Teachers: ‘None of us are built for this’
Fears pervade amid shootings
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Teacher Jessica Salfia was putting up graduation balloons last month at her West Virginia high school when two of them popped, setting off panic in a crowded hallway between classes.
One student dropped to the floor. Two others lunged into open classrooms. Salfia quickly shouted, “It’s balloons! Balloons!” and apologized as the teenagers realized the noise didn’t come from gunshots.
The moment of terror at Spring Mills High School in Martinsburg, about 80 miles northwest of Washington happened May 23, the day before a gunman fatally shot 19 children and two teachers in a classroom in Uvalde, Texas. The reaction reflects the fear that pervades the nation’s schools and taxes its teachers — even those who have never experienced such violence — and it comes on top of the strain imposed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Salfia has a more direct connection to gun threats than most. Her mother, also a West Virginia teacher, found herself staring down a student with a gun in her classroom seven years ago. After talking to him for some two hours, she was hailed for her role in helping bring the incident to a peaceful end. For any teacher standing in front of a classroom in 21st century America, the job seems to ask the impossible. Already expected to be guidance counselors, social workers, surrogate parents and more to their students, teachers are sometimes called on to be protectors, too.
The U.S. public school landscape has changed markedly since the Columbine school shooting in Colorado in 1999, and Salfia said teachers think about the risks every day.
“What would happen if we go into a lockdown? What would happen if I hear gunshots?” she said. “What would happen if one of my students came to school armed that day? This is a constant thread of thought.”
George Theoharis was a teacher and principal for a decade, and has spent the past 18 years training teachers and school administrators at Syracuse University. He said teachers are stretched more now than ever — even more than last year, “when the pandemic was newer.”
“We’re sort of left in this moment where we do expect teachers and schools to solve all our problems, and do it quickly,” he said.
Schools nationwide have been dealing with widespread episodes of misbehavior since the return to in-person learning, which has been accompanied by soaring student mental health needs. In growing numbers, teens have been turning to gun violence to resolve spur-of-the-moment conflicts, researchers say.
In Nashville, Tennessee, three Inglewood Elementary School staffers sprang into action last month to restrain a man who had hopped a fence. After children on the playground were directed inside, the man followed them, but he was tackled by kindergarten teacher Rachel Davis.
At one point, secretary Katrina “Nikki” Thomas held him in a headlock. They and school bookkeeper Shay Patton cornered the man, who didn’t have a gun, inside the school until authorities arrived. All three employees were hurt.
“For me, it was just like, these kids are innocent,” Patton said. “I just knew that they couldn’t protect themselves, so it was on us to do it. And I didn’t think twice.”
The three employees watched in horror less than two weeks later as news of the Uvalde shooting unfolded.
“In my head, immediately I thought, ‘That could have been me and my kids,’” Davis said. “That could have been us out there on that playground with this … guy if he had had a gun on him.”
Adding to frustration for some educators was the scapegoating of a teacher initially blamed for propping open the door a gunman used to enter the Uvalde, Texas, elementary school. Days later, officials said the teacher had closed the door, but it didn’t lock.
Kindergarten teacher Ana Hernandez said Texas educators are anxious after a rough patch that has lasted years and shows no sign of ending. She and a group of colleagues from Dilley drove an hour to Uvalde to do all they could, delivering donated stuffed animals and cases of water. She said more is needed.
“Changes have to be done for us to feel secure in a classroom as a teacher, (and) for students also to feel secure and safe in a classroom,” she said.
Tish Jennings, a University of Virginia education professor specializing in teacher stress and socialemotional learning, said teacher stress becomes contagious. “It interferes with their ability to function and it also interferes with students’ ability to learn,” Jennings said.