Ask your kid what it feels like to do a lockdown drill at school. There’s a good chance you, the parent, didn’t experience this practice when you were in school.

Fire drill? Check.
Tornado drill? Check.
Maybe even a duck and cover drill.

But there is a high likelihood you don’t know what a lockdown drill feels like. There is a good chance, because of your age, you don’t know what it feels like to run through an intruder drill while you’re at school trying to learn.

Let me tell you.

Teachers sometimes know they’re coming, but mostly teachers do not.

Students never know this drill is coming.

A school administrator or a police officer will select a classroom or an adult to walk up to and say something along the lines of “there’s an intruder in the building; he is wearing a green shirt, black pants, and has a gun.” Immediately the adult must call the office and have the intruder alarm sounded while giving a physical description of the intruder.

The administrator or officer observes this to see how quickly the school can go from everyday-business to locked-and-quiet.

Every second counts and unless you were the adult who called in the lockdown alert, you don’t know if this is real or not.

THIS IS A LOCKDOWN goes over the PA system almost immediately.

The school and every single person in it goes into lockdown mode.

Every teacher goes to his or her classroom door which are all permanently locked now. Teachers open their doors to make sure there are no kids wandering the halls. If there are kids or classes in the hallway, they grab everyone they see as fast as they can, and then shut the door again.

Read again what I just typed: teachers learn there is an intruder (drill or not) in the building, and they are trained to immediately run to the hallway where an intruder might be in hopes of being shelter for students.

While teachers are clearing the hallways, students in classrooms are going to the corner of the room most hidden from the entry point. They’re crowding into corners, getting under tables, cramming as close to the wall as they can. Personal space doesn’t count in a lockdown drill.

I’ve taught two age groups in my time as a teacher: middle school kids and high school kids. They don’t move fast out of principle. There are two exceptions to this rule: when there’s a fight, kids will rush to check it out, and they will move with a quickness to their safe corner. Violence makes students move.

In our little corner, we get in tight, teacher and student just the same.

Students are quiet. Everyone is quiet.

They’re quiet, because they don’t know if this is a drill or not. Kids who cannot stop talking during lessons, quizzes, or standardized tests will instantly be quiet during an intruder drill.

Students are quiet, because this is becoming less of a drill. We’re raising kids bombarded with school-shooting violence and death; they know this is reality. They know this is serious. They know to be silent.

Then we wait in silence–holding our breath–just hoping the announcement will soon give us the all-clear so we can return to our learning and our desks and our books.

As we wait, students look at you, the teacher, waiting for a sign that says you know this is fake. They watch you to see if your shoulders will relax or if you’ll give them a reassuring smile so they can breath again.

But teachers don’t know either.

So we wait.

Administrators and police officers are running the halls right now as you sit crowded into a corner with your students; you can hear their boots hitting the floor. They are jiggling door handles to make sure they’re locked, checking to make sure classrooms are quiet.

We’re told locked doors and quiet kids will save us.

I don’t care how often you practice a lockdown drill, when someone grabs that door handle to shake it, when you hear people moving fast down the halls, you are scared.

You hope in the back of your mind this is just pretend. You hope in the back of your mind you’ll return to teaching in just a few minutes. You can feel your students hoping the same things. They’re not good at hiding their thoughts and you’re too good at noticing them.

Eventually a school administrator will come over the PA and give you the all-clear. You’ll stand up slowly, legs asleep from sitting. You’ll grab students’ arms and pull them to their feet. You’ll pat a few shaken kids on the back. You’ll be gentler with your instructions as they head to their seats, maybe you’ll spend a few minutes talking about the drill.

You give everyone a minute to breath.

Then you’re supposed to go back to teaching. Teachers will still be evaluated today. Students will still be required to take tests, ace quizzes, and concentrate on their homework.

At the end of the day, parents will welcome their kids home off the bus, never realizing the pretending their children did at school that day. The way they had to imagine they were going to die and what they would do to prevent it. Like it’s their job to prevent their own violent deaths as they sit in their desks learning their letters and math and a foreign language.

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When I changed my major from journalism to education my sophomore year of college, I did not know this would be part of my job; that my love of reading and books and language and cranky teenagers would mean I was also agreeing to die for them, to die with them.

Have you ever put an anxiety-riddled child in a lockdown situation and demanded they be still? Have you ever had to sit next to an autistic child whose routine and ability to know what is next has just been taken away and then ask them to be quiet?

We don’t have enough trained staff in buildings to handle the current emotional needs of our students; how will we even begin to address the damage we’re doing with these high-stress situations we’re putting our students in? Are we allowing kids to process the drills we’re practicing with them? Are we notifying parents so they can check in with their kids when they get home? Are we talking about what support needs to happen at home so kids can talk about their fears and worries? Who is equipping parents with the right tools to handle a situation they didn’t encounter when they were younger?

