I am writing this on the first day of school in New York City. My phone is exploding with photographs of friends’ children with their hair brushed, in clean clothes, smiling with teeth in front of Brooklyn red brick on their way to the first day of Middle School, Second Grade, Preschool.
Colorado, where my family lives now, starts school earlier so last night was already “Back To School Night”. That’s the evening where work-weary parents crowd into elementary school classrooms so teachers can tell them the story of what school will look like this year. Last night, in my daughter’s bright Kindergarten/First Grade classroom, grown-ups were sitting in awkward criss-cross applesauce poses on a rug decorated with the alphabet when one mom raised her hand. “I wanted to ask, you know, especially today...” she began and I braced myself. Our children were playing quietly in another corner of the room, so she used coded language.
The question, of course, was about school shootings. It turned out she wanted to know what Mr. Chris (a little about him, from his slides: he’s been teaching for 11 years, he loves to hike and run, he reads fantasy novels in his spare time and has been working on writing a children’s book!) was going to say to our Kindergarten and First Graders about why they have to do lockdown drills. What language would he use so they wouldn’t be afraid?
There is no language to make me not afraid. Or to make me less angry. Actually, angry isn’t right. I’m furious. I’m spitting, boiling mad. I’m overcome with outrage.
This is not the first time I have heard another parent ask a question about school shootings. This is my daughter’s third year in public schools and it comes up like clockwork. Ramona’s first day of school in Brooklyn was in September 2022, months after the shooting in Uvalde. At a parent orientation that summer, people grilled the principal about school security. Where did the resource officer, the uniformed NYPD agent stationed in every school, sit? What entrances and exits existed to get into the school? How were they secured?
It took everything in me not to shout, “None of that matters! It’s the guns!”
If a person with an automatic weapon wants to walk into a school and kill people, they will. There is nothing that school staff or teachers or locked doors or signs saying “No Firearms” can do to stop a weapon that can fire 45 rounds of deadly bullets per minute.
“If someone wants to come and shoot our children,” I wanted to explain, “They will. And every adult in this building will put their life on the line and their body in front of the bullets before they let that happen, but that is all they can do.”
In 2012 when 26 elementary schoolers and their teachers were murdered in Newtown, Connecticut, I was just an hour away on the lush Bronx campus where I taught history to high schoolers. They, too, had questions. What if, they wanted to know, what if a shooter entered the campus from the football field? Or what if we were in one of the rooms with floor to ceiling windows and someone wanted to shoot us from outside? What if someone is on the roof?
I hedged at first, using my party line about “These aren’t questions for us to worry about, there are people in charge who worry about those questions and our job is to follow the instructions to stay safe.” But there’s only so much lying you can do to high school students.
Finally, I said, “Every adult at this school would put their body on the line to protect any of the children.”
One of my 16 year old students raised her hand, “Miss, when do you become an adult?”
“Oh, you’re all children.” I said without hesitating.
It is the first time I have ever seen a room full of high school juniors relieved to be called children.
But that is all we can promise. The only guarantee we have is that adults will risk their lives to protect the children they have pledged to educate. There is nothing else schools can do. We cannot ask more of them. No matter how many rules we make about when doors can open and close or what visitor passes you need in order to get past the front desk, no matter how many blackout curtains we install, or “resource officers” we employ.
It’s the guns. It’s the guns. It’s the guns.
This post broke my heart. But you are right. It's the guns, it's the guns, it's the guns.