Well it is been a week and I have had time to sort out my feelings about the Sandy Hook school shooting. My first reaction, the first weekend, was that I refuse to live in fear. I limited what I read, didn't talk about it, and just kept busy to prevent myself from thinking about it.
Then I went to school on Monday. We had a meeting, my principal told us she loved us, and I had a couple of deep conversations with colleagues. One child wanted to hear from me that I was the closest classroom to his. He didn't want to tell me why, but I imagined that he was imagining his teacher dead and where would he run to if that happened. I was distracted the rest of the day picturing where I would hide the children. My four year old kept asking why the flags were halfway down. I got on facebook and saw how worried parents were about this and I longed to help them feel safe but I was just beginning to realize that I didn't feel safe myself.
I started talking to my hubby about it and we discussed what steps our country needs to take to protect our children. I am very much of the opinion that you take a risk every time you get in a car, got to a mall, church or any public place. But the bottom line is I wanted to feel safe enough in schools to reassure parents that schools are a safe place to be.
Right away many people wanted to arm teachers. I found this hilarious. One minute teachers are the problem as to why children aren't smarter, more well behaved, and judged us according to the few teachers that do not act professionally. The next minute they wanted to give us all guns. Has the public forgotten about the few (very few IMO) bad seeds that do land teaching jobs in public schools? No, I was, and am not comfortable with guns in schools.
We discussed having guards at schools but knowing that it didn't deter Columbine, it didn't make me feel any safer. I started wondering, what can we learn from Sandy Hook and I came to the conclusion and was comforted with the fact that most of the children that were hidden were spared. We have a reinforced tornado shelter that may be close to bullet-proof? However ,we have to use the hallways to get there. Then I started thinking, what if we have a secret passageway to get there? How feasible is that? Would it be cheaper to have bullet proof saferooms than guards at all schools? It definitely would make me feel safer than gathering children in a corner and hoping for the best. I would like to take matters in my own hands without a gun. I am confident I would do everything humanly possible in the moment to shove, escort kids into bullet proof safety. We would practice, we would become quite good, and it would feel much more proactive than sitting in a corner just waiting.
That is our idea for a band-aid fix to immediately help families and teachers feel safer at schools. Touching on the idea that we need to "do something with the mentally ill", I suggest making every child feel loved. I wonder if Adam Lanza was loved by anyone and if so did he feel it? Feeling loved is as important as being told. Our actions are louder than words. To this I know that institutionalizing the mentally ill is not a good answer. Can we make ALL our children feel so loved that all they want to do in their adult lives is spread love? And to that I came across an amazing website on how to make your child feel loved. I especially love the affirmation statements located here at Inspiration for Mothers (I'd like to add and teachers, fathers, general public). Can we all first make sure our own children feel loved and then look for the good in all children? Is that much to ask?
That felt really good to get off my chest, now I can move on to healing myself. We started healing with our snowflakes for Sandy Hook and we used these instructions and freezer paper to make them.
Learn more about the project here.
How are you doing?
