Sandy Hook teacher co-founds organization to fight gun violence
NEWTOWN — The rifle shots from the gunman’s AR-15 were coming into her classroom so loudly that Abbey Clements wanted to climb on the table and rip the intercom speaker off its mounts, but she couldn’t risk leaving her students in the closet area.
“I knew (the gunfire) was traumatizing the kids,” Clements said. “But I had no idea which direction the shots were coming from, and I didn’t want to stand in front of the window.”
When all 154 bullets had been fired that horrible December morning and Clements heard footsteps on the roof, she told her secondgraders, “They’re here to help us,” but Clements didn’t know whose footsteps those were.
Even after police in SWAT gear came to rescue Clements and her second-graders, rushing them into the hallway and urging them to run to the exit, Clements didn’t imagine the terror was over, because the officers she passed had rifles in ready-shoot positions.
That day that 26 first-graders and educators died would
only get worse as families who had not been reunited with their loved ones who waited in vain in the Sandy Hook firehouse.
“It was the worst thing you could ever imagine — the horror, the panic, the fear, the crying,” Clements said. “Your brain is trying to protect you from what you are experiencing, and I remember holding my ears, not wanting to know what everyone was trying to figure out.”
People invariably say, “I can’t imagine,” when Clements shares her story. It’s true in some respects that it is an unimaginable terror, Clements told Hearst Connecticut Media.
Increasingly in Connecticut and across the United States gun violence is becoming a subject school kids are discussing with their teachers.
“Gun violence is everywhere — it’s in our schools, it’s in our communities and it’s our homes,” said Clements, who teaches fourth grade in Newtown. “In the gun violence prevention movement, we are always thinking of ways to engage the population without making everyone depressed, because we want people to feel empowered that they can do something about it.”
Then came the shooting death of four high school students in Michigan on Nov. 30.
Clements was talking through the tragedy with her friend, Sarah Lerner — a teacher who survived the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in 2018, and with her friend Sari Beth Rosenberg — a New York City high school teacher who routinely hears stories of everyday gun violence from her students, when the three realized they were done bemoaning the fact that teachers’ voices were not being heard in the national debate about gun violence in schools.
The three launched Teachers Unify to End Gun Violence to “amplify the stories and lived experiences of teachers and school staff across the country” and to support those educators who often feel alone with the burdens they carry for their students.
“We are the ones who listen to kids whose lives have been changed by suicide, by gun violence, and by domestic violence” said Lerner, who teaches English at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., four years after 17 students and staff were slain by a gunman.
“When teachers hear these stories and deal with these kids, we can get bystander trauma because it is very heavy to take in,” Lerner said. “We want to create a space where these stories can be told so that teachers realize they are not in a vacuum and they are not alone.” Clements agreed.
“In my class every year, I have students who are afraid something is going to happen to them when they go to school,” she said.
Teachers helping teachers
Through her friendship with Clements, Lerner experienced first-hand the therapeutic power of support from someone who knows what it’s like to be trapped in a classroom as a gunman ravages the school.
“Even when you go through the same thing with co-workers on campus, you experience it differently and you feel alone, so we wanted to create a sense of community so that teachers know what they’re feeling and what they’re going through is normal,” said Lerner. “Abbey has been such an integral part of my healing over these last three years that I don’t know where I would be in my healing journey without her support and guidance.”
Along with Rosenberg, who is an activist, a writer and hosts the PBS NewsHour Classroom Educator Zoom Series, Clements and Lerner envision an organization that is both public facing and peer facing. The goal is to tell the public how gun violence is tearing at the fabric of the classroom, and reinforce teachers with support and resources.
In doing so, the organization intends to create anonymous ways to share stories about the scourge of gun violence without exploiting victims.
“There are complicated levels of trauma with gun violence where survivors who carry survivor guilt might be apprehensive to share,” Clements said. “We know the levels of impact and want to protect people.” Nor is the new organization out to be divisive, she said.
“We are not out there to attack school boards and superintendents but if the stories we tell are showing cracks in the armor of some school districts, it would be irresponsible for us not to share that,” Clements said. Lerner agrees.
“We are cognizant of the confidentiality needs of teachers who are not tenured or who do not have a union,” Lerner said. “We have ways for teachers to share their stories anonymously.”
Clements and Lerner said the common experience and the common vision they share with co-founder Rosenberg is the model for their organization’s growth.
“This common passion that we have is like sisters who have known each other our entire lives,” Clements said. “I see this growing exponentially from teacher to teacher as a safe place to share their stories and elevate their voices.”