Thread by @IWriteMonsters

1) Let me, a Broward schoolteacher near Marjory Stoneman Douglas, give a perspective on school shootings from the inside.

2) Once a year, my co-workers and I are birefed by a LEO on what to do if a gunman enters the school.

Inevitably, we listen to the stories of gun violence at similar schools.

I realize the LEO has given this spiel so much, it's automatic.

3) Rarely, an intimidating stranger will stroll purposefully down the main hallway of a school.

They are either a pissed-off parent, the plainclothes cop you're expected to stop in a drill, or the man who'll orphan your children.

Decide.

4) I keep a jar of marbles and over of the sharp engineering tools stored by the door of my lab, and laugh at the thought that my tubby ass could John McClain anyone.

But they're there.

Might as well be a rabbit's foot.

5) At least once a year, you will have drills of every kind. Shooting nearby, active shooter, bomb, etc. You will not know if each is a drill or if someone is within 100 yards and wants you dead.

Unless it's at 9:15 am.

Then it's mostly a drill.

Mostly.

6) Once, under a lockdown where someone with a gun was at loose & possibly headed towards a school, I hid in the dark of my classroom with twenty tweens, behind a whiteboard, hiding under cardboard boxes.

One girl had to go to the bathroom.

She cried for hours. #schoolshooting

7) Another time, when it was not a drill but a false alarm, I calmly passed out sharp metal scissors to twenty children, looked them in the eye, and told them that if a gunmen broke in that we would have to rush him en masse and kill him.

8) This is what it is like to teach in America.
#schoolshooting #StonemanDouglas #stonemanshooting

9) Tthe Broward Teacher's Union texted us to check email.

They sent a list of resources to help grieving students. My kids may have had family & friends killed at #MarjoryStonemanDouglas today.

I opened my mailbox, saw the phrase "With heavy hearts," and just started to cry.

10) I'm typing this while listening to my superintendent's robo-call on speaker.

I don;t want to press *.

I sure as hell don't want to repeat this message.
#schoolshooting

11) "Do you ever think about this?" I ask my wife. "Being married to a teacher."

"No," she immediately replies. "I would go crazy."
#schoolshooting