Following the slaughter of 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, teachers and school staff around the country started speaking up on social media about their experiences preparing for a mass shooter to come to their school. Because this is the United States of America in 2022: Teachers and students alike have had to think about what they will do if someone bent on mass murder comes to their school with assault weapons and body armor. Where will they hide? Who will they text with what might be their last words?
“We had our first post-Covid assembly last week to honor and recognize all that we had missed over the past few years,” Missoula, Montana, teacher Matt Keenan told NBC News. “While I should have been paying attention and celebrating, the entire time I was monitoring entry/exit points, keeping an eye on students with backpacks milling around the side walls of the gym, and running through active shooter scenarios in my head.”
“All day I have been imagining what I would do if someone came into my room with a gun today,” a California teacher said. “Would I get them to safety in time? Would they see each other die? Get shot? Would they see me die or get shot?”
Kids have plans, too. Immediately after the Sandy Hook shooting, teacher Kaitlin Roig spoke about hiding in a bathroom with her students, and how they said things like, “I know karate, so it’s okay.” Little babies talking about using their beginner karate on a shooter.
Kids like this one have a plan:
And it’s because there are too, too many kids and teachers who have been through this that so many now have given thought to what they’d do. Here are two Sandy Hook teachers talking about what they did to keep their classes safe while children and teachers in their school were being slaughtered.
“I said to them 'I need you to know, that I love you all very much and that it's going to be okay,' 'cause I thought that was the last thing they were ever going to hear. I thought we were all going to die,” Roig said. “You know, and I don't know if that's okay, you know, teachers ... But I wanted them to know someone loved them and I wanted that to be one of the last things they heard, not the gunfire in the hallway.”
Here’s a teenager who survived Sandy Hook talking about how it still defines her life to this day:
This should not be a part of the school experience.