Sandy Hook

As you know I switched teaching jobs 2 months ago. At the beginning of the school year when I taught in my school age Autistic Support program, we had to start doing lock down drills. We were to turn off the lights and have the children go to a corner of the room, out of view. I was also supposed to do a sweep of the area immediately outside of my classroom and bring anyone in to my room who needed safety. We then could lock the doors. In that building, the doors could be locked from the inside. They could be locked from the inside because in that school, we often had to lock the doors to keep our students and staff safe from aggressive students in other rooms.

Elementary schools go through these lock down drills across the nation. I know you know why I am sharing this. We prepare for lock downs but we never can be fully prepared. As of yet we do not know the full stories. But it sounds like, for the classrooms that could, teachers and staff followed the procedures and the law enforcement. /div>

I am not a very emotional person, but this has gotten to me. They are little kids, they have no idea what to do if this kind of violence happens. I don't want my little elementary school child to have to know what to do if a gunman enters their school.

I watched the news story in my bedroom, away from the girls. Celia has no idea and I wonder if she will hear about it from someone. I hesitate at her age because she listens to everything and now she understands what is said. So I question, do I tell her a tiny bit so if she hears someone talking she will not be interested because she already knows the story, or do I wait. For now I am waiting and hoping she does not hear anything.

I uploaded pictures of the girls onto the computer a few hours ago and I thought about all of the families. The families that still have those pictures on their cameras and phones. The families who will soon go through pictures for an entirely different reason. The families that have their photo christmas cards ready to be mailed out.

I will of course give my girls some extra hugs but I am going to go on with life as normal. Celia will get in trouble for making as much noise as possible while in "quiet" time because that is normal life. Living your life as a family and not letting the violence that occurred today destroy your everyday moments in my opinion is the best way to fight back against this tragedy. We will be praying for the families, friends, students, and community in that small Connecticut town. In that small town where my husband lived for a short time as a child and he did attend Sandy Hook elementary school. There always seems to be ties to someone or something when these tragedies occur.