But in my life, I am something that is 1000 times more important to me than being a runner. I am a teacher. I am a first grade teacher. And today, as I sit down to write, it is not running that has been on my mind. I could tell you about my long run on Saturday, my recovery run on Sunday, or my lack of running today. But that is not where my mind is.
Since 11:15 Friday morning, my mind has been in Newtown, CT. Along with the rest of the country.
I was in the library with my 1st graders for our weekly 30 minutes of reading with our 4th grade reading buddies. The 4th grade teacher mentioned to me that someone had heard about a school shooting that morning. I had not had a single break to look at a computer that day, so I didn't know. My heart sank. Then she said it was an elementary school. My heart dropped out of my chest. We looked up a few news reports with the librarian and the library assistant, out of sight of the prying eyes of the children. The first words that sunk in on the screen were "18 children" and "Kindergarteners." My mind started convulsing in disbelief.
This kind of stuff doesn't happen in elementary schools. It is a fear and violence that exists in middle and high schools, in movie theaters, in shopping malls...not in elementary schools. Not to these little children. I felt like something had shattered. Some shield had just fallen away.
As we learned more throughout the day--20 children, 6 adults--20 year old shooter--the principal, the counselor, a first grade teacher, a substitute teacher--my hands began to shake. Suddenly it felt like it was my life, my kids. My adorable, precious, enthusiastic 1st graders that have so much life left to live. Those awful images that usually exist only in nightmares kept coming to my mind in flashes as I spent the rest of the afternoon with my children, pretending that nothing had happened, carrying on as if nothing was wrong.
At their afternoon recess, I watched Obama's tearful speech and read more news reports. When they came back into the classroom I wanted to hug them tighter than I ever have and tell them how much I love them.
That night, I went home and lit candles for the ones who had their lives taken from them. And as I lit the candles, I couldn't help but think about my family. So I told them all I love them.
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| My family. Healthy and safe and alive. |
After my run, any spare moment I had I was looking up more news reports, my thoughts consumed by any information I could learn about what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School. They released the names of the children, confirming that they were all either 6 or 7 years old. They released the names of the teachers, and one of them, Vicki Soto, was a 27 year old first grade teacher. The facts too closely aligned with my own life to ignore. This tragedy has nothing to do with me, is not about me, but it sure felt like it could have been me. And I just can't seem to shake that feeling.
I can't imagine what those families are facing, and will face as they mourn their loses. And I especially worry about the 1st graders who watched as their teacher and classmates were brutally killed. Or the students who saw the bodies as they left the school. Or those who simply heard the shots or were present in the school. Those images, those sounds, that fear will haunt them for years to come. Their innocence was stolen from them, and they may never be able to get it back. It isn't fair.
Today, as my students entered my classroom, I again saw those horrific images I had composed in my mind, but just I smiled and hugged them and welcomed them back to our classroom. A classroom I didn't feel quite as safe in as I did on Friday morning. I wondered what they knew, what facts they had heard and what misinformation had not been clarified. I couldn't ask them, I couldn't talk to them--that is not my job. I am not their parent. I am their teacher. As much as I want to talk to them about it and reassure them if they are scared and help them understand if they do not, that is not my job.
When one student walked up and hugged me tightly, looked me in the eye, and said "I missed you, Ms. Kaplan," I couldn't help but think does she know? Is this just a first grader's loving hug after a weekend away from school or was it something more? But I couldn't ask, I couldn't probe. That is not my job.
I heard nothing from the students until the very end of the day. During writing time, something sparked a student to comment about the tragedy. He spouted off a few facts "20 children, 6 adults" and a few pieces of misinformation "the guy's mom was a kindergarten teacher and he shot her kids," before I could quickly stop the conversation and keep these statements out of the ears of nearby children.
But as he spoke, he said one thing that made me cringe and want to cry out in anger. "My brother says that this is why teachers should be armed too." I know his brother. A few short years ago he was a 1st grader in my class too. I know this family and I know this is not the beliefs of the parents. But somehow these boys now think that their teachers need guns in their classrooms to make them feel safe.
I don't often get political on this blog, but today I feel a need. Today, I am sad and I am angry and I don't believe that Americans should be allowed to own semi-automatic weapons. This is the gun that Adam Lanza carried into an elementary school so that he could shoot 6- and 7-year-olds as they learned to read:
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| Plus 2 other handguns. |
Guns don't kill people, people do. Why don't you outlaw knives and shovels and cars while you're at it? Yes people kill people, but guns make it a whole lot easier. Knives are meant for chopping, shovels are meant for digging, and cars are meant for driving. But guns...guns are meant for killing and nothing else.
It's for protection, defense. Really, when an intruder breaks into your home, do you think you'll have time to run to the gun safe and grab your ammo and gun before they get to you? And if you tell me you could keep it loaded in your bedside table, then I will never knowingly set foot into your house and hope no child ever does either.
I use my guns for hunting. That's fine, but do you need a semi-automatic rifle to hunt deer? And if it's only for hunting, there's no need to keep ammo in the house. And the gun should be locked tightly away.
Whatever the argument, I am not open minded about gun control. According to a CNN article I read over the weekend, "There are an estimated 270 million guns in the hands of civilians in the
United States, making Americans the most heavily armed people in the world per
capita. Yemen, a tribal nation with no history of strong central government or
the rule of law, comes in a distant second" (source). Now is the time for a conversation about gun control across the country (actually, it was the time for talk about gun control after Columbine or Virginia Tech or the Aurora shootings and long before). It is time for a change, and I will stand strongly behind any movement to take assault weapons out of the hands of civilians.
But the problems behind what happened in Newtown are two-fold. Gun control would go a long way towards solving some problems, but we also need to make changes to our mental health care system. This blog post presents a few of the problems with our system. Right now, people who need help can't get it until they are charged with something. Until it's too late.
I have seen these children in my classroom. The angry ones. The violent ones. The self-destructive ones. And I do what I can for them, but I always wonder...where will these children be 10 or 20 years down the road? If they don't get the help they need, will they be the next Adam Lanza? What will they have to do before they get what they need? I am scared for these children, I have been scared of these children, and I am scared for their friends and family when something goes wrong.
We all know that prevention is the key, but where is the government, where are funds to help make this necessary prevention happen? And why are most of our prisons filled with the mentally ill, biding away their time without counseling or help?
I hope that if we have to live through this massacre of children, teachers, and school staff that we can do something productive with it. But I fear that as with most other things, as the news begins to fade and the general public begins to forget in a few weeks, the conversations we are all so passionate to have right now will blur into the background.
But for me, it will be a long time before I can "forget" what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary. This shooting has shaken me to my core more than I could have thought possible. In one week I will be back home in New York celebrating the holidays with my mom, dad, sister, and brothers. I will hug them and tell them I love them because I can. Because they have not been taken from me and I have not been taken from them. I will cherish those moments all the more this year.
And I will try my best to remember the children and brave staff members of Sandy Hook...I will try my best to fight for the kinds of change that could have saved their lives. I hope you do too.
Charlotte, 6 Rachel Davino, 29
Daniel, 7 Dawn Hocksprung, 47
Olivia, 6 Anne Marie Murphy, 52
Josephine, 7 Lauren Russeau, 30
Ana, 6 Mary Sherlach, 56
Dylan, 6 Victoria Soto, 27
Madeleine, 6
Catherine, 6
Chase, 7
Jesse, 6
James, 6
Grace, 7
Emilie, 6
Jack, 6
Noah, 6
Caroline,
6
Jessica, 6
Avielle, 6
Benjamin, 6
Allison, 6
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