I Wrote This Post About School Shootings In 2023, Knowing I’d Hit Publish One Day

Teachers think about this every day.

All drawings by the author.

I wrote this in February, 2023, and saved it as a draft in Medium. I thought, “It won’t be long before there’s another mass shooting at a school, and then I’ll hit publish.” And, of course, one hopes this won’t happen, but knows that it will.

In fact, there have been hundreds of school shootings since then. The shooting in Minneapolis this week captured the attention of the nation, and so here I am, publishing this piece that I wrote after an hours-long lockdown in the public high school where I used to teach.

I’ve been a teacher for seventeen years. Every year, at every school, I’ve practiced teaching children how to hide. The tone of this post is upbeat; I wrote it for my students, with my students. But also, I cried while I wrote it.

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I asked my (high school senior-aged) students what I should write about today, and they had a lot of ideas. I told them I liked to write on the internet about, generally, self-care. They nodded, knowingly. They understood. Here’s what they thought I should write about. (I took detailed notes.)

• Carmen (I’m changing everyone’s names here) said I should write about Valentine’s Day. She…