The day America’s Heart Broke

It was already an incredibly difficult day at San Diego High School. I kept looking over at the clock hoping the workday would soon be over. When lunch finally came around, I took out my phone, read a few words and instantly put my phone down. The only way I could keep my head up was by supporting it with my hands. I couldn’t believe this horrible blow. There were tears in my eyes. The teacher I was working with put on the news immediately and we were both horrified by what we heard. While we were having an unpleasant morning at SDHS, a 20 year old man forced himself into a Connecticut elementary school and killed 20 kids and 6 adults. Much to America’s horror the six and seven year-olds that died that day had multiple gunshots in their bodies. About a couple of days after the shootings, I read a very touching story about a special needs child, six year-old Dylan Hockley whose body was found wrapped in the arms of the body of his teacher’s aide. This broke my heart. This teacher’s aide died trying to protect her student while doing the same line of work I was doing at the time. I couldn’t help but wonder what if this crazed man would have chosen my school that day? What would I have done if it were my classroom he entered? This is scary not only as a teacher, but as a person that wants to have a family someday and still believes that schools are like second homes to our kids. Although I’m not a parent yet, I am an aunt who is very involved in the lives of her nephews. Their little faces were the first thing that I thought of when I heard the devastating news. And I cried in fear for our kids’ future, for the poor little souls who were robbed from their parents, and for the little angels who survived and will forever remember this day, poor kids to have had their innocence stripped away from them. It’s just such a terrible travesty. I don’t want to think about it anymore and yet the headlines keep haunting me, all I can do is write because it is the only thing I can take control of. My thoughts and prayers to the families and hopefully this tragedy put an end to these awful copy-cat school shootings that are occurring in our society.