I’ll die trying to save you: One teacher’s message to his students

Every day, I go to work to teach my beautiful Black and brown 5- and 6-year-old babies. Their unyielding joy and willingness to learn about the world have sustained me in a difficult work and social climate. My heart has become so heavy.

As a Black teacher in America, my emotions are real and raw. I am distraught and weary. I have been teaching in elementary and secondary schools for seven years. In that time, I have had students directly influenced by gun violence. Alerts about neighborhood shootings add to the daily stressors that come with being a teacher or a student in an urban environment. I have also felt the pain of mass shootings in schools, which have become pervasive in American culture. The massacre that occurred in Uvalde, Texas, rocked me at my core.

When I heard about what happened at Robb Elementary School, my heart dropped. The school day had just ended and I’d sent my students home when I was able to catch up on the day’s news. As I read the horrifying details, I sat down at my desk and wept. In my despair, I thought about how tired I am of this happening to us — this nation, our schools, our students — again and again. I thought about how America is the only place with this problem, and I wondered what there is to stop this from happening to me or my students.

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Teachers nationwide bear the impact of so many things, and we are expected to help our students prepare for the inevitable, even when we are not prepared ourselves.

A few weeks before the Uvalde shooting, my school held an active shooter school drill, during which some of my coworkers were tasked with pretending to be the culprits. The idea that we as an elementary school have to prepare for the possibility that at any moment, a crazed person could enter with a semiautomatic weapon and irreparably ruin families hit me hard. I had to take a break. This was not my first drill, but like many other teachers forced to endure this, I became overwhelmed that we are still having to prepare for a shooting. Ten years after babies were murdered in their classroom in Sandy Hook, the country still has not enacted meaningful gun reform.

Over the last few days, as America has grappled with the latest slaughter of innocent children, Democratic lawmakers (right on cue) grabbed the mic to disparage the Republicans for their recent opposition to gun laws. Even after the racially motivated carnage at a grocery store in Buffalo, the argument about guns continues.

Enough is enough. It was enough before Uvalde and Sandy Hook. Young children should not have to die for the needle to move on banning military-style weapons.

What happened to those beautiful children in Uvalde and Sandy Hook is not a case of schools being ill-prepared, or teachers not caring enough to take the reality of school-based mass shootings seriously. There is plenty of blame to go around, but ineffective teachers will never be the reason.

Teachers are worn out. We are continually forced to operate in crisis mode. We have to come up with solutions to keep our students safe in our classroom with COVID-19 still plaguing our nation. We have to invent strategies to support our students who are dealing daily with neighborhood gun violence, poverty, and social inequities in a nation that seems to not give a damn about their well-being.

Now we have to deal with the reality that we may be tasked with shielding our students from being murdered during a school shooting, likely at the expense of our own lives. Teachers are tired of being the heroes, and our students are tired of being the victims.

As a Black male teacher, I am doubly exhausted. I have to make the daily decision to exist in the world with the knowledge that at any moment, my life can be taken from me. There is nothing that I can do to keep myself out of harm’s way: not grocery shopping, not even teaching in my own school and classroom.

“Teachers are tired of being the heroes.”

In spite of all that, each day I muster just a little more strength to go back into the trenches to teach my babies another day. Meanwhile, someone in Washington is watching this violence, and not planning to do anything at all about it.

I am tired of begging Republican lawmakers to ensure our safety. I am angry that America is still incapable of protecting even the most innocent among us.

To the federal government: Help us and pass sensible gun legislation banning weapons of mass destruction. Do the work to end domestic terrorism in our schools.

To my fellow educators: The end of this school year is near. Be as strong and as gentle with yourselves as possible, even if that means not being strong at all.

To our students: Hold on to your teachers; we still got you — even if we have to die trying.

Eric T. Turner Jr. is a Temple University and St. Joseph’s University alum, a writer, and an urban elementary educator living in South Philadelphia.