We have failed our children.
Those boys who wrote “rat” all over my whiteboard. Who called me a cry baby. Who called me a dumb bitch.
Last week those boys were asking me where Buffalo was. How far from here it was. Had I heard what happened there? All those people dead at the grocery store? And today they were asking me about gun laws. About why people could even buy assault rifles. “Why are they legal?” they asked. Did I know he shot his grandmother? (“Why would he shoot his grandmother?”) And which schools were preferable to go to (Prince William County was no good … but Herndon is OK, “Right?”) About what we’d do in our room. Would their teachers keep them safe? Would I keep them safe?
And I willed the tears to stop just at the tips of my eyelids, but they noticed anyway. “Is she crying?”
And I told them this sort of thing didn’t happen when I was their age. That it wasn’t fair that they had to go to school with these fears. And I told them I’d like to think if it happened to us that I would keep them safe. That I would do everything I could within my power because they are my students and I cared about them. And I told them we could move furniture. And they told me they’d jump the guy. And I told them I had no doubts about their valor. And they didn’t make fun of me for crying this time.
They’re just children. Even those boys with their insults and their swagger. They’re children.
And we are failing them.
Tonight it was the strings concert. a gymnasium full of nervous fourth and fifth and sixth graders. Squirming in their seats. Waving to their parents. Plucking their strings, dragging their bows. Tonight it was “Hot Crossed Buns” and “Mozart Melody” and a French Folk song one of my student’s little sisters said should make us cry. And it didn’t make me cry, but it did make me smile. All of us gathered together. All these proud parents and crying babies and older brothers and little sisters bored, but clapping. These teachers coaxing music out of boys who’d rather swing their violins like lassos and girls who didn’t feel like practicing. This was joy.
Tonight it was the 10-year-old soloist playing “Gavotte in G Minor”- a song I’d never heard but was magic. This little girl – already a virtuoso – or as close to a virtuoso as you’ll witness in an elementary school gymnasium on a Wednesday night. It was astonishing.
Imagine where she’ll be in 10 years.
I scroll through pictures of Uvalde fourth graders on my phone.
Imagine if she’ll be in 10 years.
Nine and a half years ago I wept watching the news about an elementary school in Connecticut while Lily, just older than 2, and Jovie, nearly 8 months old, napped. They weren’t in school. Yet. And surely the slaughter of 20 6 and 7 year olds might make us do SOMETHING before my babies went to school. Surely.
But not yet.
Instead, they know to line up against a wall away from sight lines as their teacher closes the blind and covers the window on the door. They know to stay quiet. So, so quiet behind their locked doors in their darkened classroom.
They’ve learned that. Just in case. Just part of the routine. Just like fire drills and tornado drills.
That it’s part of the procedure. That it’s practiced. That it’s written into the state guidelines. “Two lockdown drills are conducted each school year in accordance with Virginia law as part of comprehensive options based approach to responding to potentially violent intruders in the facility or on school grounds.”
All that bland legalese. That we’ve accepted it.
Instead of protecting them, we’ve taught them to protect themselves.
That’s the best we can do for them.
These children. All of them.
We have failed them.
And it’s going to be 5:15 a.m. any minute now but I can’t sleep.
My babies are all upstairs in bed. And I’m on my laptop. Just like I was 9 and a half years ago. Except now I send two girls to school every day. Their little sister not far behind. And every time this happens it feels more and more like wishful thinking that they’ll come home unscathed. And in the four classrooms I teach in, every time I mentally assess where we’ll all hide and what desk or shelf I’ll move. What table I could over turn. And every time I read stories about parents frantically asking about their sons and daughters. Every photo of mothers and fathers folded over themselves in desolation I whisper prayers for their peace and thank the lord it wasn’t our children.
This time.
This time I hope we choose our children.