Year 8 – Week 24: An American Teacher

I’ve got it all figure out.

If I hear the lockdown code on the loudspeaker before the shots, I simultaneously tell the students how to sit on the ground, in a steady and serious tone, and run to lock the door. If I hear the shots and no lockdown notice, I’m instruct a student to hit the small rectangular button on the wall that goes straight to the security desk, and then I tell my kids to go into lockdown mode as I go to lock the door.

If I’m with my 3rd graders, I’ll probably grab a handful of the music storybooks from the book shelf in our room, and read to them as we sit in the corner of the room. If I’m with some of my older MS students, I’ll tell them a story from my college days, recounting one of my misadventures as a frat boy.

I’ve thought about what I would do if there was a shooter in my workplace, because I’ve practiced, with children, this exact scenario at least once a year, every year for the past ten years. I've heard stories of people who share my profession, who are dead trying save children from tragedy, over and over. I've had to suffer the indignity of leader who fails to acknowledge the my contributions, and worse, blamed people like me for not doing enough.

I’ve had to do all of these things because I’m a teacher in America.

I feel the honor of the privilege to serve our children, and our country, by giving the best of me to my students. I feel the weight of the responsibility that I have to educate the young people to be more empathetic, more kind and more honorable citizens. And I feel the trust that parents put into my school, the administration, the staff, and in me to take care of their children, and keep them safe.

Too often, I’ve felt the horror. Each school shooting has caused my brain to imagine my school community, my colleagues, and my students figuratively, and literally ripped apart by bullets. I try not to do this, and I’m able to hold myself back for a time, but inevitably it happens. It’s horror, and while I wince, and move my mind to something else, I remember for too many of school communities in America, this isn’t imagination at play, this is reality.

I didn’t sign up for this. This wasn’t discussed in my education courses in college, and it wasn’t on my job application. However, it has become part of my job, it has become part of what it means to be a teacher: facing the reality of school shootings in America.

I’ve chosen to be an optimist,  but if 20 six and seven year olds who died at Sandy Hook couldn’t put into motion real change, than what is 17 people being killed in a high school going to do? The empathy gap is galling, the immoral greed of gun companies is disgusting, and those who claim to be “leaders,” but act in their own interests over what is best for our children is despicable. 

I’ve got to hope that my doing my part, that by helping teach my students to be knowledgeable, empathetic and active citizens in our democracy, I can help make our country safer for my two boys. I have a chance every day at school to make real change happen beyond thoughts and prayers.

I am proud to be a teacher. And I refuse to let that guy keep me from being proud to be an American teacher.  Though right now, my feelings about being an American teacher are complex, and it's hard to express all that is in my heart. 

I'm tired of the lip-service people give children and teachers, that not backed up in budgets, I'm frustrated that people make more money than teachers and are held at a lower moral and professional standard, and I'm in disbelief that people are so selfish and insecure that they aren't willing to make reasonable changes to the gun control laws for the chance that it may save children's lives. 

This is who I am, after being a husband, a parent and an Asian-American, being an American teacher is the most important part of my identity.  I refuse to let this part of myself go.

There's too much work to be done.