Columbine Memorial

 We just returned from a road trip, beginning on Route 66 from Chicago and then turning and ending up in Denver. We had a great time, and I posted lots of pictures on social media. However, there is one stop that I did not post on social media because I didn't want to trivialize it.

While driving from Colorado Springs to Denver, we stopped in Littleton.

I wanted to see the memorial to the victims of the Columbine Highschool massacre. (I don't phrase it that way to be dramatic; there are several sources that name it that way.)

 

That day is burned into my brain, as it is for many people my age who watched it unfold on every news channel on our TVs. For months afterwards, we saw the horrifying images splashed across magazine covers and for years afterwards we have heard other school shooting incidents compared to it.

The memorial is in a beautiful park, very close to the school.

I wanted to visit to pay my respect to the people were lost and injured on that terrible day.

I also wanted to go so that I could honor all of the people who are still impacted by it, in different ways.

Obviously the Littleton community, but also the broad community of educators.

In August, as many people are still getting in beach days or planning Labor Day cook-outs, thousands of teachers across the country are preparing for their school year in active shooter trainings. These types of trainings didn't really exist before then; the earliest programs started in 2000. After the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, the drills became more broadly implemented across the country.

At my school, and others that I know of, the activie shooter training includes listening to the 911 calls from Patti Neilson, the teacher who was in the library during the shooting. It's chilling and heart-breaking and terrifying to imagine. I assume that every person who works in a school feel similarly.

I listened to a podcast recently which interviewed Brooks Brown, who survived the Columbine shooting. He had been friends with Dylan Klebold, and that morning he encountered Eric Harris walking towards the school, and Harris told him "Brooks, I like you. . . Get out of here. Go home."

During that podcast, Brown said something which my heart stop. He explained that Harris and Kelobold did not just happen to go into the library that day, it was their plan all along. They wanted to show that they were anti-establishment and rejecting the culture of their community (which I suppose in a school community, meaning teachers' authority and teenage socialization) and that is why they chose the library.

It made me think of Yvonne Cech, who was the school librarian at Sandy Hook. She barricaded 18 students and four other staff members in a closet during the 2012 shooting with a filing cabinet.

It also made me think of Diane Haneski, the librarian at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. During the 2018 shooting, she locked herself, 50 students and five other staff members into a media room at the back of the library.

I also think of American Horror Story, the horror television series which featured a school shooting storyline in the first season. The character, Tate Langdon, also chooses the library as his primary site. That storyline was horrifying because it didn't need any imagination.

I feel immense sadness for anyone who has been personally affected by any school violence, but I also feel immense anger that this is still something we have to fear, prepare for and worry about.

I didn't become a school librarian to listen to 911 calls, practice covering windows and locking doors or remind students to be quiet during lockdown drills.

 I love answering students' questions, but not when they ask "Why do we have to practice hiding?" or "What would we do if there really was someone out there?"

We just celebrated the 4th of July, and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

We love to be patriotic and to talk about what America is, what it means to us, or how it 'should be.'

Shouldn't it be a place where we don't have to worry about this anymore?