On Monday, January 22, fewer than twenty four hours before tragedy struck our neighboring school seventeen miles away, each of my middle school writing classes took a survey that was needed by our resource center as a requirement for funding and planning in the upcoming months. Short survey...no big deal. One of the questions asked kids to check the top three social/emotional issues that they or kids they knew had faced. There were issues ranging from drugs and alcohol to bullying to eating disorders to anger management to self esteem to grief or family issues....eleven choices in all. We finished the survey and moved on with class. About twenty minutes later as we started working on a prewriting activity for an argumentative essay, one of my boys called me over to his desk. "Ms. Atherton, can I change my topic?"
"Why? What do you want to write about?"
"I want to write that I think we should have some kind of therapy classes at school."
"What? Why?"
"Did you see that question on the survey? If kids here are dealing with allllll those things, we neeeed some kind of therapy!"
And just like that, my innocent twelve-year-old changed from writing an essay about why his parents should get him a dog to why his school should provide social and emotional wellness for his peers.
On Wednesday of that week, twenty four hours after the catastrophic loss, that same student walked into our classroom and said, "Ms. Atherton, I think I changed my topic at just the right time."
And that's when my broken heart crumbled just a bit more.
Before the final drafts of that assignment were even graded, seventeen more lives were lost in a senseless violent act. Our time is not running out, friends….I believe it may have already slipped away.
A couple years ago, as part of my work with the education segment of Hope Street Group, I was engaged in a meeting with our country’s former Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. In that meeting, it resonated with me when he discussed the increased amount of funding in school districts across our country being dedicated to mental health in education….the largest number of dollars that had ever been on record. Schools had increased the number of counselors on campus. They were working with a growing number of outside agencies. There were changes to the character lessons of the past to include tips for dealing with the stress and anxiety that often define growing up as a teen in America. There was backlash as other program funding was being cut in an attempt to try and provide resources to create not just intelligent, but mentally and emotionally healthy kids.
And it wasn’t enough.
In our small, quiet little piece of the world in western Kentucky where people settle down to raise families, it wasn't enough. In a high achieving Florida school known for its excellence in all aspects of academic and extracurricular life, it wasn't enough.
During the past few weeks, I have heard educators fulfilling every role in our schools declare, "I don't know what the answer is." We've debated gun control and the almost equally controversial heightened safety that metal detectors might present if they met students at the door. We've discussed smaller classes, more focus on individuals, and ways to ease the stresses of student life and pressures of pre-college success. We've pondered parent classes and mentoring programs. We've predicted the success of armed marshals and increased presence of outside law enforcement.
Everyone has an idea. No one trusts that he or she has the answer.
The one remark that repeated itself over and over in my head over the course of the week following our neighbor's tragedy was the one uttered by that sixth grade student viewing life with innocent, yet ever so insightful eyes. What if as the years go by, my plans for the week need to include less about grammar and prose and more about listening to the narratives of the lives in my room?
Regardless of the time it took that week, I committed to investigating every hurtful look, every misbehavior, every skewed cry for help. I listened as kids poured their issues into my lap. Our public school is your public school, and we need help. We have families deprived of basic needs of electricity and warm showers in wintertime and food to adequately nourish the children trying to survive under cold roofs. We have children living the results of lives captured by drugs. We have incarcerated parents and children sleeping on the floor next to kids from other families who are seeking refuge and silently dealing with sexual assault. We have preteens blaming themselves for the fleeing of their own parents and questioning if if is their fault for not contributing financially to the household income. We have those avoiding grief of deceased loved ones because no one is helping them to even know how to go about it. We have those whose only conversations are about imaginary violent characters who are helping them to achieve bloodshed in video games that have superseded their reality. We have kids whose reality is an online chaos of unsocial struggle to be accepted in what we call social media. We have children who are walking into our academic institutions, having not spoken a word to any adult since they left our doors the previous afternoon, and they...are...broken. With more degrees in education than my current classroom job title equates, I still was not prepared for this. I said to colleagues this week, "I don't know if we can fix this."
So what do we do?
