This One's Not About Books

It's about students.  And violence.  And fear.  And guns.  And shootings.  And how I personally am fed up with it and want it stop.  I don't want one more child or colleague to die because someone with a gun has come into a school building and opened fire. 

Remember these events:  Parkland, 17 people dead; Virginia Tech, 32 people dead; Sandy Hook, 20 people dead -- most of whom were 6 and 7 years old; and Columbine, 13 people dead.  This list of school shootings is just the beginning.  Dozens of children and adults have died in school violence over the last 20 years.  I can't shake out of my head and heart the images of bloody teenagers crawling out of windows in search of safety, of elementary babies walking out of school hands on shoulders while a helicopter hovers overhead, of still photographs of teachers who are heroes because they were gunned down trying to protect students, of parents brought down by the unimaginable grief of losing a child to a kid who had a gun and used it to kill their babies.

It's just so, so, so, so wrong.  And it is time for it to STOP. 

Let me also say at this point:  While I have strong political beliefs and in my private life I advocate for issues I care about, I try hard as a teacher to stay politically neutral in my classroom.  In fact, students have guessed at various times that I'm a Republican and a Democrat because I absolutely do not use my classroom as a platform for my beliefs.  However, to me, school shootings and gun violence transcend politics; I feel compelled to be an advocate for change on this issue because it is about my students -- my kids.  The very lives of my students is at stake if we as a nation don't get a grip on our national gun violence problem and the way it enters our school buildings.

I'm tired of the empty "thoughts and prayers" and the temporary dismay and hand-wringing about what to do about guns and school violence.  I cannot fathom why as a nation we allow children to die again and again and again because we refuse to handle the plague of gun violence.

In my personal life, I am finding avenues to push for change including donating to groups who are dedicated to making our schools so much safer than they are now.  I am hopeful to see that the Parkland High students are turning their grief into action.  They have begun a national movement to create change; their rallying cry is "We are the students, we are the victims, we are the change."  I wholeheartedly support the teenagers who will get behind the Parkland movement to make some noise and to create discomfort for the adults who are not doing anything to make schools safer. 

Since this blog is really about books and reading, please consider reading some of these texts to better understand school violence -- where it comes from, the effects it has on everyone involved, and how we as a nation need to be handling our children and our guns differently:

How to Reduce Schootings (The New York Times 2/15/2018)
Why Can't the U.S. Treat Gun Violence as a Public Health Problem (The Atlantic, 2/15/2018)
The U.S. Fights Terrorism -- But Not School Shootings (The Atlantic, 2/15/2018)
School Violence Data and Statistics (CDC, 8/22/2017)
Columbine by Dave Cullen (2009)
A Mother's Reckoning:  Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy by Sue Klebold (2016)
Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult (2007)
Hate List by Jennifer Brown (2009)
This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp (2016)