She knows that she and her students can jump from the window on the flat roof below. “I have always plan B and plan A,” Dias said.įor example, she knows that she can push the bookcase in her classroom against the door. Since the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary, both Dias and Palmer say every teacher in Connecticut, and perhaps every teacher in the country, have plans in place beyond those formulated by school districts. “They just felt very vulnerable,” she said. Even though they were high school students and half a state away from the tragedy itself, she said they felt “overwhelmed and scared.” It was a group of students who told Dias the news. “It was the kind of thing that you just couldn't imagine happening.” Dias said she was teaching math at Manchester High School, “in room 271,” when she heard the news about the massacre. She’s also president of the Connecticut Education Association, which represents many teachers in the state. Kate Dias teaches math at Manchester High School. “Every time there's a school shooting, I go back in my memory to the thoughts of what was going through my head that day, how I was trying to help my students in the moment and then in the aftermath of the tragedy.” I think the closer you were to the tragedy, you had different levels of impact.”Įven though Palmer said “I know people who are so much more impacted than myself,” he is brought back to that moment far too often. Teachers all over the country, people all over the country, are very impacted by it. “Teachers all over Connecticut felt very impacted by it. “I think the whole country experienced the tragedy in different layers,” he said. He talks about the trauma from the experience as though it is felt in concentric circles, getting more palpable the closer one was to the shooting itself. Palmer teaches high school, so he wasn’t at the school when a gunman opened fire. If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere," he continued. “Because Newtown is very much this quintessential New England town. “Most teachers always have the feeling, ‘Oh, it couldn't happen here,’ and I think Sandy Hook, from my perspective, opened everyone's eyes like, ‘It can happen anywhere,” he said. “I feel like my career has been in many ways shaped by my experience,” he said.
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