February is a hard month all around: dreary, gray and soul-crushing. It’s not anything and yet it is
everything. The shortest month that
feels like the longest month. February
is hard enough by itself, but February watching children get murdered and
parents cry and teachers die and the world go crazy is too much.
I’ve been caught in a quagmire of feeling everything and
nothing. I am also guilty of being
caught up in me, my life, and my troubles that I block out those of the world
around me. I heard about the Parkland
shooting but found it was almost 24 hours later that I saw all the footage,
read all the words and I cried. I cried
for those kids, those adults and this messed-up world. And I thought about my door at school that
doesn’t even lock half the time. And I
thought again about those teachers and could easily see one of my people being
the heroes that they were that day. But you
can’t think too much about any of those things or you can’t get up and get
dressed and go into school the next day. And you have to go to school the next day
because you promised someone you would read over a paper or you know that one
kid in second period hasn’t eaten yet and you need to be with your people and
know that they are feeling what you are feeling too.
And you get really angry watching people argue about who the problem lies with instead of everyone just saying ENOUGH. And you heart hurts when you hug your kids
and listen as they cry and say how terrible this is and all you can say is that
you know. We know. We have messed up this world and people are
buying guns and killing you at school but politicians are offering thoughts and
prayers, so check that box. And your
heart is aching and your brain cannot make sense of what it is coming in and
you are numb. You see the students of
Parkland standing up and yelling ENOUGH and you have hope. It slashes through the blanket of bitter
despair you have wrapped yourself in and you breathe a little better. You see students at your own school become
activated by these students and you feel proud.
You read letters they have written to these young survivors and you feel
encouraged.
You go to meetings and hear what you should do, what you
should tell kids, where to put them in a lockdown and you are still thinking
that your door doesn’t always lock. You
hear all the other things you are still supposed to be doing and you think,
okay, I can do all this. I can encourage
this one to stay in school, I can get all my grades in, I can remember to fill
out that form for my review, I can do all the testing and make sure kids know
about the weird schedule on Monday and get the writing samples in from kids
who rarely come to class. We can do all
that.
We do all of that, so I will ask that people stop telling
the world that teachers need to be armed.
Your kids are telling me in class that I should have a gun. I don’t even wear my keys on a lanyard
because the weight of them feels like a yoke around my neck at the end of the
day; I cannot imagine what the weight of a gun would feel like. I am a teacher, I teach. I feed children, counsel them, laugh with
them and encourage them. I don’t shoot
them.
