This is a soapbox. Not really about technology. Mostly my babbling in response to events in the world that I am trying to digest. The words are editorial and reflective. Yet, I shared them with you…
I clearly remember Columbine. It will give you my age, but I was in college. I walked into the dorm common room moments after the news coverage started. Along with countless others, I watched that tragedy unfold before my eyes through the media. I was a prospective teacher, and I began to truly understand that was my future profession that I was watching. A job in a world where I would need to practice huddling in the dark with my students. Columbine opened my eyes. And, sadly, I’ve never had a chance to close them. A teacher I worked with in college committed a murder/suicide just weeks after I last worked with him. His letter of recommendation was in my folder as I applied for jobs. I’ve broken up fights and taken a weapon off of a student. I’ve found writings that spoke of potential tragedies that could just as easily have happened at my school.I’ve lost former students to suicide. Two previous students have been involved with the death of others, though the details I do not know.
As educators, we grow to love and care for every one of our students. They take over our hearts. All of these experiences I have felt directly, in real life. My heart, also, belongs to every student and teacher in every school. When you walk into a school building, you can feel the energy and pulse of learning. I enter a school and feel at home. These relationships and connections to the art of education make today’s tragedy in a Kindergarten class in Connecticut all the more unfathomable. What makes Sandy Hook Elementary any different from the schools that I’ve worked for?
After an incident over ten years ago at one of my schools, the press gathered in our parking lot. It seems like such a small news story now, in the shadow of today’s horrific tale. But, like at Sandy Hook, they stuck the cameras in the face of our seventh graders. In what way is it ethical to milk a child for their passionate reaction? The press pushed. We know more details from within the halls of that building through these interviews- yet even the name of the suspect was incorrect at first. Do we, as a society, really eat up the details of the case? Personally, I want to know more about what happened. I want to try – not to make sense of it all- but to process my grief. But, I don’t need to learn more at the expense of a seven year old who just exited what will probably be the most life changing event they ever experience.
There was a time when news from a warfront took months to get back to families. Letters would just stop coming, and families would not know the fate of their loved ones. In my lifetime, that has changed to live shots of rockets hitting cities and the Tweeting of the attack on America’s sworn enemies. Through Tweets, phone calls, social media posts, live camera shots— the media makes us all witnesses to this horror. And, yet, many of us can not look away.
Too many elements led to this tragedy to just blame one aspect of society. But as more and more mass shootings occur, are we becoming desensitized? First 12, then 20, now almost 30. Will the totals keep growing of lives lost to violence that is witnessed by the world in real-time? I have studied lists of the Oklahoma City victims, those from 9/11, the London Bombings, Columbine, Norway and more incidents than I want to recall tonight. I want to get to know those we have lost. I want to remember them. But with 5 year olds on a list, this is beyond heart-wrenching.
I can not fathom what these families are facing. I cuddled and kissed my own children a lot more tonight. This world in which they grow up is so dark at times. So dark – and the media casts a spotlight on that darkness and shares it with the world.
The media makes us all witnesses to horror. Technology is the vehicle. What holds so much promise to open the world to students to grow also opens the darker sides of the world.
I pray for those who have been directly touched by the tragedy in Connecticut. The thoughts of the world are with them.