Heartbreaking Letter Describes Teaching In Mass Shooting Era

California resident Casey Delorenzo is a new teacher who has been in her current teaching job for only four months. The beginning of a career should be an exciting time for a young educator, but in the wake of so many tragic mass shootings, Delorenzo can’t help but feel fearful.

One day after a deadly shooting rampage in Northern California, Delorenzo put pen to paper as horrific details from the shooting emerged. The suspect, identified as Kevin Janson Neal, killed five people during the Tuesday morning rampage that started at a residence before Neal entered the Rancho Tehama Elementary School, where he shot at multiple classrooms and injured at least one child. Neal was killed in a gunfight with police.

Two weeks earlier, an hours-long standoff at a Southern California school that involved a parent and a teacher ended with the parent's death.

Delorenzo gave Patch permission to share an emotional letter she wrote about her perspective on teaching in 2017:

Being a teacher in the school systems in 2017 means watching the custodian come out to the flagpole and lower our American flag to half mast for the third time this month. Being a teacher in the school systems in 2017 means whispering to faculty members behind closed doors our fears that angry parents or mentally ill adults will find their way to our campus and open fire.

It’s hearing a knock at your door, and when five students jump up to answer it, you demand they sit down and let you open the door. Being a teacher in 2017 means opening that door and praying that it’s just another student, instead of the muzzle of a shotgun. Being a teacher in 2017 means having your 24 second grade students talk about bad guys and what we need to do if one was ever in our school. Instead of having drills, we have real lockdowns to practice this actual safeguard. We teachers look into the fearful eyes of innocent children and swallow our own fear in our 2017 elementary classrooms, and pray for a miracle, that this violence will stop.

I am 24 years old, 4 months into my first year of teaching and yes, it’s hard. For years, people have warned me about the trials and tribulations of first year teachers, but let me tell you what my hardest day has been. The morning of October 2nd , 2017, at 6:00 a.m., I woke to 20 text messages from my family back in Connecticut about a shooter who killed 58 people at a concert in Las Vegas, a place only three hours from my new home in California. 58 people. This made me sick to my stomach.

I took a deep breath. In just two short hours, I had to get myself together and stand in front of my 24, seven year old students and pretend that I was happy, that life was still good and that nobody in my classroom would ever face the fear and the pain of the real world today. I went to school with a broken heart and not one of my students knew it.

My home in Connecticut is 15 short minutes away from Newtown. Three times as far as any first responder. Newtown is where 26 people were murdered in an elementary school in 2012. 20 children and six teachers, the same age as my current students. The Vegas shooting claimed 58 lives, and Newtown, 26 lives. Five years have passed between these deadly events and these are just two of the many shootings where countless lives have been lost and endless hearts have been broken. But in five years, what has really changed?

Being a teacher in 2017 means being scared for your life every single day you go to do your job. It means looking into the eyes of 24 students who look up to you, trust you and know you would never let anyone harm them. So what do you do when a man with a semi automatic rifle slams through the gates of your school, opens fire on your amazing students and threatens the innocent lives you swore would protect with your life? What do you do if all control is in the hands of the gunman?

I constantly pray that if the time ever came, I would do what any teacher who loves her students would do to protect them. Yet, when love isn’t enough, bullets are a dime a dozen, and countless bodies are being laid to rest through murder, reality kicks in. This so called, “time that will never come” is in fact, coming. It’s here and it’s real. Being a teacher in 2017 means knowing you would die for your students, in more than just the fluffy, “it’s just a phrase!” meaning.

It means knowing there are real teachers out in the world like you, who have died for their students. It means knowing that even though you would, and even though those heroic teachers did, the students still died anyway. These numbers on the news, these texts to our friends and family who are nearby the shootings, saying “I’m so glad you’re safe,” may one day become more than just a number and become a text that is never answered. These 58, 26, 13, and 14 victims, may one day become a best friend, a sister, a mother, a father, an uncle or aunt. When you text them and call them, leaving 5 different, frantic voicemails, they may never answer.

Because to the rest of the world sitting back and watching these numbers increase, and these shootings happen more often, it’s only a matter of time before a tragedy turns these numbers into someone you love. And someone you can’t replace.

In 2017, we don’t have to be teachers, or students. We could be at the movies, or walking our dog, or sitting at our kitchen table. In 2017, we fear, we mourn and we forget. In 2017, we are all in the same danger, and we are all pretending it won’t happen to us.

See Also:

• Suspect In Riverside School Hostage Situation Dies
• Rancho Tehama Shootings Death Toll Rises To 6: Report

--Photo: A U.S. flag flies at half-staff in honor of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims, Dec. 19, 2012, in Newtown, Conn. (David Goldman/Associated Press)