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Katrina Rasmussen was an eighth-grade student in North Texas when she saw raw television footage of children her age running from Colorado high school while bloody students and teachers were being transported to parked ambulances.
Now, 23 years later, she saw how the tragic week unfolded in Uvalde as a high school teacher in Dallas, and she says it’s as if nothing has changed since the Columbine High School shooting.
“We feel like we’re at the mercy of people who don’t even know what it’s like in the classroom,” he said.
Across the state, Texas teachers are ending one of the toughest years they’ve ever seen. A global pandemic has shut down schools and forced more than 5 million public school students to use laptops and desktops at home.
This was to be a successful way to get back to normal for public schools. But after two major increases in COVID-19, a year of angry school board meetings, parents claimed that teachers were preparing children for abuse and fights over everything from masked mandates to students to books they can read, teachers were already at a breaking point with almost 500 quitting smoking, even though it meant losing their license.
On top of all that, Texas passed a law last year banning teachers from discussing “a widely debated and currently controversial issue of public policy or social affairs,” the so-called “critical theory of race” law. state. And both state lawmakers and Governor Greg Abbott have questioned books in school libraries about race, gender, and sexuality, and called on education officials to develop standards to keep “pornographic” books on school shelves after highlight titles that include LGBTQ characters.
In short, it has been a lot.
Rasmussen said that on seeing the news of the shooting at Robb Elementary School that left 19 children and two teachers dead, including the press conference of Governor Greg Abbott and other state leaders, he has no control over how to respond to these mass shootings.
“People who have never taught before, make policies that affect every moment of my day,” he said. “Right now, that’s really what cuts me the most.”
Lakeisha Patterson, an elementary school teacher at Deer Park, said it has been exhausting to see so many school shootings over the years. When Columbine passed, he said there was a shock wave across the country and people gathered to demand a change and for action to take place.
Now, she says she’s 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 tutor, an animator, a supporter, a nurse, a custodian, and now I need to be a police officer,” Patterson said. . dit.
One day after an 18-year-old gunman opened fire on a classroom in Uvalde, one of Luaren González’s students asked him a heartbreaking question.
“Miss Gonzalez, are we sure?” asked his third grader.
Gonzalez, who teaches in the Pasadena Independent School District, felt he had to be strong for his students who were the same age as those who were killed in Uvalde on Tuesday.
“That really caught me off guard,” Gonzalez said, trying to hold back tears. “That was something that hurt my heart.”
Even before the horrific shooting in Uvalde, the mood among Texas teachers has been one of resignation. Literally.
And that adds to the shortage of teachers the state suffered before the pandemic that is now exacerbated by the return to school that forced Gov. Greg Abbott to set up a commission to find solutions.
Public education advocates and teachers themselves fear that this latest incident will be the breaking point for teachers who are already considering leaving the profession since the pandemic. All the while Texas is already facing a shortage of teachers.
Teachers have left with the fear of a shootout for years, and every time there is one, the fear continues to grow, said Alejandra Lopez, president of the San Antonio Alliance of Teachers and Support Staff.
“We’re talking about escalating crises,” Lopez said. “We have a lack of funding and resources, we have had to endure two years of pandemic and now the reality of school shooting.”
There have already been more than 200 mass shootings in 2022, according to The Gun Violence Archive, an independent data collection organization. Teachers, whether here in Texas or anywhere else, feel the pain of the shootings in their communities, as schools most of the time serve as a community center.
Lopez said people should reject the premise that teachers should be prepared for such incidents and instead find ways to prevent them from happening completely. This starts to make it harder to get weapons.
Ron Acierno, executive director of the Authealth Houston Center for Trauma and Resilience, said it was “crazy” for people to wonder how teachers can be better prepared for this situation when people should call for less gun violence. and further arms reform.
“Are we really at this point where this is a valid question?” said Acierno. “It’s like, how can we prepare children to be sexually exploited or sexually trafficked?”
Acierno said that for teachers, fear or trauma can begin with the school shooter exercises they practice throughout the school year, especially for those who have already suffered past trauma.
“They will get into these exercises, many of them have already experienced trauma at the bottom of their lives,” he said. “They’re dealing with their students’ trauma and then putting it on stress levels that are already very high.”
Nicholas Westers, a clinical psychologist at Children’s Health in Dallas, said it’s normal for students to feel anxious about mass shooting, but that parents should keep an eye on it if it continues.
With children already facing behavior problems from being trapped at home during the pandemic, Westers said that during this time, parents and teachers need to reassure students that they will be safe and tell them how.
“We all have physical needs for food, shelter and water,” he said. “That’s the decent thing to do, and it should end there.”
Westers encouraged parents to have conversations with their children about what they feel, what they have heard, and what worries them most.
Andrew Hairston, a civil rights lawyer and advocate for education policies at Texas Appleseed, an organization that works to address systemic inequalities in state education, said the next steps should be a solid expansion of mental health experts in the schools.
“This should be a priority for policymakers to alleviate the suffering of teachers and young people by investing in these mental health resources,” Hairston said.
Rasmussen, who signed his contract for the next school year on the day of the shooting, said he plans to leave the profession each year for the past two years.
“This year, I was really expanding my network, putting in my resume and doing a deep research on where I want to be this time next year,” he said. “Not from the point of view that I no longer like to teach, but from the point of view of not knowing if I will be able to live more like that.”
Many teachers this year saw a dramatic increase in classroom behavior problems this year, as students who attended virtual school from their kitchens or dormitories had to admit to sitting in a classroom. classroom away from home for more than seven hours.
This increase in student behavior problems is one of the reasons Darrell Nichols, 30, left his job in April at a charter school in Brazos Valley near College Station after teaching for seven years.
“I was bitten; They scratched me; I’ve been impacted in my line of work for the last two years, with this last year in particular, ”Nichols said.
But Nichols, who left teaching to pursue sales, said last week has affected him greatly, especially because he remembers all the active shooting exercises he did with his own students every few months. Their children are already so used to them that they don’t even question what they are doing.
“I’m having a lot of old feelings because I had to practice what those teachers did,” Nicholls said, referring to teachers Irma Garcia and Eva Mireles who were killed Tuesday at Robb Elementary School. “I had my children hidden away from the window, from the door. I would lean against the door with the car keys in my hand as a makeshift weapon if I had to use them.”
He said seeing Abbott and other state leaders come to Uvalde and asking for healing prayers for the community also bothered him.
“I didn’t go into the classroom, on the one hand, to be accused of preparing my students and, on the other hand, to ask them to take an AR-15 clip with them,” Nichols said. “And no one I know has ever been involved in teaching.”
Journalist Jason Beeferman contributed to this story.
Disclosure: Apple, Curry and Texas Appleseed have …