Today marks the 2nd anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy. As an elementary school teacher, I cannot fathom living through an experience like that. Our sweet children come to school every day expecting life to be normal just like every other day at school. Teachers never expect to be the person that may have to save the lives of their students.
On this day two years ago, normal changed forever. Now, we have hard and soft lock down drills. We have fences and gates and new security rules. We talk about where we would hide our students if a shooter were on campus. We have keys and padlocks and badges and we have to make sure everyone on our campus is a friendly.
When you became a teacher, did you ever think this would be in your job description?
A few weeks ago, there was a shooting at Florida State University in the main library. My daughter goes to school there. I was devastated. Fortunately, she was not at the library – but she could have been. Due to the quick response of the front desk staff, only one person was critically injured – but he is paralyzed for life.
Why hasn’t the shootings of these innocent children and teachers caused more uproar? Why has nothing changed? The media was covering every aspect of this for about a week or two, then nothing. We should never forget what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary or Florida State University or any other school. Our children deserve a safe place to learn.
Everything changed that day 2 years ago. Today I remember 20 sweet children and their dedicated teachers.
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