Dawn Hochsprung, Principal, Sandy Hook Elementary
It has been happening all too often in America. Men and women, mostly women, have been gunned down in our schools by folks who have grievances, real or perceived. In what should be a place of sacredness and quiet and contemplation or, alternatively, a place of lively discourse and love and vibrant excitement, our public school teachers (and I include in that label anyone, including the custodians and lunch ladies who work in our schools and serve our kids) are being killed by madmen with assault rifles and handguns. No one can gauge the loss that the most recent shooting in Newtown, Connecticut inflicted upon that small suburban community. No one who was not there can theorize what the last moments of life were like for the twenty first graders who were brutally executed by a gunman who, with seeming ease, killed his own mother while she slept, took her assault rifle and semi-automatic handguns, and set out to wreck murder and mayhem on the most vulnerable of our society. But we do know that, with those twenty little children were six teachers who, as reported by survivors and the physical evidence, perished in that maelstrom trying to save the lives of their students. Notice that I have emphasized the word “teacher”. I have been troubled by news reports of the shooting that tell us twenty children and six adults died in the tragedy. Yes, they were adults. But more importantly, they were women who had dedicated their lives to ensuring the education and safety of our children. They were grandmothers, mothers, sisters, and wives who had chosen to become educators in the public schools. To simply label them as adult victims, in my view, diminishes who they were and the importance of their role in American society.
We all, I think, can remember a teacher, or two, or three who made a difference in our lives. As a writer, I have dedicated a number of my novels to English teachers I had in junior high and high school, so large was the impact of those women (yes, they were all women) upon my urge to write. This is not to discount the men who also instructed me and provided me with an education through my thirteen years of public school, four years of public university, and four years of private law school. They too made a difference in how I viewed the world, how I came into my own, how I chose to live my life. But there’s something about great female teachers and young students, a bound that forms, I think, akin to the bond of mother and child, that is unique and amazing. I mean no disrespect to the fine men who teach in elementary schools by making this observation: It’s just something that seems to me to be true.
Today, please take a moment to remember the teachers of Sandy Hook Elementary School and pray that the folks who shepherd our children from infancy to adulthood never again have to shield students from gunfire in our schools. I’ll leave it to others to begin the much-needed dialogue about weapons and mental illness and video games and the like. I am simply too sad, too heartbroken at the images of teachers being taken from their students (and little kids being taken from their families) to engage in political discourse on this gray and cold December morning along the banks of the Cloquet River.
Some of the Victims (Students and Teachers) of the Sandy Hook Shooting
May the teachers and children of Sandy Hook find eternal peace and rest and their families and friends find comfort in knowing that all of America mourns with them.
Mark