What we have done so far is prepare as best we can in our classrooms with what sadly seems like a spirit of "when" instead of "if.” Children in my little space know exactly how to fold themselves into the tiniest of forms to fit thirty of their classmates into the corner of a room that wasn't even designed to hold thirty kids who aren't in hiding. They worry that if they must jump from the window, they'll sprain an ankle and won't be able to flee. A few tough and buff ones have assured the others that they'll spot them and won't let them fall....our twelve-year-old heroes in waiting, trying to mask their own worry and apprehension. "If the shooter knows the drill, won't he know we are all over here in the corner? Shouldn't we just go to the window first? Will you go with us, or will you have to stay?" they ask. What if....? What if....? What if.....?" Questions whose answers were once meant simply to stall the inevitable English lesson are now posed to create a mental rolodex of life saving strategy and temporarily bandage an unwavering uneasiness they can’t seem to shake.
Our district has taken preparation to a broader level by continuing to merge our leadership with that of the local sheriff’s department and law enforcement so that their missions and visions and even roles of safety precautions and response for our community have blended into the same. In that piece of the unity, I see potential and hope.
But what can we do to change that "When..." back to a "God forbid, if..."
As cliche as it may sound, Mother Teresa once said, "Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love." I have seen those in our neighboring county do even the smallest of gestures with the greatest of love over the past weeks. Those people-focused gestures must begin to translate into policy...be it the policy we set for ourselves in our own classrooms or the policy that we encourage government to make official for our profession and the souls it exists to serve. When we are focused on the lives of children and not the politics of our own divisiveness, then our emotions and ethics and those quiet voices inside us that say, "You know better," must press forward into action.
In my room, I must give myself permission to schedule intentional conversations and activities to focus on more than just the academic and social realm of kids’ lives. In schools, we must stop publishing our success based on the correct number of bubbles filled in on a state assessment. We are boasting of distinguished institutions filled with teachers who often head to their cars in the afternoon with a guilt that they - we - are failing our children. I have to remind myself that just as the algebra teacher who receives children unable to multiply must go back to fill in some crucial gaps for understanding, I have to work harder to reach a child who shows up without parenting or morals or discipline or a focus on any content at all. I hear educators say that it's not our job to be their parents, but even Dr. Seuss, the mind behind so much childhood engagement, once penned, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” We can rant that parents need to step up and fulfill their responsibilities, but a Facebook post won't change the level of discipline and love bestowed upon our kids in their homes inside our communities. No, it's not in my job description, but in my classroom, and in the hallways, and in that time before and after school, and in those twenty-five minutes of golden conversation opportunity found in the cafeteria at lunch…I have to try harder.
We have to quit waiting for tragedy to happen to walk outside our four walls to seek how other educators are tackling the increasing need for mental health in their schools, while still meeting the high level academic needs of those fortunate children showing up happy, healthy, and ready to learn. Read that one again; it. is. daunting. Having taught in classrooms from the commonwealth of Kentucky to the secluded island of Maui in Hawaii, I have seen that children may look different and classrooms may seem unconventional, but needs are exactly the same. We must not see our schools as competitors for rankings, but as resources for ideas for helping our children….for strengthening every aspect of our students and the futures for which we are preparing them.
I have learned over my sixteen years in the classroom that when educators stop advocating for certain standards or funds or school procedures and begin to advocate for children, perspective of the words spoken and the ears upon which they fall will change. As we move into the difficult conversations of gun control or the potential outlawing, or at the very least regulating, of certain weapons that may serve no purpose in the hands of civilians, my hope is that we remember those topics are not really the heart of the conversation. When we reevaluate the ways in which our country’s education budget is preventing a reform of counselor-to-student ratio to catch up to the ever-increasing issue-to-student need, might we remember that the numbers on that spreadsheet aren’t the story at all. My job exists for children. My focus is on children. My responsibility is to the safety of children. When those conversations exist for the purpose of moving into action, may a teacher - that passionate person fulfilling a calling to live the reality of public education on a daily basis - be at the table. Better yet, let me circle my students around that table with their growing fears and unanswered questions to remind us all exactly who and what should guide our advocacy. One solid action could falsify progress; the kids know that crucial renovations to our plans, our policies, and our days are many.
Alongside our argumentative writing unit in class that week, we began to learn a bit about indefinite pronouns. We read a story about characters named Somebody, Anybody, Everybody, and Nobody. In the story, there was an important job to be done. Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did. Then Everybody was mad that Nobody did what Anybody could have done. Besides understanding indefinite pronouns, my students learned the importance of being the Somebody to take initiative. A twelve-year-old kid sitting in my classroom with recent acquisition of knowledge and a heart for his peers changed his focus and initiated a plan through argumentative writing. May we stop waiting for somebody else to do what could be done right now. I speak to myself as well when I say…take initiative. Do what you can do to help today. My kids’ lives - our kids’ lives- are counting on it.