It’s like a set of dominoes; we’ve thought out the first two or three moves, how things will fall and how we’ll react, but can we even see far enough down the course to the long-term issues we’re causing?

What a cruel, horrible world we live in.

I cried four times last week as I told my classes I was leaving them.

Three of those times were with my first class. I knew it would be hardest telling them because they’re my advanced kids I’ve been with for two years and those dorky kids love me. And I love them. My announcement was so out of left field and the looks on their faces just broke my heart. I eventually just turned my back to them and stared at the white board so I could get myself together. And so I didn’t have to look them in the eye for a moment.

My next class was easier, but I still cried. They told me they were mad at me and weren’t going to be my friends anymore.

8th graders try to act big and tough, but inside, not so much.

By the next two classes, word had spread and I didn’t have to witness falling faces and teary eyes. I just got their wrath and questions and hurt which I was a little more prepared to handle.

But today is going to be hard. It’s my last day. My room is empty, the posters are gone, the books are in storage. I’ll be walking out at 3:00 with empty hands and a lifetime of memories that shaped and molded me in endless ways.

A few months after I started working here, Chris and I married and I got to try on the Graham name for the first time. It felt weird and ill-fitting after twenty five years of being a Ritter. Being called Ms. Graham was hard to get used to and I often forgot to answer when someone said my new name.

I waddled down these halls as my body grew two beautiful baby girls. I showed off swollen ankles and early sonogram pictures to seventh graders as they shared in my joy and excitement. These co-workers threw my first official baby shower and came to visit when I brought Elliott Quinn home.

The people I’ve gotten to do life with for the past ten years, staff and students, have changed me profoundly. I’ve cried in meetings, laughed uncontrollably in lunch rooms, stood after school for hours in these halls talking about students, our families, our frustrations, and our joys. Years ago, I lost range of motion on my right thumb breaking up a fight and I’ll carry that injury with me forever. I’ve collected weave from hallways and bathrooms to add to teacher collections. I’ve stood next to friends nine times on the last day of school waving off buses as some students waved back with their whole hand and some waved with just one finger. I’ve been called every name under the sun. I’ve received love letters from seventh grade boys that make me feel creepy and I’ve received thank you cards from students and parents that still sit in my keepsake box at home.

My heart has been broken and crushed here, but it has also grown and swelled. Teaching is a careful dance of love and hate, of stress and fun. Some days I handled it well and some days I did not.

A lot of my favorite educators left this place before me. The last few years have been a revolving door of people coming and going and, in a way, that made it easier to leave. The experienced, mentor teachers that I looked up to have all retired. My good friend Tom left in August for another school. My former teammates have moved on to other careers because the climate of teaching is horrible and many smart, hardworking, gifted teachers just couldn’t do it anymore.

In between these walls, I learned how to grieve the loss of a good friend while surrounded by heartbroken teachers and shocked students. The passing of my friend and fellow teacher, Joe, was my first adult experience of profound loss and it shaped my last few years in the classroom in monumental ways. Some days I still don’t believe he’s not just around the corner hiding with his damn snake trying to scare me again.

My students are frustrating and inspiring. They have made bad days less bad and then other times made good days suck. I worry about them when I go home. I cry for them when I read their essays or meet their parents and understand what they’re up against. I cheer for them as they go on to the high school and when they go to college. And I love that they remember my promise of allowing them to be my friend on Facebook once they graduate. I have former students having babies, getting married, traveling the world, and changing lives. And while we probably don’t often credit our middle school language arts teachers as driving forces in our adult lives, I like to live in the delusional world where that really does happen and everything they are is thanks to me.

Being a teacher is wonderful. Delusional, but wonderful.

My very first teaching job was a middle-of-the-year English position with high school sophomores and seniors. They had been through three teachers by the time I started in January and I had some major work to do to break down the walls they had built up from teachers leaving them and a million other things that came with teaching in an inner-city school. I was a young, inexperienced teacher that had a passion for the written word and a fire that made me ridiculously confident in a way that makes me cringe now. But it seems apropos that I’m leaving in the middle of a school year just like this whole crazy thing started so many years ago. I hate the uncertainty and the mess I’m leaving behind. Losing a teacher in the middle of the year is hard on kids. I’ve struggled with those consequences a lot, and it’s made me lose a lot of sleep.

On Tuesday I was carrying boxes to my car and one of our janitors stopped and asked if I was leaving. We talked for a while about what I had decided and he shared his desire to retire early so he could be home more with his kids before they graduated. We finished our conversation and I continued on to my car. About ten minutes later, I was heading out with more boxes and from down the hallway, he shouted at me, “You’re doing the right thing, baby girl!” as I turned the corner.

I just smiled. He’s right.

What I’m doing is hard. What I’m doing doesn’t make total sense. What I’m doing makes me sad and happy and excited and slightly nauseous, but it’s the right thing.

