A Letter to America from a Teacher

Dear Reader,

It’s happened again. After Sandy Hook we said it should never happen again, but this is the 27th school shooting this year. The police come out and say they “did what they felt they could at the time.” You turn off the news and get on social media to make a “sending thoughts and prayers” post. The next day you chat with some friends about how tragic it is. How you wish “they” would do something about it. But five days later you wake up, eat breakfast, and go to work without giving a moment’s thought to the dreams that will never be achieved by a child shot dead while watching Lilo & Stitch right before she finished her 4th grade year. 

It is June 14th, 21 days since the Uvalde school shooting. Three weeks and there has yet to have been any action addressing the cause of this shooting--guns. Sure, officials made an appearance to condemn this “unimaginable” tragedy. But then they go back home and their worries shift from the dead bodies of children to what they will eat for dinner tonight. 

That’s what it is, right? An “unimaginable” tragedy? The funny thing is that it is not unimaginable because this is reality to many students and teachers and communities across the US. It’s not that school shootings are unimaginable. It’s that we don’t want to imagine them. Imagining them makes them more real. It makes us feel hopeless and sad and we don’t like being sad. But, if you will please humor me for a second, I want you to walk with me as I imagine that “unimaginable” tragedy. 

It’s 6am on a Tuesday morning and I just got up to pack my daughter’s lunch. It’s her penultimate day of school and she is excited for the academic award's ceremony today. She is in fourth grade but is so proud because she is reading at a sixth-grade level. When she grows up she wants to be an author. Judging from the short stories she writes now I think she’s going to be a good one. For right now though, I am just happy to sit in the crowd at an elementary school awards ceremony to cheer on my little girl. 

After breakfast we get in the car and drive 5 minutes to school. As she gets unbuckled, I remind her about soccer practice tonight. All her friends are on the same team, so she is looking forward to post-practice ice-cream parties. Before she steps out I say, “Love you sweetie, see you tonight.”

At the ceremony my daughter smiles at me as she proudly presents her gold achievement ribbon. I was more of a math person myself, but I am glad she has her own passions and identity. For a moment, as I walk to my car, I think of what kind of mom she will be if she has a daughter of her own. I get in my car and drive home. 

11:43am. I am standing in the kitchen getting ready to go to the grocery store. I volunteered to get sports drinks for my daughter’s team tonight and need to swing by the store to pick some up. As I open my notes app on my phone, I get a notification. It's an email from the district saying that my daughter’s school is in Lockdown. 

My knees give out and there is a ringing in my ears. I can barely think, but there’s a pain in my chest that sits so deep I can’t breathe. My legs are numb as I run through the door and down the street towards the school. The email said to stay away, but everything in me screams “Run to her!” I see the patrol cars and hear the screaming of other parents. Several police with shields run into the building. I want to cry and push past the others and demand to see my baby. But I can’t because dread keeps me silent. Dread that speaking my greatest fear will bring it into existence. 

12:05pm. We see children climbing out the windows. We rush to the barrier hoping, praying, and begging to see our child in the crowd. Pushed away by police I hear a man yell “That’s my daughter!” The school tells us to reunite with our children at the funeral home across the street. What a fitting place to wait for the dead. 

12:50pm. We hear more gunshots then see the school doors open. Medics rush in with stretchers. Children, covered in others’ blood, walk out. Those around me are crying, screaming, pleading, but I don’t hear a thing. The stone in my chest grows larger and my throat constricts. Then beds carrying small bodies exit the school. I collapse. 

The president offers his condolences, but it doesn’t matter. All the thoughts and prayers in the world cannot bring her back. As I lay on my bed with no tears left to cry, I remember the sports drinks I forgot to get for practice last night. But why should I care? I don’t have a daughter anymore. 

I do not have a daughter and was not at Uvalde on May 24th, but I am a teacher. In February, I was co-teaching a high school algebra class with 28 students when we heard a loud bang. Before I even had a chance to say a word my students stood up and rushed to the wall out of view of the door. The fear in the room was tangible as students prepared to fight for their lives, armed with books to throw at the door like we taught them to do. That day in February there was not a shooter in the building. A freshman class had knocked over a table while filming a project. But the reaction from my students was genuine terror.

Every night since the Uvalde shooting, I have been kept awake by nightmares. School shootings are not unimaginable. They are very real to me. These scenes haunt me and every day I walk into school I think to myself, “will we be next?” It doesn’t matter that the three shooting threats my school has this year were not credible. Ulvade didn’t have any warning, and neither will I. 

So, to those of you who have the privilege of saying, “that’s horrible,” then switching off the news; to those of you who don’t live with the nightmare of dead children; to those who don’t have to wake up every day and walk into a school building in fear, I hope you at least take time to remember their names: Makenna, Layla, Maranda, Nevaeh, Jose, Xavier, Tess, Rojelio, Ellie, Eliahna, Annabell, Jackie, Uziyah, Jayce, Maite, Jailah, Irma, Eva, Amerie, Lexi, and Alithia. They loved and were loved. They had dreams and aspirations. They had parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and friends. If you are going to continue to live in inaction, I hope you at least take time to imagine the unimaginable. Because some of us don’t have the luxury of inaction.

Sincerely,

Michaela Parisi, M.Ed.