We are grateful to benefit from Shelly Shaffer's wisdom this week. Shelly is a professor of Literacy at Eastern Washington University. Much of Shelly's research focuses on how school shootings are portrayed in YA literature. That interest has led to an edited collection about gun violence in the ELA classroom-Contending with Gun Violence in the English Language Classroom. Shelly is also working on a book related to the Toe Tag Monologues.
Parents, students, teachers, and others continue to live in fear of school violence (e.g., Columbine, CO-1999 - Uvalde, TX- 2022). According to Vigderman and Turner (2022), there have been 304 deaths from school shootings since the shooting at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. The government response always seems to be “thoughts and prayers” after an incident. No action. Very little gun reform. Few changes in regulations on who can own guns. No difference on which types of guns are being sold. Guns are big business. Apparently, the loss of children’s lives is the cost of doing business. After all, not many have died in these past 23 years from school shootings: 304 children and teachers. A pretty low number percentage-wise. Though many more than 304 students have been exposed to the trauma associated with school shootings, pro-gun folks figure the more than 311,000 students who have experienced gun violence at school since 1999 (Cox et al., 2022) are less important than their guns. These students have died, have been injured, and have been profoundly traumatized by violence in their schools. Yet, gun folks refuse changes to the laws, making claims of second amendment rights. But our Constitution also promises “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”--doesn’t this type of violence take that promise away from those who are impacted?
In 2018, students got angry. And they had a reason to be mad. They decided that their voices needed to be heard. #NeverAgain became a rallying cry after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida on February 14, 2018. It was supposed to be a start to ending school violence. Students across the nation staged walkouts protesting the government’s inaction toward passing more restrictive gun laws; young people marched on Washington and lobbied lawmakers. Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School published books. David and Lauren Hogg wrote #Never Again: A New Generation Draws the Line (Hogg & Hogg, 2018), which shares their journey to becoming activists following the shooting at their high school. Both David and Lauren were in the school February 14, 2018–hiding and texting their friends and family as they feared for their lives. Parkland Student Journalists published the book We Say #Never Again (Falkowski & Garner, 2018), a collection of news articles and editorials written by student survivors of Parkland. The book has four sections: “Introduction,” “Part 1: Activism,” “Part 2: MSD Strong,” and “Part 3: What Comes Next.” With 24 student contributors and 2 faculty advisors/editors, this book offers a personal and compelling voice about how a school shooting impacts a high school community. Parkland Speaks: Survivors from Marjory Stoneman Douglas Share Their Stories (Lerner, 2019) adds to the voices of student survivors of this tragic shooting. Sarah Lerner, an English and journalism teacher at Parkland, edited this collection of photos, art, poems, stories, letters, speeches, and journal entries from student contributors. It is a gripping collection full of heartbreaking loss–and hope, reminiscent of a class book. The Founders of March for Our Lives published Glimmer of Hope: How a Tragedy Sparked a Movement, which chronicles the evolution of the March for Our Lives Movement. Twenty-three of its 25 contributors were students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and the collection includes a diverse array of text types as readers learn about these young activists’ experiences. These four books–written by the students who were there, and survived–provide a priceless look into the impact of trauma, grief, anger, determination, healing, and hope felt after school shootings.
So depressing. So maddening. I feel helpless and frustrated, so I’ve continued my work with YA books focused on school shootings, still hoping to make a difference. So many of the books I’ve been studying recently feature survivors trying to “move on” with their lives, like the Parkland students and the 311,000 other students who have been impacted by school shootings.
Every Moment After by Joseph Moldover (2019) takes place at senior graduation and the summer that follows. Three students who lived, after a shooter killed every one of their classmates, still struggle to figure out how to move on - even after 12 years. The shooting happened when they were 6 years old, in first grade; yet, their lives continue to be haunted by their lost classmates and thoughts of “What if?”
