An English teacher in St. Augustine, Florida was watching online during lunch break the day the gunman set foot in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and made the most deadly shooting seen in the country in a decade. .. When the board of her local school was involved in a fierce battle over books in the library.
In the suburbs of Dallas, the teacher was at the end of her rope after she said it was the most difficult year of almost 20 years in the classroom. Even near the end of the second semester, many of her students aged 10 and 11 still needed instructions on basic tasks, and some were absent altogether on a daily basis.
And in the Atlanta area, a 31-year-old teacher worried and went to bed. Is her elementary school next? Just before falling asleep, her husband promised to take care of her two-year-old son in the event of the worst.
Nationwide, teachers were dragged to the end of the school year and were squeezed by the pressure that had accumulated even before the Uvalde shooting last month.
The school has made a promising start — classrooms have been opened, vaccines have become more widely available, and learning is underway. Also, while some teachers were relatively normal for the first time since the pandemic began, others have had the most difficult years this year.
Throughout the country, students were lagging behind in major subjects such as reading and math, but many showed signs of anxiety and depression. At the same time, teachers in some school districts were involved in a political battle as more efforts were made to ban books and many state lawmakers were trying to limit their guidance on sexuality and racism. In some cities, teachers went on strike over paid and Covid-19 protocols.
For some teachers, the news that 19 children and two teachers were shot dead in an elementary school in Texas was the last bowel punch.
“I’m just angry,” said Octavio Hernandez, a middle school math teacher in Davenport, Florida. He knew that at least 20 students had been hospitalized for a mental health emergency in the last two years.
“They want us to be police officers and counselors,” said 42-year-old Hernandez. And when you teach, please teach like this. And don’t mention anything about what’s happening in the world. “
In the days following the shooting of Yuvarde, many teachers did what they normally do. They appeared at school, cheered on the students at the graduation ceremony, and brought homemade cupcakes to celebrate the year. However, some explained that they would do everything by gluing one eye to the classroom door.
Lateefah Mosley, a 47-year-old teacher in Decatur, Georgia, was working on a shooting at a black shopper in a Buffalo supermarket last month when a shooting in Yuvalde occurred. 10 days later.
Mosley teaches a fourth grader of the same age as the one attacked in Texas. Among the faces of the 19 murdered children, she saw the faces of the students. Among her teachers, she saw herself.
“You don’t think it was me because of God’s grace,” she said. “But what makes me better than them?”
Overall, schools are relatively safe for the country’s 54 million students and nearly 4 million teachers. However, shooting at school is becoming more common, and the tragedy in Yuvarde represents the worst horror of many.
The shooting resurfaced the debate over the armament of teachers, and in Ohio showed that the governor would sign a law to make it easier for teachers to carry guns. 73% of teachers have guns at school, according to a Gallup study conducted after one of the deadliest school shootings in the United States, where 17 people were killed in Parkland, Florida in 2018. We opposed teachers and staff, and 20% agreed. More than half of teachers say they make schools less secure.
“I don’t have enough money to buy paper and pencils for kids. Do you want me to have a gun to protect them?” Mosley said, no matter what their view of the gun, they simply Said reflecting the feelings shared by other teachers who said they didn’t have bandwidth.
Guns are just the latest way national political wars are increasingly invading classrooms.
On the day of the shooting in Texas, the Board of Education in St. John’s County, Florida considers a proposal to ban books from school libraries, including those that tackle white supremacy, including transgender and non-binary characters. was doing. Megan Young, an English teacher at a high school in the district, warmed up rice and meatball leftovers, closed classroom doors, spent a lunch break online, and watched the conference scream and slander.
Efforts failed with a 3 to 2 vote, but Lancor annoyed Young, who sees books as a way to foster students’ love for reading.
Nationally, efforts to ban books are increasing at the same time as a wave of new laws trying to limit the way teachers talk about issues that are considered politically sensitive. The “Parental Rights in Education” bill, which critics call the “not gay” bill, goes into effect this summer in Florida, limiting the way teachers talk about sexual orientation and gender identity.
In the classroom, Young said he opposed a lesson asking students to analyze the persuasiveness of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “letter from Birmingham Prison” and the corresponding letter by eight white priests.
Young (33) remembered how she brought a leather belt to store in a classroom first aid kit in case a tourniquet was needed for a student after a shooting in Parkland. Years old) is confused by the heightened scrutiny.
“It’s literally up to their lives, but not the choice of curriculum,” she said.
Public school teachers earn an average of about $ 65,000 a year and are one of the most trusted professionals alongside nurses, doctors, military personnel and scientists. However, the school was closed during the pandemic and the social structure collapsed, reducing confidence in teachers.
For some, competing pressure was enough to get rid of.
“I needed change,” said Kathy McKen, 62, a math and science teacher near Dallas, Richardson, Texas.
After graduating from school early in the pandemic, her fifth grade is back in great distress this year. Even when she tried to help them academically, Mr. McKen said he spent a lot of time calming and keeping them focused. Take out the pencil. Write the assignment to the planner. Do not use your iPad during story time.
She didn’t have the time, so she had to shrink her favorite science project (making a terrarium for students to take home).
And in the last week of school, the blockade interrupted the field athletic meet. In the tug of war and the fun at the bounce house, the students rushed in. McKen flocked with the students on the dark classroom floor. Police investigated the report Of a teenager walking down the street with a rifle.
In the days following the shooting of Yuvarde, it was one of many horrors across the country.
Dan Plonsey, a math teacher at Berkeley High School in California, canceled the final exam last week and was called ill after a student was arrested for saying authorities were planning to attack the high school. The announcement was made a year after Covid’s absence and student suicide, and a few days after the shooting of Yuvarde.
Prongie, 63, saw his illness as one small act of rebellion against what he described as sadly insensitive to American society.
“What’s wrong with us?” Prongie asked when she cleaned up the classroom last week. “Why do we do business as usual every day?”
“Let’s take humanity,” he said. “Let’s be sad for a few hours.”
Other teachers did their best to stay normal.
Kathleen Ingraham, a music teacher in Alpharetta, Georgia, talked to her husband about who would take care of her son if she was killed in a school shooting, and got up the next morning to go to work. She planned to lead her kindergarten graduation ceremony with a song.
Standing on the stage of the school cafeteria, standing under the colorful banner that says “Kindergarten”. The kids sang:
I’m growing — how, how.
I grow up with hope and dreams and move towards the world.
We are growing — ways, ways.
We are growing with hope and dreams and expanding into the world.
Ingraham smiled at the students who were too young to know about Yuvarde. But when the music stopped and the work was done, she slipped behind the stage curtain. She cried out of sight and as quietly as possible.