Eight students, two teachers

Where were you when you learned of the 22nd school shooting in the United States in 2018?

Can you name all the shootings that happened before this one? Because I can't. Because they happen all the time. A flicker on a screen. Another white male shooter (the kind that is responsible for most of our mass shootings and the kind that is almost always taken alive and fed a meal instead of shot on sight--the police do have that skill set). Another school. Another day in America.

In 2018 I was going to donate money and I was going to write every single time a school shooting happened and I have not and I cannot name them all. So consider this night my catching up.

I can tell you where I was today, even if I cannot, off the top of my head, name all of the shootings that have occurred this year. I had to look them up. Some don't even make my screen flicker. Today, I was at school. Early. Hours earlier than my contract requires, because my job is bigger than my contract recognizes. I kissed my sleepy children good-bye, I kissed my husband who went to work late so that I could go to work early. I drove into the dawn, prepared to work through the day that was supposed to be the joyful (?) culmination of nearly two years' worth of work in a role I feel I am still clumsily learning. Of collecting and cajoling and planning and organizing and praying that all the adults I work with won't hate me at the end of the day, because I am still learning the ways in which asking for things from adults is different from asking for things from kids. Or maybe it's not different. I don't know. It's hard in different ways.

My friend Kailey was out today, on an airplane this morning, but she is still a teacher and teachers work from airplanes, so we messaged each other via Facebook.

She sent this message after she landed: "I just got off the plane to see the news."

I hadn't seen the news. By then, I was deep into the work of the day. I looked at the news.

Jesus, I thought. Again.

The students of Santa Fe High School said, I wasn't surprised. I was just scared. It was going to happen eventually. This is the country we have created for our children.

Eight students, and two teachers. No one is surprised, and we all know it will happen again. My eight-year-old son is not surprised. My children know this will happen again. When I was in second grade, or sixth grade, or tenth grade, it never occurred to me that I could be shot in my own school. This is a thing my own children think about. This is a thing my children's teachers prepare for. This is a thing I talk about with my students.

Not long ago, out of the blue, one of my sophomores said, "Winslow, if someone came to our door with a gun, what would we do?"

I said, "If they came to our door, you run that way," I said, gesturing to the computer lab. "You get the hell out the other door, and you run." (This is just good sense. It's also what we're taught in our Active Shooter Training. Because Active Shooter Training is a thing in my job now.)

"Wait, what about you?"

"I make sure you all get the hell out, Babies."

"But you come too, right?"

"I mean, after you're all out. Yeah, I'll come."

"But what if he starts shooting?"

"You run out the back door, and you keep running."

"But what do you do?"

"I do my damndest to make sure he doesn't get to you."

"You just stay and get shot? That's messed up. We'd stay with you."

"No. You don't."

I teared up a little. With love and anger, both. Love, because these kiddos of mine were so, so incredulous and indignant. Anger because this is an actual conversation we have. No, it's not part of my job description. This is not what I signed up for. And yes, it is what I would do. It's not a question. It's not okay, but it has become part of the job expectation for those of us who teach kids. Our bodies are on the line. They just are. And our great, broken country seems to have very little interest in changing this reality.

And I have to tell you, I'm tired of donating money for this shit, because I really feel like this shit shouldn't be a thing I worry about. If it happens at my school, or my children's school, and let me tell you how typing those words constricts my chest to the point where I can barely stand to type this (my children's teachers are parents to their own children, and their bodies are on the line for mine), I won't be surprised. And I hope it doesn't happen, and I pray (I do pray) it doesn't, but it is clearly going to be happening again somewhere in this broken country, because it just always does.

So where were you? I was in the Instructional Resource Room at my own school, working with the coordinators at our feeder middle schools to finalize nearly two years' worth of work we need to submit to the International Baccalaureate Organization in order to maintain our authorization. I checked my phone. I gasped out loud. The others already knew. We didn't talk about it at all. What is there to say? It's another one. It's another one.

I cried a lot today, in the end. I worked, I felt my body growing tense with the effort to stay on task, I spoke like a normal adult human being to other adult human beings and a few students. Or I tried, anyway. We finished our work. Have a good weekend, we said. And I sat there this afternoon, finally alone with all of it, with the strangeness of letting go of nearly two years' worth of work, with the weight of this day, with the strange heartbreak of this entire week that will not be made clear on this very public blog. I packed up my laptop, my notebooks. I walked back to my empty, quiet classroom. I sat down at my desk in a building that empties quickly on a Friday afternoon, and I cried for twenty minutes. I couldn't tell you exactly why. One of my best friends found me there before I left, someone who always checks in at the end of the day, and I didn't need to say anything. That this person was there to hug me before I drove home mattered. That Kailey was there even when she wasn't physically there mattered. I was suddenly so overwhelmed: by love and grief and gratitude. By anger and helpless rage. And by something I couldn't name. What is the word for that?