I Spoke To 16 Teachers After The Uvalde School Shooting, And Their Words Should Be Delivered Straight To Congress

Warning: Some of these stories include depictions that might be hard to read for some.

School shootings have rocked this country time and time again. Teachers have become the vanguard in a war they didn't sign up for. They have been placed on the front lines of a battle that shouldn't even exist. No matter where you stand ideologically and politically, it's impossible not to feel empathetic for our teachers and educators nationwide.

1."As far as the shooting in Uvalde goes, I’ve felt sick to my stomach for the past week. I don’t know what my students felt because we’ve already started our summer break. But during the workdays last week, my colleagues kept talking about how they couldn’t sleep and how they’re grateful for their own children no matter how annoying they have been."

"We’ve taught our students to run, hide, and/or fight. It’s tough having to teach your students how to barricade a door and how to use textbooks and chairs as weapons. Asking students, 'Who wants to be responsible for helping me attack the shooter' if they get in the classroom is always hard for me because sometimes no student volunteers to practice that part. To be honest, I don’t want that responsibility either!"

2."This nation was founded by wealthy white landowners — a nation that chose to build itself upon the anguished toil, blood, and lives of 4,000,000 enslaved human beings over a quarter millennium — a nation grown and nurtured upon the systemic century-and-a-half genocide of millions of the peoples who called this continent home — and, sadly, a nation that will not acknowledge and atone for its atrocities. Worse, this nation not only perpetuates its denial but has manufactured for itself a testosterone-fueled myth of 'manifest destiny' and 'exceptionalism.'"

3."Emotionally… I’m all over. I think about my students who have 13 more years of lockdowns and active shooter drills. I’m drained from the multitude of shootings that the nation continues to think about and pray on, yet our children are dying."

4."My wish would be to speak to each age level of students and let them know that who they are is just fine, and maybe if more people did that, kids wouldn’t feel ostracized or looked over or that they are not enough. There is so much outward competition and that creates an awful lot of negative feelings."

5.How Can I Teach You To Care? (A Poem)

6."When I first started teaching, I remember my students’ favorite P.E. activity was softball at the end of the day. Like many elementary classrooms, students take pride in their class jobs — and students knew that when the clock hit 1:35 PM, it was time to alert the teacher, clean up our areas, and grab the bat, softballs, and cones to head out for P.E. That bat is now stored in a bin closest to the door in my middle school classroom."

"In 2022 it was Uvalde, Texas. The morning after the shooting, I did my daily check-in with my students, except this time it wasn’t gummy bears vs. sour worms — it was 'how are we coping with what’s going on in the world?' And most of them reiterated what we generally ask ourselves, 'why did this happen? How did it happen?' The conversation progressed, and ended with making a strategic plan, as a class, of what we would do if this happened in our school to our class. I take a deep breath."

7."I am feeling a lot of things...sadness, anger, fear, disappointment. Mostly though, I feel frustrated. I am frustrated that mass shootings keep happening, and the response is always the same: temporary thoughts and prayers, no changes to prevent this from happening again, and then it's only a matter of time before it does happen again. How many kids need to die to protect the 'rights' of adults?"

8."After the recent supreme court decision expanding the rights of the second amendment, I feel little will happen in my lifetime. There will be another shooting in a school classroom with an assault weapon. That’s just the truth. It pains me to say this, our government does not respect the lives of its citizens. That’s just the truth."

9."As my brain and body try to recover from the toll of one of the many realities I have to face as an educator in the US, another hit pushes me back to where I started. Emotionally, I feel drained. There is no safe space. Living and working in East New York, Brooklyn is not for the faint of heart."

"I often find myself looking at my surroundings to see where would be the safest place I can get to in a hurry in case something happens. What used to be a drill when I was younger is very much a real threat now that I am an adult. Every time I see a police officer in the building, or hear that we have yet another lockdown, all I can do is pray that we don't end up another news story. Adding school safety agents, metal detectors, and having yet another school assembly about violence does not negate the fact that our students are hurting. As long as guns and other weapons are made easily available for the public to access, we will continue to have the same conversations, with no solutions, over and over again."

10."I totally agree with the many people across the country who are advocating, once again, for common sense gun reform."

11."In my senior year of high school, three teenagers from another district walked into my high school unimpeded and stabbed a boy to death in a classroom. It was a defining, traumatic experience for everyone in my small town. In the subsequent years, many schools adopted locked door policies and upgraded security systems in an effort to provide added protection. But it’s never been enough."

12."The school shooting that happened in Texas really shook me up, along with many of my colleagues. So many things go through your head after hearing about an incident such as what [happened] in Uvalde. In the days following the horrific tragedy, I couldn't help but think about what I would do if a similar situation happened in my school. How would we protect 30 students? Where would we hide 30 students in our classroom? How do I keep 30 students quiet to hopefully help keep us safe?"

13."Getting off a staff Zoom meeting, I read what was happening in Uvalde. Then and every time since then, I have felt anger. My heart did soften that evening of the shooting, as I saw fellow educators across the country had already created lesson plans and shared them widely via teacher professional and teacher union networks on how to have the conversation with our students."

"The youth need shelter and protection, but they also need access to making their own choices and processing them with trusted perspectives and mentorship. Kind of like how citizens need the United States. I hold these truths to be self-evident: we all need shelter and protection and the chance to make our own choices and discuss them with trusted perspectives and mentorship."

14."The night of the Uvalde school shooting, I found myself up after 12 a.m. reflecting on the details of the massacre. I found myself picturing my students and me waiting, terrified, for over an hour as shots sound just down the hall. Tears began to pour as my chest tightened and panic set in. Seventy-eight minutes, seventy-eight minutes, the Uvalde officers waited outside as the lives of children and teachers were taken. One of the primary reasons I avoided teaching for so long, despite my passion for it, was the fear of a school shooting."

15."I remember when I was in high school, which was not that long ago, it seemed like every other week an instance occurred where someone called in a bomb threat, wrote, 'I have a gun' in lipstick on a bathroom mirror, or something else of a threatening nature. An announcement was made, we would have to leave the building and go to our evacuation spot on the edge of the school grounds."

"Students who I have talked to share similar feelings. While some still have the youthfully ignorant 'that can never happen to me' mentality, many have seen or read about all of the tragedies that have happened over the past decade with regard to school shootings and gun violence in general. They seem much more apprehensive than I did when I was their age. It is disheartening that I have had to answer the question, 'Is this real?' multiple times during drills over the past few years. Then after the drill is over, overhear students talk about how they would use scissors or their computer to try and fight off a shooter, or jump out the far window into the bushes below to escape."

16."The Day" (A Poem)

Are you an educator that has something to say? Please, let me know in the comment section below!