The School Shooting

Oh, my heart.  It breaks for those families who lost their children yesterday and for the families of the teachers and administrator who also lost their lives protecting their students.

I get CNN news updates on my phone and briefly saw the flash of it while I was in the library with my students yesterday.  Eventually, it was my planning, and I took my phone out to see a text from A about it.

I went online and saw what he was talking about.  I can't even imagine the horror of what I saw unfolding.

I try to picture what I would do if it were my school, my students.  Would I have the semblance of mind to react as those teachers did?  Would I be courageous enough to try stop the shooter like the principal and counselor did?  Or would I hide under my desk, cowering in fear?

I think about the parents of the children who were murdered.  They must have been preparing for the upcoming winter break, for Christmas, or maybe just simply for the weekend.  I think about those children who witnessed their classmates' deaths.  Those teachers who tried to protect those babies...  And I tear up, over and over.

I've seen a lot posted on FB about gun control, about home schooling, about this, and about that...  I don't know who is right and who is wrong.  I can only see it from my perspective, as a mom of two little girls who some day soon (sooner than I'd wish) will be public school students and as a public school teacher who does what she can each day for her students.  If it were me, I don't know how I would move on.