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On April 16, 2007, during my first year teaching, a recent graduate of our school was killed in the Virginia Tech shooting. My colleagues who knew her were devastated and exchanged remembrances about her; we named the school track in her memory. On December 14, 2012, five years later, my friends' child was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary. My husband and I were devastated, but we had to find a way through it for ourselves as well. The next Monday, my co-teacher, coincidentally from Newtown, and I grimly viewed our second floor classroom with hinged-but-not-opening windows and formed a plan in case a shooting happened at our school. In the 12 years since, that thought has never been far from my mind. My husband also teaches. My eldest is a college student; my younger is in high school. So far, we've been lucky; I still put a rubber door stop on my classroom Amazon wish list.
The shooting at Madison, Wis.' Abundant Life Christian School is only the most recent of 2024. According to Education Week, 39 school shootings this year resulted in injury or death. That means 39 communities are shaken, if not broken. Dozens of families are grieving families. Teachers and students alike are traumatized and unable to feel safe. The embarrassing truth is that, outside the U.S., shootings are perceived as an unbelievable piece of American culture. "How do you go about your life, knowing this is possible?" people asked us while we traveled outside the country. My husband and I had no good answer. "We just do," we said.
After Sandy Hook, we were certain change was coming—and some progress did occur. The 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act gave states funding for school mental health programs and local violence interventions, among other preventive measures. Twenty-one states expanded background checks for gun sales. President Joe Biden created the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, although it remains to be seen whether that will survive the transition into the next administration.
Despite these steps, however, we are a deeply divided nation regarding guns and governance. Forty-nine percent of Americans said earlier this year that gun violence is a major problem, which means the majority believe it is not. Fifty-nine percent of teachers said last year that they were somewhat worried about a shooting in their school. Anecdotally, that statistic feels a bit conservative to me; nearly every teacher I've talked to about this scenario immediately responds with similar words: "I have a plan." Whether it's having the biggest football players in the class throw a desk through the window, fighting off the attacker, or building a barricade in front of the door, we plan because we have little other reassurance. Most of us do not want to be armed. Earlier this year, Iowa and Tennessee voted to allow teachers to carry concealed weapons, but while some may be equipped to handle this, who is then caring for their students?
We try to shield our students from the knowledge that we are scared, too. But children, especially those who are newly encountering the idea that someone could enter a safe place and cause them harm, are often affected by the regular lockdowns and simulations most schools employ. More than a quarter of teens reported experiencing anxiety following lockdowns. Miranda Rake, author and parenting podcaster, wrote recently about her experience of keeping her kindergartener away from the ritual of the lockdown drill; she checked him out of school that day, and on every drill day since. "I don't want the placebo, I want the real deal," she said. "Stricter gun control, parental education on safe storage, better mental health resources in our area, and open conversation with fellow parents about guns in the home."
The Abundant Life Christian School shooting is a tragedy, as are all those before it. As a teacher, I know there are kids in pain, kids looking for a way to make themselves heard. Those of us in schools do our best to hear them and get them help. But what we're doing is not yet enough. We have to keep trying. We need more mental health support, both within schools and within communities. We need better oversight on background checks and firearm purchases. We need more pressure for gunowners to secure their weapons and keep them out of children's hands. We have to do better—for all of us.
Madeleine Deliee is a freelance journalist and educator. She has bylines with CNN, The Washington Post, InStyle, Southern Living, Parents, Shondaland, and others.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
