I had half a dozen interesting posts ready to go out today, but I decided it was inappropriate to return to business as usual after the tragedy at the Sandy Hook Elementary School.
I postponed them. So you won’t be getting another post today.
This is a time to mourn, to reflect, to be still.
It’s a time to think about the heroic staff at the school who reacted immediately to protect their students.
It’s a time to think about the principal Dawn Hochsprung and the school psychologist Mary Sherlach. When the trouble started, they ran to the shooter instead of hiding.
I saw an interview with a teacher who was distraught. A reader saw the same interview and said this: “Did you happen to catch the interview with the one teacher (one amazing wonderful woman) who shepherded her class into a bathroom and kept them all assured that they would be ok? She told them, “i want you all to know I love you.” She expressed to the interviewer that her thinking was that she was afraid they would die and she wanted to make sure that if they were that the last thing they would remember hearing was not the gunshots, but the sound of someone telling them that they were loved. “This” in this era of teacher bashing.”
Last night I got an email informing me, “you lost a follower.” That’s when I found out that Dawn Hochsprung followed me on Twitter; she followed only 70 people. I was shaken.
Mostly what I thought about was the parents. I have a six-year-old grandson, and I was heartsick for those who lost their babies. Many years ago, one of my children died of leukemia, which was horrible, but how much worse to think that your precious son or daughter was murdered. What unfathomable madness. I don’t know how you live with that terrible knowledge. The pain is unbearable.
There is no way to make sense of what happened. I ask myself why anyone is allowed to have an assault weapon. I don’t know why. I ask why and how our society has become so desensitized to violence and at the same time so addicted to it.
I think of the violent video games, the violent movies, the violent conflicts in which we engage around the world. And I think about how many seriously disturbed people see violence as a route to infamy or attention or some fantasy in which they are a super-hero/villain.
We have a lot of thinking to do.
About violence. About our reckless media. About the true heroism of our educators. About how we change our ways of thinking and acting. About how we protect our children. About why we are obsessed about being number 1 instead of spending more time repairing the serious ills of our society.
I don’t have the answers.
I just think it’s time to start asking the right questions.
Please feel free to leave a comment.
I thought a great deal about Newtown in the days after. it brought back the times in which I was involved in dangerous, what could have been life threatening incidents at the schools in which I taught for 32 years. I’d like to think I’d be a teacher who would knowingly give her life to protect her students. I don’t know that.
What I do is that like many other dedicated teachers our first reaction is kneejerk; protect the students. Keep them safe. You aren’t, at least I wasn’t, thinking, “well do I put myself between the shooter and the kids? or the propane tank or fire and the kids?” No.
We were trained to keep the safety of our students utmost in our minds at all times. I’d like to think I’d be one of those teachers who could do that for her kids because that is who they were to me, my children. My kids when they were with me, in my classroom, in my school.
There are no easy answers. There never will be. The day we stop trying to find the fast and simple solution is the day that we may begin to understand what really needs to be done. I hurt for the families and my heart goes out to them as do my prayers. I have children and have raised over 20 of them (fostering, adoption and biological). The loss of any one of them for any reason would be devastating.
I am still speechless regarding the carnage at Sandy Hook. I can’t comprehend it. I don’t understand the mindset that led to it. In fact I don’t want to understand it. Columbine, Beslan, Dunblane ………. names of places that will live forever in the World’s memory because of the slaughter of innocents.
The perpetrators of these horrors should not be afforded any form of publicity as I think it only feeds and spurs on other deranged minds.
The NRA offered the opinion that if Dawn Hochsprung had been carrying a gun, she could have dealt with the situation ! Total insanity !
We have many problems here in Ireland, not least of which is having to come to terms with, and attempt to heal, the decades of institutional abuse of children, but at least we don’t have “the right to bear arms.” The bloodshed on this island was horrific enough as it was without the psychopaths having “a right” to their weapons.
Diane,
Thank You for this…I also feel the sorrow surrounding this tragedy and it inspired me to write this blog post:
http://moonhippiemystic.com/2012/12/15/the-gift/
and I had written this one prior but it is appropriate to the grieving/Healing process:
http://moonhippiemystic.com/2012/12/08/let-it-rain/
Blessings,
Jennifer
Brought tears to my eyes Diane. There are no easy answers. Although you are right- We NEED to start asking questions. Rest in heaven to the little angels and victims. Caitlyn x