I am in my 24th year as an educator. As the daughter of two career educators, I have leaned on their knowledge and encouragement throughout my career. I want to dedicate this opinion piece to my mom, who passed away in May, because she is the one who taught me that most of my problems as a teacher could be solved by centering my heart on the student and engaging in empathy.
One thing that is unique about a school is that our job is to take students of all walks of life — all ethnic backgrounds and all economic statuses — and convince them to unify under one mascot — Lions, Jaguars, Dawgs, etc. We teach them our school chants, celebrate our school colors, share our school spirit. We celebrate what unifies us. We root for all our teams, whether we are part of them or not. We celebrate their victories, and we share their disappointments.
Credit: Courtesy photo
Credit: Courtesy photo
Our teachers and administrators strategically and consistently work to build a positive school culture. There are always forces at work to separate and label our kids. Students are trying on different looks, joining different peer groups, developing different styles. They pick up labels and sometimes discard them — nerds, jocks, gamers, etc. But our job is to bring them all together.
We as Americans are like a public school. We all have our own identities, our own families, our own opinions and our own styles, but we are also one school and when it comes down to it, we have each other’s back. We ought to follow the community response model to a tornado, fire or hurricane, where everyone helps with a recovery to a crisis.
I live in Jackson County, and Winder is 20 minutes away from my home. The school where I teach was rattled by news of the shooting at Apalachee High School. I went back to school the next day wanting to stay in my room with the door locked, keeping my kids inside and out of the halls. I comforted kids whose parents decided it was too scary and checked them out that Friday. I have a niece and nephews in public schools, cousins in public schools and my three kids are now attending public universities.
We are not treating this crisis the way we treat natural disasters. We are not seeing this crisis as one that demands our collective attention and action.
Why?
Some of our leaders have managed to convince us that we are not one school, that we are not one team, that we are not one unified American people. Yet we are, in fact, united because none of us want these school shootings to continue.
But we have to remember that if we want anything better for our futures, we have to respond to the crisis of school shootings with collective action. We cannot get stuck on what we cannot do. We have to come together to find solutions together.
The first step to coming together is being able to talk about it. We have to be able to listen to each other. False divisions have shut down our communication. When we can’t communicate, we cannot problem-solve together to bring an end to this crisis. We have to rally behind Team USA and empathize with one another.
First, there are young men who are hurting, who have been failed by adults in their lives. If they are able to put their hands on a weapon, not only is there a possibility of violence, but their lives are effectively over. What might those lives have been if those young people had found help before getting their hands on weapons?
There are innocent victims of school shootings whose families and communities will be devastated by their loss. There are students who will replay the trauma of this experience for the rest of their lives and who will run a higher risk of mental illness and addiction. There are teachers and staff who feel scared and powerless, and some who may choose to leave their chosen vocation because they can no longer justify the risk to their well-being.
While we are sitting in our grief following the latest school shooting in Winder, I have some questions for us to consider.
Should all schools be equipped with additional social workers and mental health professionals, in addition to counselors whose typical duties include scheduling and testing?
Should adults have to pass background checks to buy weapons?
Should gun owners be legally required to secure their weapons?
Should gun owners who do not secure their weapons bear the full liability of anything that happens as a result?
Should gun owners be required to carry liability insurance?
Should the police be required to temporarily take weapons away from someone who has threatened violence or who is suffering a mental health event?
By all accounts, the response at Apalachee was swift and competent, but it only took seconds for one shooter to kill two students and two teachers and wound nine more. Should U.S. citizens be able to own weapons like the ones soldiers use in war? Should U.S. citizens have the right to purchase a weapon that can decimate even a bulletproof vest? Should young people like the alleged Apalachee shooter have access to these weapons?
While we may not have the same answers to all these questions, I know we can build consensus around our answers to most of them. We can stop school shootings. We can choose to see this as an issue that demands all hands on deck. We can declare that we can’t live like this anymore. But to do that, we must pick up our USA team banner, reject the divisive rhetoric of leaders who have pitted us against one another and come together around common sense solutions.
Allison Webb teaches Spanish at East Forsyth High School in Gainesville.
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