From a Teacher's Heart

I hope you all will forgive me if I digress a bit from the usual themes of this blog, in order to focus on something that has been dominating my mind for the past several days.  In all likelihood, this deviation from the norm is harder for me than it will be for you--in my mind, I have "rules" for this blog (Must be recovery!  Must be Jewish!) and it is challenging for me to be flexible and acknowledge that this week, I have something else that I want--need--to write about.  But, never fear--I'll do my best to bring it all together at some point!

Last Friday afternoon, my students were reading quietly as they always do after lunch, and I took advantage of the quiet to check the news on my laptop.  Expecting the usual mix of political and entertainment headlines, I was shocked at what I found instead:  reports of a mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school, details of which were still unfolding.  The rest of the afternoon passed in a surreal blur: I would teach a lesson, then check the news during a lull, then simply turn and watch my kids in all their vibrant vitality.  By the time I dismissed my class of third graders, I knew the gruesome outcome of the brutal assault on Sandy Hook Elementary School: 28 people dead, including 6 educators and 20 six- and seven-year-old children.

For the first few days after the shooting, my mind was consumed with thoughts about the tragedy.  Not being a parent myself, I couldn't really conceptualize the grief that the parents of the slain children were feeling.  But, as a third grade teacher, I felt complete empathy for the teachers at Sandy Hook.  I thought about what it would be like to lose colleagues and students in such a sudden, tragic way.  I worried about where I would hide 23 nine-year-olds in my own classroom if, G-d forbid, we ever faced a similar situation.  I watched and read interviews with teachers who had protected their students by hiding them in bathrooms, closets, and cabinets, teachers who had kept their kids calm by reading to them and telling them to "wait for the good guys."  As a teacher, I am deeply devoted to my students and feel fiercely protective of them...and the idea of NOT being able to shield them from such trauma is just about the worst thing I can imagine.  For me, thinking of what it must have been like for those teachers is absolutely devastating.

This week, I've had to give myself plenty of space to feel grief over what happened in Connecticut.  I'm also conscious of the fact that five years ago I probably would not have been capable of having such an intense emotional reaction to a story in the news--I had numbed myself into emotional flatline.  This week, however, I've felt the full force of sadness as I've tried to wrap my mind around the deaths of so many children and the adults who cared for them.  Years ago, I would have run from such strong feelings as quickly as possible.  Now, however, I am able to recognize that being able to have emotions is also what helps me be connected to other people who are going through a similar experience.

It has been a tough week to be an elementary school teacher...but, it has also been a special one.  On Monday morning, my colleagues and I met for an emergency staff meeting to discuss what we might face during the day.  We expressed our fears, we cried, we hugged each other...and then we went to meet our students, who came through the doors full of precious energy and reminded us of why, exactly, we do the work that we do.  I have never felt more privileged to be a teacher than I have this week.  My heart is with the teachers from Sandy Hook, and I pray that they will find the strength to guide themselves and their students through this dark time--emerging, once more, into the light.

"I have learned two lessons in my life:  first, there are no sufficient literary, psychological, or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones.  Second, just as despair can come to one another only from human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by human beings."  --Elie Wiesel