From a teacher:
Confused,
As a teacher in Connecticut, near Sandy Hook, I saw the look on my fellow colleagues faces that we no longer could say that something like this could never happen here. I teach in an amazing suburban school district, like Newtown, and it was clear that our high school was in no way safer because of its location if something like this could happen a few towns away.
Yet I knew that many teachers in Connecticut were having similar thoughts. My husband teaches in the city of Bridgeport and he heard the news while he was watching his 5th graders during recess. He messages me that he could barely keep it together as he saw them playing innocently on the playground when just a few weeks ago the school was locked down for the third or fourth time this year due to gun violence in the neighborhood.
I received a call from my mom who teaches kindergarten also in Bpt. and was home ill yesterday. We both began crying as we shared that we knew it was a kindergarten that was targeted. I knew it could have been her school,which is my sons school. My son, who I know we both were thinking of at that exact moment, whose kindergarten classroom is directly across from hers.
This could have been my aunts school or any of the other 3 schools that I have had the honor of teaching in. This was the school of my fellow friends and high school classmates. Yesterday I learned of who was safe and today I have been told of how my circle of friends and colleagues has been impacted. We are not safe in our classrooms just because this and other tragedies have happened in different states, different towns, or other coasts. This is the elephant in the room that so many have ignored and said that today is not the day to address.
We as teachers have homework to do. We need to be the ones that have the conversation regarding the reality of gun violence in our country with our government elected officials. We need to be the group that regardless of our political affiliations stand together and say that enough is enough. We need to be the group that marches and says we will not leave until our children can go to school and be safe.
In the next 15 days I will give birth to our third child and I pray that this child will never have to hear what we heard on the news yesterday. I pray that my son will continue to be shielded from the events until I can explain it to him when he is older. I pray most of all that children will be allowed to keep their innocence and not have someone steal it away. Ironically, yesterday in English we finished reading The Catcher in The Rye. I find myself wishing I could follow Holden’s dream and keep the children of Sandy Hook from loosing their innocence.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Could the AFT and the AMA organize a lobbying effort on gun control?
The answer is not necessairly to control guns but to ensure that people are able to control themeslves. My frustration in the aftermath of Sandy Hook was focused on theimmediate rush to make new laws concerning the control of guns. I do not beleive that thi si the problem. I beleive the problem is in the poor quality of mental health care and in the lack of support available for the families of the mentally ill. it is extremely hard for me to beleive that in the 21st century people living with mental illness are still often phariah in thier neighborhoods.
Not only is mental health care often expensive adn difficult to access, but there is such stigma when one does utilize the services. Ihave been involved with mental health and drug and alcohol counseling for nearly 30 years. Many dually diagnosed patients, those with substance abuse as well as mental health diagnoses, prefer to be known as addicts adn drunks rather than as people living withmental illness. Somehow it ismore acceptable to be a drunk than “crazy”. Until this changes, i am afraid we will continue to see tragedy such as Sandy Hook..
We are on the prepauice of the “Fiscal Cliff”. NOW is the time to act. Gun control will not solve the problem. Ensuring that people can be in control of themselves is what will turn this trend around. Fund mental health care. Fund community education regarding mental health care. Work towards changin the attitudes which case people living with mental health diagnoses and thier families to feeel disenfrnachised.
From a retired teacher
Like so many, I could not hold back tears reading internet postings of this tragic event. In the continued efforts to outlaw guns, I hope other victims of society’s blindness or indifference does not lie buried. Another mother made repeated efforts, often heroic, to get help for her mentally unstable son. Short of incarcerating mentally ill youth, who usually have not broken the law, help is virtually unavailable. On every level, funding for treatment of the mentally ill has been cut. Shameful in a nation where running for Public Office ginned up billions of dollars and hollow promises. Stronger gun laws, yes. Real help and intervention for parents desperately seeking support for their child.
Several things occurred to me as I read so many wise comments posted on this blog. I live and teach in Connecticut, and Connecticut is a small state. Since we are not spread out, we travel to, shop in, visit, know, and are connected to each other in a way that some larger states may not be. My own school is not in Newtown, but several of our teachers live there. Our pain is raw.
But as many have expressed, the pain and heartbreak are felt by all of us no matter how far away we live. These children, these teachers and staff members, this school…they are part of all of us. John Donne said it well so many years ago:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
You can never wipe out all of this insanity especially in a society which praises violence and elects to high office those who do not care about us only the corporations and wealthiest of us. Reagan got rid of mental health care, civics classes and real history so what else do we expect? Since then our society has become one of only me and not you. So once again what else do you expect? There is no way to totally make a school safe against a highly armed and dedicated killer. In L.A. several years ago someone shot up a campus from outside of the campus. How do you stop that? The only thing we can do is begin to rebuild a society in which all people are important and those, especially in the financial markets, who cheat and rob us pay a heavy price in the courts and prisons.