The shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis on Aug. 27 is the 229th school shooting resulting in at least one injury or death since 2018, according to Education Week. Just yesterday, Sept. 10, there were two more shootings at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah and Evergreen High School in Evergreen, Colo.
The Minneapolis shooting left two children dead and 21 others injured, including 18 people between the ages of 6 and 35 and three in their 80s, according to the City of Minneapolis’ website.
As life in Minneapolis returns to some semblance of normal and preschool begins at Annunciation again, we return to the question: “How do we move forward?” Dr. Alyssa Hadley Dunn, the director of teacher education and associate professor of curriculum and instruction, studies how teachers cope with “the days after” life-altering events.
“For almost the last 10 years, I have been studying the choices that teachers make on days after national tragedies, traumas, major events and how they make those choices,” Dunn said. Some of these events include elections, natural disasters, police brutality, protest and school shootings.
Dunn interviewed teachers and students across the country, looking at the choices teachers made in the days after and how they affected students. She found in her research that in these moments, Dunn says, teachers — including herself — wanted to be with and support their students.
Dunn talks with teachers about what it’s like teaching “generation lockdown,” the generation of students who have never experienced a world before Columbine and the perceived normalcy of school shootings.
“You all grew up with active shooter drills; with the rhetoric of run, hide, fight. For more veteran teachers, [this is] something that we did not grow up with,” Dunn said. “So, most veteran teachers have shared with me about how on days after, they’re really kind of being led by their students.”
Dunn said that teachers have noticed that their students are somewhat desensitized to it. Dunn experienced this desensitization — this confusion about how or what to feel — firsthand during a lecture she gave at another university.
“I asked this big lecture hall of people about any days after that they remembered. The older people in the room, you know, the hands went up and they remember very specific days. But none of the college students raised their hands,” Dunn said. “And finally, a student said, ‘look, I remember categories of days after… there are so many school shootings that I don’t remember [exactly]: was it after Parkland? Was it after the one in Texas? Was it after Michigan State?’”
So, what is the right thing for teachers to say to students in the days after? While Dunn says there isn’t one right answer, there is a wrong one.
“The wrong answer is silence,” Dunn said. “So many kids and teachers have memories of days after that are memories of silence. They’re… memories of missed opportunities, missed connections… when the students really need to talk.”
Students will still talk, though, Dunn said, whether teachers or administrations are ready to or not. While teachers are not meant to be therapists, she said, they need to readily recognize their students’ humanity.
“Sometimes we say, ‘oh, school is preparing kids for the real world,’ right? But school is the real world,” Dunn said. “It’s really happening. [Students] can’t just leave [themselves] at the classroom door, just like teachers can’t.”
Teachers who experienced tragedies firsthand are often divided on how to go about their lives afterwards. Some want to get back into the classroom. Some never want to go back. Dunn said none of them, however, are ever sure about how to talk to their students about what happened. Teaching on days after, Dunn said, is about equity and justice: it’s meant to support students, families and community members. However, Dunn says, it only works if you are teaching about that all the time.
“You can’t teach for justice and equity on days after if you haven’t been teaching for justice and equity on days before and days during. It’s not like, ‘oh my god, this thing happened, I’m going to talk about it and then never try to support my students or have justice-oriented conversations again,’” Dunn said. “You have to have already built a relationship and a classroom culture of trust and care.”
Recovery and teaching on days after is also meant to be a holistic approach, Dunn said; it can’t only be done in one class or in one therapy session. Dunn is currently working with universities to create a “proactive days after group” that will study how to respond and support students and teachers during these times.
“If kids only come to English class and talk about it only in English class, and then they go to science or they go to math… and their teachers say ‘that’s too political. We’re not going to touch it today…’ That’s not how brains work,” Dunn said. “Our brains are not siloed. So, if we’re only allowed to talk about it and process it in one place, then we will never be able to recover.”
Dunn said that some level of desensitization is necessary to protect yourself, though she warns against being trapped in that emotional state so long that you no longer feel compelled to act. The biggest thing that compels us to act, she said, is each other: “the collective.” Collective action — counselors, mental health services, student-led groups and in-and-out-of-school action — is what helps students, teachers and communities recover.
“It is realizing that you are not alone in these feelings, in joining social movements, in joining non-profits, in joining community-engaged collectives,” Dunn said. “Even if you’re not making big, sweeping changes, you are able to make little progress… so that you don’t give up hope. It’s not naive to say that things can change.”