. I cannot help but wonder how much of that comes from a lifetime of feeling like he has no real control or real sense of safety in that public space. Thanks for all you do and for sharing this.
Thank you so much for reading and commenting, Emily. It's so heavy for us as adults, and I don't know how kids like your son (and my kids not far behind him) have absorbed this in such formative years. So interesting that you have metal detectors and searches in your community. We do not have that yet, and part of me - like you said - hates the idea of a prison-like atmosphere. But then when something like this happens, I don't even care about any of that and just want to be safe. I think a lot lately about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Education only works when that bottom of the triangle is stable. How can they even learn in a world like this?
Yes- that hierarchy. They are learning, but not what is getting taught in the classroom.
I really have no words that are an appropriate response to the raw emotional power of your little box, opened. I just want to squeeze your hand and say “I see you—and your students and the little tiny children.” We, as a people, have failed, utterly, in a most basic cornerstone for a civilization—to protect and nurture our children. But you have not failed. You have persevered despite grave risk and continued chronic trauma. Thank you.
This comment made my eyes well up, Stephanie. Thank you for this -- for hearing what I had to say and recognizing what teachers are facing everyday and what it takes to keep going.
It takes more than I have, absolutely. It's like going to a war zone. Since reading your piece I've realized I need to do more, and have signed up with Everytown for Gun Safety (https://www.everytown.org) I found myself reflecting why I hadn't done this sooner and realized that every school shooting is another traumatic event. We are all numb with terror. Reading your piece somehow broke through and inspired action on my part. I am in your debt.
Thank you for adding the link to the Every Town.. I’ve not heard of it before but now that I know, I know. AND, now I have a responsibility to act on that particular knowledge. The worry never ends…my own kids got out of high school in 2000 and 2004 and I thought (foolishly) they would be safer at college. Now I have elementary grand girls that I can barely stand the mere thought of something like this happening to them. Maybe that’s what’s keeping many of us from action like joining forces with the group you mentioned. Fear can be paralyzing. We have to move. I have to move. If I’m not a part of the solution I’m part of the problem. Onward, soldiers. My gratitude and respect to Katie Mitchell and ALL of you who have joined this conversation.
I just forwarded your piece, Katie, to Everytown via their Instagram account. Your reflections are powerful and moving. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you for reading and for sharing, Sara. I considered forwarding it to them soon after I wrote it, but then I got busy with teaching and mothering and all the things. This essay really felt like I was just crying into the void, so to speak. I'm grateful to see it resonating with so many people on Substack and to know that I was heard.
This hit me really hard. It’s one of the best, most powerfully written pieces I’ve ever read. But writing aside, it’s just…gutting that it has to be said at all. My eldest is a second grader and the first day she came home from kindergarten and told me about their code red drill, I cried.
Thank you for this, Sarah. I can't believe we are doing this to little ones, the constant feeling of threat and what that must do to our nervous systems both individually and collectively. It's so hard. Thank you for reading and for sharing with others.
It’s almost as though we are teaching our children to compartmentalize. As a former first grade teacher who retired just before Sandy Hook, I remember being completely gutted by that event. Every school shooting guts me but I know what you mean when you say it’s the posture of the boy or the age of the child (yes the “gunman” is a child himself) that triggers the unraveling, the opening of the box that we can no longer shut. Thank you for articulating all this so honestly.
We are teaching them to compartmentalize for sure which, as we all know, can only take you so far before it breaks down and overflows - or the body keeps the score and the fear you compartmentalized manifests in other ways. Is it any wonder these kids have sky-rocketing rates of anxiety?
This was such a touching article. Thank you for being so vulnerable and for sharing what this feels like for you. I really resonate with the way we keep our grief locked into a “little locked box” and it escapes sometimes, and then we pack it down again instead of taking right action to express the dream of a better world. You have inspired me.
Sometimes we have to pack it all back in the box to move on with our day and the business at hand. But it's always there underneath it all. I'm so glad this resonated with you, and thank you for reading.
Katie - this exploded like a bomb from your little locked box. Thankyou for bravely writing - you clearly show the truth of this poor world.
Here in Oz - we don’t have the guns. We stand on our soapboxes and self-righteously look down our noses at USA gun laws and lawmakers.
But we have the same problems.
Here the kids use fists / knives / steal cars. Here disadvantage speaks the same. Looks the same.
And ideologies prey on the vulnerable.
I hear you Katie - I applaud your bravery - in turning up at work, in thinking, in writing, and in parenting.
And I also hold you in my heart.
And hope that this world can find its way out of the mess of rampant capitalism - where money and power cruelly trump compassion day after day. Where people seek escape however they can find it.
And where kids suffer.
❤️
Thank you for this, Sarah. Fists and knives and stealing cars sound far less frightening than our news reel here, but you are right that it's all the same root cause. Thank you for reading on the other side of the world and sharing my work and commenting here.
