I’ll Have This Conversation Again…

On the afternoon of September 11, 2001…I stared up at an empty sky. It was the first time in my life that I noticed the deafening silence that accompanied the absence of planes flying overhead.

I was in 7th grade when I looked up at the empty skies, watched the nonstop news coverage on network television, and started to understand the devastation of mass casualties and terror attacks. It’s been almost seventeen years since that afternoon, but without fail… Every time I look up and see a plane headed in the direction of downtown… my heart skips a beat, as I envision the plane colliding with our city skyline. Sometimes I don’t even notice that I’ve stopped breathing while I’m on my way to work, or am driving to pick up Max, or am running errands. But it happens a lot.

I wasn’t there on September 11. I didn’t know anyone who lost their life that day. I didn’t experience it first hand. But it has haunted me daily in ways I don’t even realize.

Today…We were dismissing at the end of the day. About 100 sixth graders from my wing of the building were all eager to get home at the end of a regular Thursday at school. 100 sixth graders were already planning their excuses to their parents about how they don’t have homework to do. 100 sixth graders were chit-chatting about who got who a Valentine yesterday. And then…100 sixth graders bottle-necked as they were leaving through one set of double doors.

It was at that bottleneck at those double doors today that I stopped breathing. The same familiar knot in my stomach arose to my throat, as I morbidly envisioned mass chaos, blood, gunshots, and screaming. I had to look around and take an audible deep breath to clear my head and make myself realize that these were happy kids. That these weren’t kids running for their lives. That these were kids who think of school as a safe place. That these aren’t kids who now associate a sanctuary of learning with a cemetery. It was just dismissal. Dismissal, Morgan. It’s just dismissal.

But now this is our reality.

It’s a reality where dismissal can induce momentary lapses in reality. Fire drills instill terror. Visions of nightmares flood our minds during passing period as we silently hide our fear behind welcoming smiles and high-fives at the classroom door. We silently look around the hallway… imagining where we would hide, whether we would have time to run, or how to shield our precious students from danger.

It’s a reality where the same lawmakers who send us to Donors Choose to get pencils because they’ve slashed funding, tell us the solution is to put guns in our hands.

It gets worse every day…. With 18 school shootings happening since the first day of this new year.

1 every 60 hours.

I have had to sit down with my class three times this year to process students’ thoughts and feelings about the latest mass shootings. These three mass shootings alone have stolen 99 lives combined just since the school year began. I’m growing weary from this. I can’t have this conversation again. I can’t see the flag at half mast again.

But I will.

I’ll have this conversation again and again with my students. We’ll talk about their fears. We’ll practice turning out the lights and hiding in the corners, while stifling sneezes and wiping away silent tears. An eerie silence…almost deafening…filling the entire school while we rehearse for a massacre.

I’ll have this conversation again because our nation hasn’t made safety a priority.

I’ll have this conversation again because education isn’t valued.

I’ll have this conversation again and again….because I’ll have to.

And I’ll never get used to it.