Columbine survivors share their wisdom
It’ll be ‘day by day’ for Florida students, staff
LITTLETON, Colo. – Change the sound of the fire alarms. Consider banning what the cafeteria cooked for lunch that fateful day. Watch out for slamming lockers and popping balloons.
And accept that normal will never truly be normal again.
That’s the advice survivors of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting have for students, educators and administrators at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Nearly 20 years after Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 of their fellow students and teacher Dave Sand- ers, the lessons of Columbine are visible across the nation: more metal detectors and armed guards, a more aggressive police response.
Less visible are the lessons learned by the teachers and administrators who lived through that day and returned to their shattered school weeks later to pick up the pieces.
At Stoneman Douglas, curriculum will be altered, grading diminished, teaching style adapted. Test scores could drop and learning could slow, at least in the short term, as traumatized students and staff try to readjust to a campus transformed into a national focal point on gun violence.
“Everybody needs school to feel like school. But everyone is traumatized, and traumatized brains don’t learn
well,” said Paula Reed, an English teacher who survived Columbine. “It’s going to be a while before they even start getting their feet under them.”
Monday and Tuesday were set aside for staff planning, and classes resume Wednesday on a modified schedule. The full class schedule resumes March 5. The freshman building, where the carnage took place, will remain closed, and tentative plans call for its demolition. The school has been closed since Feb. 14, when authorities say former student Nikolas Cruz killed 14 students and three staff members.
Now retired, Columbine principal Frank DeAngelis has spoken several times with Ty Thompson, Stoneman Douglas’ principal. DeAngelis has become one of the world’s leading experts on school violence and its effects on communities.
“It’s the things you don’t even think about,” DeAngelis said. “Teachers won’t know what to expect. It’s a dayby-day experience.”
DeAngelis said the smell of the food from the cafeteria could trigger memories for some students, and the fire alarm certainly will. So might sirens or even the sound of a slamming door.
After the Columbine shooting, well- meaning community members built a balloon arch in the school colors to welcome students back to class.
“What we didn’t anticipate was balloons popping and kids diving on the ground,” DeAngelis said.
In the weeks after the shooting, Reed remembers walking into her home, past her husband and two kids, to sit on the bed and stare out the window, exhausted after a day of trying to teach and balance the emotional needs of herself and her students.
Reed said at first she altered her teaching style: Instead of lecturing or asking for class participation, she asked her 10th- and 11th-graders to follow along as she read aloud to them. The comforting familiarity helped, she said, as did a daily check-in when she asked each student to rate out loud how he or she was feeling.
The most important thing, Reed and DeAngelis said, is to remember that every student and staff member will be at a different place in the grieving process. Some will be ready to move on, the two said, and some won’t be able to stop talking about it, and others will refuse to discuss it at all — at least at first.
Many will struggle with guilt, knowing they survived while their classmates and colleagues didn’t.
“The first few good days you have can also be the hardest,” Reed said. “You think you see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s actually an oncoming train.”