The New Reality

I accepted the 4th grade sub job late Sunday night, momentarily forgetting what had happened on Friday.  On Monday morning the realization struck, and for a second I thought about cancelling.  I didn't want to face a room of children who might have questions.  What do I know?  What could I say?

But then, sadly, I realized that if there were questions, I'd probably be better equiped to answer them than a recent college grad who might get assigned the sub job if I cancelled.  I've never had to answer questions about twenty kindergarteners dying in their classrooms, but I've answered questions about similar slaughters in other schools.  And malls.  And churches.  And movie theaters.

I don't know what's happening in America.  All I know is that things have changed since I first walked into a classroom in 1997.  Even before Friday, safety has been on my mind as a sub.  Every day I'm in a different classroom, and honestly I often look around and wonder about the what-ifs.  We used to do fire drills and tornado drills -- now schools do lockdown drills.  When I did a long-term sub job this fall, we had both an external lockdown drill and an internal lockdown drill. For the first, the teacher simply locked the door and kept teaching, but for the internal drill, everyone had to crouch and huddle in the back of the room, absolutely silent in the dark.  You can't help but do a mental replay of all the school shootings you've heard about over the last fifteen years.  What if, what if, what if . . .

I don't know what the answer is.  For four days now we've been ambushed with a wide range of opinions on everything from gun control to mental health to religious revival.  And school safety.  So many opinions.  Do I want to walk through a metal detector every morning as I come into school?  Get patted down like I do at the airport?  Get trained in how to use a gun so I can defend a classroom?  I don't know.  I don't know if anything will keep evil out.

All I know is that when I was a fourth grader, my biggest worry was whether or not I'd get invited to someone's birthday party.  Maybe I got anxious about tests or wondered if the boy I liked didn't like me back because I wore glasses.  But never in my wildest dreams did I enter my classroom with a quivering lower lip and teary eyes, trying to put on a brave face while secretly wondering if today would be the day someone would come into my classroom and start shooting. Never.  And I am so sad that this is the new reality for kids.