Liz Lawson’s The Lucky Ones (2020) tells the story of May, who is a survivor of a school shooting that killed her twin brother. She is angry - so angry that she vandalizes the house of the lawyer representing the shooter, gets into fights at school, and blames herself for not saving her brother. Anger paralyzes May, and even eleven months after the shooting, she cannot move forward.
Aftermath by Emily Barth Isler (2021) is a middle school book about a 12-year old girl’s experience of moving to a town four years after a school shooting took place. When she starts school, the trauma is still thick in the hallways of the school. Almost every new classmate she meets tells her about the shooting - where they were, who they lost - and it seems like the entire town is stuck. Lucy finally meets Avery, who seems to be an outsider, but Lucy finds out that Avery has a different kind of connection to the shooting; the shooter was her step-brother. Lawson does an excellent job helping readers to see how difficult it is to move on, and how hard it is to forgive.
Marisa Reichardt takes readers on a personal journey of trauma and recovery in Underwater (2016). Everything changed on October 15th, the day of the school shooting. Morgan used to be outgoing, competitive, and friendly, but after the shooting, she becomes trapped in her apartment by her own trauma. She can’t move on; she literally can’t step outside of her own front door. Reichardt’s story poignantly illustrates just how paralyzing trauma can be. Though this is not an exhaustive list of YA school shooting novels that feature characters trying to heal, these 5 texts share stories of trauma and provide insight into what survivors of school shootings–even those students who weren’t physically injured–are facing years later.
What can we do? What MUST we do? We cannot count the damage of school shootings simply by the number of lives lost or people wounded. We have to include the hundreds of thousands of people who are left behind to try to heal the emotional trauma they carry as a result of the experience. These lives are forever changed from a tragedy that should have been prevented.
We must change the narrative because gun ownership DOES NOT hold more value than human lives. Children’s lives cannot be the cost of doing business.
Bliss, B. (2020). Thoughts and prayers. Greenwillow Books.
Cox, J. W., Rich, S., Chui, A., Thacker, H., Chong, L., Muyskens, J. & Ulmanu, M. (2022, May 27). School shooting database. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/local/school-shootings-database/
Falkwoski, M., & Garner, E. (Eds.). (2018). We say #neveragain. Crown.
Flourish team. (2022, June 10). School shooting timeline: Incidents with active shooters on school campuses from Columbine to Robb Elementary. Kiln Enterprises Ltd. https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/10219708/
Grinberg, E., & Mauddi, N. (2018, March 26). How the Parkland students pulled off a massive national protest in 5 weeks. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/26/us/march-for-our-lives
Hogg, D., & Hogg, L. (2018). #NeverAgain: A new generation draws the line. Random House.
Isler, E. B. (2021). Aftermath. Carolrhoda Books.
Lawson, L. (2020). The lucky ones. Delacorte Press.
Lerner, S. (Ed.). (2019). Parkland speaks: Survivors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas share their stories. Random House.
Moldover, J. (2019). Every moment after. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Oxner, R. (2022, May 25). Uvalde gunman legally bought AR rifles days before shooting, law enforcement says. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/25/uvalde-shooter-bought-gun-legally/
Reichhardt, M. (2016). Underwater. Farrar Straus Giroux.
Shaffer, S., Rumohr-Voskuil, G., & Bickmore, S. (Eds.). (2019). Contending with gun violence in the English language classroom. Routledge.
The Associated Press. (2018, March 24). Fiery speech, and charged silence, from a Parkland student [video]. The New York Times.https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000005817208/fiery-speech-and-charged-silence-from-a-parkland-student.html
The Founders of March for Our Lives. (2018). Glimmer of hope: How tragedy sparked a movement. Razorbill & Dutton.
Vigderman, A., & Turner, G. (2022, July 6). A timeline of school shootings since Columbine. Security.org a Centerfield Media Company. https://www.security.org/blog/a-timeline-of-school-shootings-since-columbine/