Year 8: Week 26 – 21 Guns

I was on paternity leave when the shooting at the Stoneman Douglas High School occurred. I’ll be honest. The gravity of this tragedy didn’t sink in immediately. Like so many people in our country, part of me has become desensitized to these tragedies. Also, as a defense mechanism, I don’t let myself imagine too much. It’s more than I can bear. I’m a teacher, and it’s all too real, and all too easy to picture in my mind’s eye.

It was in that town hall days later when it all hit me. These amazing students said truths adults were too afraid to say, and reminded an entire country that adulthood isn’t defined by how old you are. Part of me wanted to be with my school community, but I knew my students were well looked after, and I had my responsibilities to my own family.

The more I read about this tragedy, it became clear to me how “normal,” tragedies like this were to my students. Also, I saw that the potential I knew in my own students to have an active voice in our democracy was being exercised with incredible power and conviction, that we haven’t seen as a country from the youth, since the era of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. So, I emailed the 8th grade choir teacher, and suggested that we do “21 Guns,” by Green Day as a middle school band and choir piece.

Three years ago, the 8th grade choir had done “21 Guns,” and the 8th grade band performed selections from the album American Idiot. We studied the work of Green Day and how they used their voice to protests the second War in Iraq and give voice to youth culture. Even though “21 Guns,” wasn’t about gun violence, it spoke to critical questions about citizenship. Now more than ever, it felt like the right time to bring back this song for our middle school students to process what was happening in the world.

The students enjoyed working on the song. We didn’t have time to explicate all of the lyrics, but there were some good conversations about some of the themes in the song. As we worked on it, one line held the meaning of the song, the first line of the song: “Do you know what's worth fighting for, when it's not worth dying for?” And before we performed “21 Guns,” I used this line as I did with my students to frame the song for the audience.

Throughout American history, citizens have asked themselves, what is worth fighting for. And some have decided that there were things worth dying for. This includes people who chose to fight in wars for the ideas and values of our country, but it also includes other people. Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court justice who was instrumental in overturning segregation laws and Martin Luther King Jr. knew when they went to areas of the south, they were fighting for what was right, and also that their lives were in very real danger.  The question of what's worth fighting for will follow you your entire life and is central to what it means to be a citizen.  The title of the song "21 Guns," refers to the 21 gun salute, a tribute to fallen troops during military funerals, and the song protests the second war in Iraq, questioning, as we all should, our government.