The other day, my 4-year-old sister asked my mother about her K-12 days. She asked about her teachers, principals and peers. She wanted to know their names, and what my mom thought of them. After asking my mom about her favorite teacher, my baby sister had one more question.
“Mom, what was your police officer’s name?”
My mom attended school in the late 80s and 90s. They did not have any police officers on campus.
Anyone who knows me knows that my siblings and my mother are the most important things in my life. When you ask me what I love most in this world, it’s my siblings. When you ask me where I would rather be, at any time, it is with my siblings. They mean more to me than anything in this world. I would rather be on a Starbucks date with my 4-year-old sister than anywhere else in the world, at any time.
My sister is fearless and full of energy. She likes to “tattoo” herself with Crayola markers and play dress-up. She likes cake pops, going as far as to think that there is an endless supply of them every time we enter a bakery or a coffee shop. Every night before I have to head back to college, we have sleepovers on her pink carpet floor because it makes her feel safer. She wakes me up at 3 a.m. because she can’t sleep without me, and she likes to draw portraits of me and send them to my school address. We are half siblings, but she has told me that she believes that we are not only best friends, but also twin sisters, because we are both girls.
My family has taken to teaching my baby sister how to do her own “mantras” and “affirmations.” We have taught her to say: “I am brave, I am beautiful, I am strong.”
My baby sister believes that her family can protect her from everything, which is why she latches on to me every time we are around a stranger.
I hate that I cannot protect her from everything.
My sister is 4 years old, almost 5. She is less than five years younger than William, Evelyn and Hallie, the 9-year-old victims from the mass shooting at the Covenant School on March 27 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Every day, when I wake up for class, my mind goes right to thinking about my sister and her peers. Her elementary school is the same one that I attended, educating kindergartners through fourth graders.
Her elementary school isn’t too different from the one that endured tragedy at the Covenant School.
Her elementary school isn’t too different from Sandy Hook Elementary School, either.
Her elementary school also isn’t too different from Robb Elementary School.
Do you see the problem?
It is April 6, 2023.
Kids who are the same age as my baby sister have been going through active shooter threat training and drills. They are being taught to hide from the “big bad wolf.”
The Covenant School mass school shooting marks the 131st mass shooting in the U.S. just this year. Last year, there were 51 school shootings with injuries or deaths. My sister was 3 years old last year.
As of April 6, there have been 13 school shootings this year that have resulted in injuries or deaths. Since 2018, there have been 157 such shootings. The year 2022 marked the most school shootings with injuries or deaths in a single year, according to Education Week which began tracking the data in 2018.
Every time I wake up, it’s three hours later in the day in my hometown than it is where I attend college. Most of the time, that means that my sister is in the peak of her school day.
She’s probably learning numbers alongside her peers — maybe she’s learning how to spell her name. Maybe she’s at recess. Maybe my mom let her take the day off, and they’re at Target.
The problem is that I don’t know what she’s doing at any time, and that in this day and age, I can’t just imagine her playing with toys alongside her friends or gaining the foundation of an education that will follow her forever. I never have peace of mind. Nobody who cares for a child who attends a K-12 school can have peace of mind from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday.
The world that we live in forces me to think about other things that could be going on — as I go to school across the country, at a college that’s not too different from Virginia Tech.
A college that’s not too different from Michigan State University.
Do you see the problem?
My brother goes to school, too, and his goal is to attend university in San Diego. My brother is funny, kind and down to earth. He likes to play baseball and drive his friends around in my old, beat-up Nissan Altima. He’s calm, easy-going, and brave. He has a huge heart, and has been through more than anyone his age should have to.
He goes to a high school not too different from Stoneman Douglas High School.
A school not too different from Columbine High School.
Don’t you see the problem?
Each day, 12 children die from gun violence in America. Another 32 are shot and injured, according to the Sandy Hook Promise. Guns are the leading cause of death among American children and teens, with one out of every 10 gun deaths being age 19 or younger.
I hate that I can’t shield my siblings from the horrors of the world that make it so hard to fall asleep every night. I hate that every time a school shooting occurs, we as a society collectively get overwhelmed and upset, then watch it pass into the abyss and become just another statistic. Our children are not just a statistic.
Five hundred fifty five is one of my favorite numbers in the world because it signifies change. With positive change comes hope, and hope is what we’re all seeking. It’s so easy to feel hopeless in a world where we’re seeing 1.5 mass shootings per day so far in the United States. A world where school shootings are becoming so common that we can’t keep track of them — so common that we are becoming desensitized every time they happen that we are starting to believe that this is just the way it is.
At the end of the day, I believe that we’re all on the same page. When it comes to school shootings, we all want them to stop and we want to prevent them. But, what are we doing? What can we be doing?
The polarization of our country has led us to a suspenseful stagnancy, in which no change is on the horizon due to conflicting morals, beliefs and politics. What we should not be divided on, however, is the belief that our children deserve the right to an education in which they don’t have to fear for their lives each time they enter the classroom.
If we don’t make a change now, we are going to keep waking up to more violence and our children are going to be caught in the crossfires of our stagnancy.
Next time that this happens, god forbid, are we going to accept it and watch as the headlines come and go? Are we going to turn a blind eye to our future leaders of our country, when they need us most?
When will it be enough? We shouldn’t wait for it to affect us to be prompted to act.
We need to be proactive and take matters into our own hands, before the next violent act.