I asked my fifth grader if they’d had an active shooter drill yet this school year. “Oh yeah, of course. We know to break the window, look out for glass, and jump out of the intruder is inside. Otherwise we will hide in [teacher’s] closet. But we won’t all fit, so I don’t know what we’d do then.”
I hate how “common” this has all become. Thank you for writing this.
katie- thank you for your request to read this essay. There were active shooter drills that I had to be a part of implementing when I worked in college mental health. I hated them and found them terrifying, not to mention that our students with trauma histories were really undone by these drills. So, I am no stranger to these scenarios. There were a few public safety incidences involving gunmen on our campus while I worked there. My own children are 20 and 23 so I didn't hear much about the drills when they were little. I am parenting my 4 yo granddaughter and as I read your essay I had a moment of panic about her being unsafe. Even given my experience at the university level, I had not thought about the day to day experience of todays youth and educators regarding the constant sense of threat. My little one has so much trauma, a safety drill would put her right over the edge. I combed our public schools website to find any information on drills. There was a bare mention of it accompanied by the short powerpoint they show the kids before the drill about having to hide, be silent and then the principal says its over and they can go back to having fun. No acknowledgement that this is terrifying for all involved or any mention of what they are doing to keep students and teachers safe. I am really grateful for this vulnerable piece. I can't imagine walking into that environment every day as a teacher and I am now wondering how children learn in an environment where they are being told they may have to hide from a "bad person" who is trying to hurt them and their friends. I consider myself an empathic person so have given school safety a lot of thought however your essay helped me to imagine feeling threatened every day. It's an awful feeling.
I applaud this writing, heart, and bravery, Katie — to dig deep and paint a very clear compelling picture that is heart wrenching, really? 'Close the box, move and, and pretend it has not happened and will not happen.' A relatable and transferable story. Thank you!
Thank you, Prajna.
I think your box is a perfect metaphor for how we compartmentalize because we must or we would completely break down, unable to move, to parent, to teach, to be. I also understand how compartmentalizing that way over and over again takes its own toll and finally doesn’t work anymore.
I appreciate that you offer the stories inside you as a teacher, and from your students without moving to any simple solutions, since there aren’r any. That story of the kindergartener in the bathroom will haunt me as to students carrying their dying teacher.
Thank you for your vulnerability and braveness and sharing it so the box too . Finally, I love the rhythm of your writing in this prece. If this makes sense, it feels like you are carrying this grief along with you in a river.
Carrying this grief in a river is exactly what it feels like when it escapes the box. Thank you for this, Joanne.
Oh, Katie, this hit deeply home for me, a fellow school teacher. You’ve captured so eloquently many of own thoughts and feelings. Thank you for putting that out there. 🌷
Thank you for reading here and for continuing to teach!
As a teacher (also in Georgia) and a mother, I stand with you and am in awe of your eloquence and grit. The grief gets tucked away, but the truth will continue to echo in our hearts and minds until there is, at last, change.
As a retired teacher this reads as pure truth. Thank you. Will follow you so you know someone is listening.
greenom@comcast.net if I can help...
Katie, this was beautiful, evocative and frightening, all at once. I reposted on my Facebook page and I hope that’s okay. And I hope you’re ok, too. Sincerely Dave Murray
Yes, that's ok to share it! I don't mind at all. I've been posting here on Substack to a small following, and this essay was just sort of an outpouring of grief in that moment when I needed to write it down. But I think so many people are oblivious to what it feels like to teach in this climate, so I'm grateful others are listening.
What a beautiful essay, thank you for your words. I feel as if this essay needs to go viral. It’s easy to get caught up in the political nonsense of guns and gun control but the humanistic effect needs to be felt by others. As a pediatric provider I agree with your assertion that adults are letting kids down. I often remind people that children have zero control over the context in which they are born and raised. Those children born into less fortunate circumstances really do need the power of schools and community to provide them role models, safety and opportunity. We all owe an enormous amount of gratitude to the teachers who so selflessly provide for children and who are very much on the front lines for children. I agree our society is judged on how we treat our children. Again, thank you for your words and my sincere hope is that we can change the conversation around guns and school safety without the solution of militarizing schools.
YES. Of course I just want to be safe, especially every time another shooting happens. But are metal detectors and no backpacks and increased police really the only solution? It changes the whole dynamic of the experience for kids. And teachers. Militarizing is the exact way to describe these solutions.
Katie, thank you for this exquisite writing. I just retired from classroom teaching after 29 years. The other day, I admitted to my husband that the one thing that I really will not miss is the constant worry that I would not be able to keep my students safe. As a theatre teacher, my last school classroom was the “crossroads” of our school. I taught in a large open multi-purpose space with windows on three sides located right next to the front entry. the building was locked with the security person at the front. Nevertheless, it was the first time in my teaching career that I always carried my keys on my body so that I could unlock the only the safe space, a storage room, for my students if they needed to hide from an armed intruder.
When I shared this same thought with my husband, he confided, “I worried about your safety every day.” Thanks for writing in a way that will help people to understand the stakes.