I am doing the right thing.

My Creston Indians: thank you for the learning. I came here looking to change the world and you, instead, changed mine. I am a better, wiser, calmer, more patient, and kinder person because of you. Keep fighting the hard fight and doing what seems impossible because educating and loving our kids is hard. Do it anyway. You reward is coming, I can feel it.

I finished up my ninth year of teaching a few weeks ago. From a classroom standpoint, this year was one of my easier ones. Students weren’t abnormally crazy (middle school is crazy in general, but some years are extra crazy) and my year seemed to flow pretty easily.

But in other ways it was hard and painful.

As I walked back to the building after waving off the buses on the last day of school, I mentioned to my friend Tom that I couldn’t believe we had made it a whole school year without Joe. Standing there with my hand in the air as bus after bus pulled away from the sidewalk for the last time this year, I had flashbacks to last year’s send off as I stood next to Joe. He’s even in my Instagram picture of that last day and I remember how annoyed I was that his big head was in my shot.

Now I wished that his big head could have been there ruining more last-day shots.

The end of the school year was hard for students too. Our eighth graders that we’re sending off be freshman next year are the last class to really know Joe. They were his last hurrah. A day didn’t pass this year that some former student wouldn’t stop by and say hi, ask about things, or share a memory of Joe. They needed me and I needed them. We were lifelines to a time that now feels like a fuzzy dream, sweet but distant.

Those eighth graders have had a rough two years: first losing Joe last summer and, then at Christmas, their math teacher was diagnosed with breast cancer and left unexpectedly to fight for her young life. Those kids have had lots of loss and heartache this year.

So leaving was hard for them. They learned hard and fast that nothing is guaranteed.

As the days wound down they would stop by my room, dropping off letters and asking me to pose for pictures. Some would cry. Some would share they had been struggling with depression and that our talks this year–talks about nothing and everything–saved them. Some would talk books and ask me what they should read over the summer. Some just hugged and, wordlessly, left.

Goodbyes are hard, especially for kids that have had to say goodbye a lot in their short lives.

I know I need to write about this group of kids, these wonders that will one day change worlds. But I can’t figure out how. I’ve had time to sit with my memories of them and I don’t know how to convey their importance.

This is the class that I accidentally showed an inappropriate scene of Midsummer Night’s Dream to when I thought I had skipped all the bad parts. It involved a donkey and they have never let me forget it. This is the class that saw me sprint down the hallway in heels to break up a fight and then compared me to Beyonce for how well I ran in them. I read Counting By 7s and Code Name: Verity to these kids and cried in front of them when characters were hurting. They learned that books make me cry easily and that I feel too much for characters. I stood in line with this class as we paid our respects to a friend and as we laughed through tears at how ridiculous that man was.

Those kids, the class of 2019, hold a special place in my heart. I have had the pleasure of teaching so many great kids, but these, these kids, are resilient and strong, caring and compassionate. I will miss them next year. The hallways will be a little less bright because they are gone.

In the beginning, you don’t really know what the hardest part about teaching will be. Sometimes you think it is all the papers–so many papers!–that you have to constantly grade. Other times you think it is the lack of motivation from so many students; you don’t just share knowledge and inspire learning, you sell learning, you peddle it, shine it up, and make it pretty. You have to be on one hundred percent of the time because God forbid you have an off day, you’re a teacher and these kids need you to do a better job.

There are so many hard things about teaching, but the hardest–hands down–is when a student passes away. Because this? This shouldn’t happen. Kids aren’t supposed to die and you just know so many kids that even though it’s bound to happen (that’s how you rationalize it in your head late at night when you’re just trying to get some sleep and you still can’t believe another student died), it’s still shocking and hard every single time.

Sometimes you get lulled into a fake sense of safety, you haven’t lost a student in a few years! you say. You start forgetting that students die. You don’t think as much about parents burying their kids. You put your guard back down; kids are just kids and they don’t die when they’re too young.

But then it happens again (it always happens again) and you are reminded that this life isn’t guaranteed and kids die and teachers die and it’s normally when you feel the most safe and secure that it happens. It’s when you’re not looking that death comes again.

The hardest thing about teaching is the relationships, there are just so many relationships. The ones that are a joy and the ones that just get under your skin. The relationships that wear you down all year long and the relationships that are color on a completely colorless day. But you remember that all those relationships, all those students, are someone’s kids. They go home at night to families and friends and pets and beds. They are someone’s whole world and what seems hard on some days seems less hard when you look at them through that lens.

And then sometimes they die. They die because lung transplants finally give up. They die because of car accidents. They die because they stepped off the sidewalk at the wrong time. They die in their sleep on a regular Saturday night. And sometimes they die because they don’t want to live anymore, they decide that life is too hard, and they take their own lives.