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Katrina Rasmussen was an eighth-grader in North Texas watching raw, television images of children her age fleeing her high school in Colorado while bleeding students and teachers were taken in parked ambulances.
Now, 23 years later, she is watching the events of the tragic week in Uwalde as a teacher at a high school in Dallas and says that nothing seems to have changed since the Columbine High School shooting.
“We feel at the mercy of people who don’t even know what’s in the classroom,” she said.
Across the state, teachers in Texas are completing one of the most difficult years they have ever seen. A global pandemic has closed schools and forced more than 5 million public school students to use laptops and desktops at home.
This was to be a successful path back to normalcy for public schools. But after two big jumps in COVID-19, a year of angry school board meetings, parents claiming teachers are preparing children for abuse, and fighting over everything from mask masks for students to what books they can read, teachers they were already at a tipping point with nearly 500 leaving, even if it meant losing their license.
On top of that, Texas passed a law last year banning teachers from discussing “a widely debated and currently contentious issue of public policy or social issues,” the so-called U.S. Critical Racial Theory Act. Both state lawmakers and Gov. Greg Abbott questioned books in school libraries about race, gender, and sexuality, and asked educators to develop standards to keep “pornographic” books off school shelves after highlighting titles that include LGTBQ heroes.
In short, it was a lot.
Rasmussen said she watched news of a shooting at Rob’s primary school that killed 19 children and two teachers, including a press conference by Governor Greg Abbott and other state leaders, and felt she had no control over how to react to the mass shootings.
“People who have never taught before are making policies that affect every moment of my day,” she said. That’s what really strikes me right now.
Leikisha Patterson, a teacher at Deer Park Elementary School, said it was exhausting to watch so many school shootings over the years. When Columbine happened, she said a shockwave was felt across the country and people gathered, demanding change and action.
Now she says she is tired of hearing the words “thoughts and prayers” after every tragedy.
“As a teacher, I’m not only responsible for the curriculum, but sometimes I have to be a counselor, a parent, a guardian, a cheerleader, a supporter, a nurse, a trustee, and now I have to be a police officer,” Patterson said.
A day after an 18-year-old gunman opened fire in a classroom in Uwalde, one of Loiren Gonzalez’s students asked her an embarrassing question.
“Miss Gonzalez, are we safe?” Her third-grader asked.
Gonzalez, who teaches in the independent school district of Pasadena, feels she needs to be strong for her students, who are the same age as those killed in Uwalde on Tuesday.
“It really shook me,” Gonzalez said, trying to hold back tears. “It was something that really hurt my heart.
Even before the horrific shooting in Uwalde, the mood among teachers in Texas is resigned. literally.
And this is on top of the shortage of teachers the state experienced before the pandemic, which is now exacerbated by a return to school, forcing Governor Greg Abbott to set up a commission to find solutions.
Advocates of public education and teachers themselves fear that this latest incident will be a turning point for teachers who are already considering leaving the profession after the pandemic. While Texas is already facing a shortage of teachers.
Teachers have been leaving with fears of gunfire for years, and every time it occurs, the fear continues to grow, said Alejandra Lopez, president of the Alliance of Teachers and Support Staff in San Antonio.
“We are talking about complicating crises,” Lopez said. “We have a lack of funding and resources, we had to endure two years of a pandemic and now the reality of the school shooting.”
There are already more than 200 mass shootings in 2022, according to The Gun Violence Archive, an independent data collection organization. Teachers, whether here in Texas or elsewhere, feel the pain of shooting in their communities, as schools often serve as a community center.
Lopez said people should reject the premise that teachers need to be prepared for these incidents and instead find ways to stop them from happening altogether. This starts with making it difficult to obtain a weapon.
Ron Asierno, executive director of the UTHealth Houston Trauma and Resilience Center, said it was “crazy” for people to wonder how teachers could be better prepared for this situation, when people should instead call for less gun violence. and more gun reform.
“Are we really at this point when this is a valid question?” Asierno said. “It’s like saying, how can we prepare children to be victims of sexual exploitation or trafficking?”
Asierno said that for teachers, fear or trauma can begin with shooting exercises that they practice throughout the school year, especially for those who have already experienced trauma in the past.
“They are going into this training, many of them have already experienced trauma in their lives,” he said. “They deal with the trauma of their students, and then you put that on stress levels that are already very high.”
Nicholas Westers, a clinical psychologist at Children’s Health in Dallas, said it was normal for students to be concerned about the mass shooting, but that parents should keep an eye out if it continues.
Because children who are already coping with behavioral problems by staying home during the pandemic, Westers said during that time, parents and teachers need to reassure students that they will be safe and explain how.
“We all have physical needs for food, shelter, water,” he said. “This is the most important thing, because if you don’t have this and nothing else really matters, then safety is just above that.”
Westers encouraged parents to talk to their children about how they feel, what they have heard and what they are most worried about.
Andrew Heirston, a civil rights lawyer and advocate for education policy at Texas Appleseed, an organization working to address systemic inequalities in public education, said the next step must be a steady expansion of mental health professionals in schools.
“It must be a priority for politicians to alleviate the suffering of teachers and young people to invest in these mental health resources,” Harston said.
Rasmussen, who signed her contract for the next school year on the day of the shooting, said she was considering leaving the profession every year for the past few years.
“This year I really expanded my network, posted my resume there and went deeper in my search for where I want to be at this time next year,” she said. “Not from the point of view that I no longer like to teach, but from the point of view that I don’t know if I can live like this anymore.”
Many teachers this year saw a dramatic increase in classroom behavior problems this year, as students attending a virtual school from their kitchens or bedrooms had to re-experience sitting in a classroom away from home for more than seven hours.
Increasing student behavior is one of the reasons Darrell Nichols, 30, left his job in April at Brazos Valley Charter School near College Station after teaching for seven years.
“I was bitten; I’m scratched; “I’ve been working hard for the last two years, especially this year,” Nichols said.
But Nichols, who quit teaching to go into sales, said it hit him hard last week, especially since he remembers all the active shooting training he did with his own students every few months. His children are already so used to them that they have no doubt what they are doing.
“It makes me feel very old because I had to practice what these teachers did,” Nichols said, referring to teachers Irma Garcia and Eva Mireles, who were killed Tuesday at Rob Elementary School. “I hid my children away from the window, the door. I would lean against the door with my car keys in my hand like a makeshift weapon if I had to use them.
He said watching Abbott and other state leaders come to Uwalde and pray for healing prayers for the community also upset him.
“I did not enter the classroom, on the one hand, to be accused of preparing my students, and on the other hand to be asked to take an AR-15 clip from them,” Nichols said. “And no one I know entered the teaching profession for that.
Reporter Jason Beeferman contributed to this story.
Disclosure: Apple, Curri and Texas Appleseed have …
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