On April 20th, 1999 I cried watching the students at Columbine High School run for safety and I ached for the innocence they had lost so quickly.

December 14th, 2012 I turned the TV off after the news of a classroom full of murdered Kindergartners was too depressing to watch.

May 12, 2015, an 18 year old boy at my kids’ high school shot himself in the head. That day I was thankful he only killed himself and no one else as well.

October 2nd, 2015 I heard the news of a massacre on a college campus in Oregon and I was relieved it was not my school or my students.

Today, I woke up to the news that there was a shooting at NAU, a school that I work with, and I was grateful only one student was dead and not more.

I AM PART OF THE PROBLEM.

I should not thank god someone’s child took ONLY their own life.

I should not be grateful ONLY one student was murdered at school and not more.

I should not be sitting at work grateful I have a place to hide in case of a killer.

I should not be teaching my students how to escape the campus in case we have a shooter on campus.

I SHOULD NOT BE DESENSITIZED TO A SUICIDE OR A MURDER

I hear there is no hope. I hear there is no way to fix it. I hear that this is just the way it is. I hear it but I do not believe it.

We need to arm the schools, these shootings are happening in Gun Free Zones

We need to improve school security no matter how nice and safe an area seems to be.

We need to cut down on violence in the media. Why do we allow adolescents to buy games that reward them for shooting and killing others?

We need to improve mental health care. Putting the blame on guns diverts the attention from where it needs to be. Better, more comprehensive mental health services and facilities; addressing these issues in their infancy when they’re first manifesting in childhood or puberty instead of assuming ‘it’s just a phase’ or ‘they’ll grow out of it; not groveling to drug manufacturers by prescribing anti-depressants or whatever at the first sign of trouble; getting people to understand that they won’t be punished or cast out or labeled weird for seeking help.

We need to think about the families and not the shooters. Bad people will do bad things, so take away whatever motivation or reward the person has for doing them. Stop making murderers notorious; let them die in an anonymity

We need to focus on improving parenting skills. My God we are raising children under the theory that we must protect their self-esteem at all cost. And then we as parents have better shit to do so we sit them in front of a monitor in which there is bloodshed and hate and we completely desensitized them to violence. Let’s stop shielding our kids from every possible disappointment in life, so that when they are faced with it, they know what to do.

We need to invest ourselves in the social skills of our children. Kids are playing video games and relying on social media and they are not learning how to effectively communicate with their peers. By concentrating too much on technology and too much on the self we are inhibiting the ability of our children to understand others’ emotions. Our kids are not developing critical communication and coping skills. We have stunted our youth socially, psychosocially and/or emotionally due to neglecting their social skills and we have created detached, disconnected, desensitized humans who have no coping skills.

We have fucked up.

We need more than a Facebook post with “likes” and “shares”. We need to stop wasting time debating the safety of a weapon when the danger is us. We need action. We need education. We need funding.

We can do better you guys.