Opinion: Save our lives before the next school shooting

Last week, something happened that we must stop accepting as a mere “fact of life”: a school shooting. A student armed with an AR-15 killed two students and two teachers and injured nine others at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, according to police.

I saw two things right after that motivated me to speak out. They should motivate anyone to speak out. The first was a student being interviewed on TV about one of the teacher victims. As he spoke, he began shifting tenses to talk about her — she “is” to she “was” — in mid-sentence. You could see the emotion in his face as he realized in real time that he would never see his teacher again.

And, later in the day, I saw the words of so-called leaders saying that now wasn’t the time to “politicize” the violence. They offered “thoughts and prayers” as though it were all they had power to do.

Why do we accept this from our political leaders? I grew up in rural North Carolina (Harnett County) and I have family members who hunt and own guns. Those guns aren’t the AR-15 assault-style rifle the shooter used.

The U.S. accounts for the vast majority of school shootings especially when compared to other similar countries around the world.

I think this particular sadness resonates most because I’m a public school teacher. While I teach mostly upperclassmen, young people who are on the verge of adulthood, they are still someone’s child. Each day they are entrusted to my care and supervision, to educate, guide, and at the most basic level protect.

While they may stand taller or weigh more than I do, they are still children with a promise of life and potential that deserves to be nurtured in an environment that at its minimum is secure from violence and threat of death.

I can’t imagine what the hearts and minds of the surviving teachers at Apalachee High must feel, to have the place you invest so much of your life and efforts into marred by heinous violence and unspeakable loss. I do know, however, that whenever the doors of AHS reopen and classes resume, many of those same teachers will be the first faces children will look to and find comfort and courage. Teachers are more than sages of reading, writing,  history, science or arithmetic, graders of tests, or keepers of the answers.

We are the souls and personalities that build school culture and reassure children, big or small, that tragic setbacks may come today, but that’s what tomorrow is for. We remind our students and ourselves that each day is full of chances to be and do better and to learn and grow from the events that preceded it.

However, it is dismissive and utterly disrespectful to expect these hopeful viewpoints to live in an optimistic vacuum devoid of practical and intentional political, legal, and social action on the part of our leaders.

It is beyond a dereliction of duty; it is an utter moral failing for which they will be judged, not only by those directly impacted by these incidents of violence but by the annals of history and ultimately their makers.

Even the scriptures so many of these lawmakers claim to live by establish a clear call to ACT in the face of oppression, injustice, and evil in the world.

James 2: 14-18: “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? …  So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, You have faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.”

Everything from the texts available in a school library and the curriculum taught in a humanities class to what’s served for lunch or the bathroom a child can use is being overwhelmingly scrutinized, supervised, regulated, and politicized by people claiming to have the “best interests” of students at heart.

To focus on such matters while actively avoiding and diverting from meaningful action on gun control and increasing mental health and interventionist resources in our nation’s schools is beyond hypocritical; it’s reprehensible.

As a woman of faith, yes, my prayers are most assuredly with and for the victims and survivors of this senseless act of violence.

It is not simply what students, teachers, and schools deserve … it’s the only thing that will save our very lives.