Elizabeth DeOrnellas

A message about school shootings from a k-12 veteran

It does not matter how you register to vote (I am registered nonpartisan). It matters that you register. It matters that you vote. It matters how you vote. It matters who you vote for. It matters how you act when the votes are being counted and how you act when the vote counts have been certified. Maintaining democracy is an active process — it requires participation from all those living in a country that is a functioning democracy who wish to continue to live in a country that remains a functioning democracy.

Sometimes when you can’t get the news cycle out of your head, it’s time to say something.

I just finished 13 years as a k-12 teacher. I am headed to Temple in August to enroll in a master’s in journalism program. My heart bleeds for every Philadelphia parent who has lost a loved one; every Philadelphia student who has lost a classmate; every Philadelphia teacher who has lost a student; and all those who have lost friends and loved ones to gun violence. I know what it feels like to be at a student funeral and to watch your students grieve for a classmate. There are too many youth funerals in America. School shootings aren’t the only gun violence problem we have in America. Gun violence is a real and continuous trauma that all our students, teachers, and parents are struggling to confront.

If you do want to learn more about how school shootings fit into the larger picture of gun violence in America, and you want to inform yourself about school shootings, please talk to teachers and students. We know. We KNOW. And if you want to share, please don’t share conspiracy theories. Be a good human. Fact check. Cite credible sources. You know who has an informed opinion on whether or not teachers should be armed? Teachers. #neveragain #enoughisenough #uvalde #parkland #sandyhook

The only thing “normal” about the “new normal” is it isn’t new

I’m a high school teacher. I keep thinking: “God, I can’t imagine what it must feel like to grow up through this.” The insanity and cravenness of our politics. The drumbeat of daily disaster. The unraveling of social ties.

Tonight I realized: Someone thought that about me.

They must have.

I’m the 9-11 generation.

That was my first week of high school.

The mother of one of my volleyball teammates knew one of the flight attendants who died. I remember thinking how unreal it must feel to be personally connected to a disaster like that.

To know one of the bodies.

That disaster seemed too big, too profound, too far beyond every rule of civil society we thought existed.

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Because I Am

When adults asked high school me what I wanted to be,

I told them I wanted to be a journalist,

because I thought that meant being a writer with a paycheck.

Now, when friends act surprised at how many questions I ask,

I remind them I’m a journalist – and they wonder if that part of me ever turns off.

It doesn’t.

Why turn off your why?

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What Oklahoma teachers taught me

I am eternally indebted to Oklahoma educators for shepherding me through my first two years of teaching (an on-the-job learning curve unlike anything else on Earth). I will forever be grateful for their compassion, their empathy and their dedication. Their mentorship and expertise guide me to this day. In case you are at all confused about why Oklahoma educators deserve to be treated better, here is a by-no-means comprehensive list of what they taught me:

Oklahoma teachers have walked out, and they’re not going back.

When I write that sentence, I feel at once incredibly frustrated and indescribably proud.

I’m frustrated that national media outlets have missed nuance and context that you can really only get from local sources (I see you, Tulsa World – keep up the good work!). I’m frustrated that state and federal politicians are making the insulting and inaccurate claim that teachers care more about their own household budgets than they do about the needs of their students. I’m frustrated that years of regressive tax policy and corporate handouts to oil and gas companies have drained the schools of revenue so badly that one in five Oklahoma public schools now operate a four-day week.

I’m proud that Oklahoma teachers, while they work in a “Right to Work” state in which legislators have done everything they can to kill unions, have kept a seat at the table through the tireless work of organizations such as TCTA. You’ll notice that TCTA names itself an “association” not a “union.” I could write another entire post on my feelings on that distinction (a debate that frequently preoccupied the minds and hearts of the DAE, another local teachers’ union I’m proud to have been an active member of).

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What it feels like to be a teacher in the era of school shootings

When I was 22 and a first-year teacher, a Creative Writing student told me in the middle of a lockdown that it was my job to stand in front of the door so I would get shot first.

Then one of my students decided to hide in a cabinet so he could bang on its door.

I was proud of myself for not visibly jumping.

I had absolutely nothing productive to say.

That day, I had a 45-minute class that was on lockdown for at least two hours. We received no information from our administration other than confirmation that it was not a drill.

We watched Freedom Writers – not because it was meaningful or useful, but because Creative Writing was my third prep and it is nearly impossible as a first-year teacher to write curriculum for three different classes and be as over-prepared as you need to be to make sure you have enough material to fill each period, let alone deal with unforeseen contingencies.

Let’s be clear: School shootings (and the accompanying lockdown drills) are no longer unforeseen contingencies. This is my ninth year as a classroom teacher. When I heard about the Stoneman shooting, I barely blinked.

Why am I so desensitized? Here is a by-no-means-comprehensive list of the school shooting related incidents that have happened to me during the past nine years:

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30 Things I Learned by 30

In lieu of New Year’s Resolutions, I offer this piece I wrote in honor of my birthday last spring:

30 Things I Learned by 30

If you tell Creative Writing students they can write about nonhuman characters, one of them will write a tragedy about the doomed love between a pencil and an eraser, and it will be worlds sadder than anything Shakespeare ever dreamed of.

2. When you go to write down what you’ve learned, you will always gravitate toward what your students taught you.

3. For someone obsessed with other people’s stories, you will grow to find your own family history more and more fascinating.

4. You will always be more comfortable on one side of an interview than the other.

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One Year In

We have allowed our country to descend into tribalism, and that us vs. them attitude is infecting the way our young people view the world. The toxic bigotry of online life, in which anonymous hatred has become a reflex muscle, is seeping into our offline world. Meanwhile, our 70-year-old boy king tweets in the manor while the empire burns. He is the emperor of the trolls. He sees high ratings in the flames.

There are two Onion headlines that define for me the transition from Obama’s America to Trump’s.

On Nov. 4, 2008, the Onion’s main story was “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.” I remember reading it and thinking, “That’s the most accurate description of presidential politics I’ve seen in a long time.” There was a knowingness to it – the cynicism that comes from watching a young go-getter go get something and then thinking, “Let’s see what happens when he actually tries to change something.”

Eight years later, the Onion ran this headline: “Study: Depression Up Among Teenage Girls Able to Perceive Any Part of the World Around Them.” It was after the election, and it said nothing about Hillary, but it perfectly captured the world weariness that comes from watching an absurdly well-qualified woman lose to an absurdly ill-qualified clown and having the conversation revolve, inevitably, around her “likeability” rather than his proudly ignorant bully of a persona.

Next weekend marks the one-year anniversary of Trump’s inauguration, and the most shocking thing about looking back on those two headlines is how thoroughly Trump has managed to redefine the job he so obviously never wanted. With Obama, there was an understanding that the presidency is a job – a difficult one, one that requires patience, hard work, diplomacy, and knowledge of both domestic and international policy. With Trump, there is no understanding. Trevor Noah said watching the Trump presidency is akin to having a nationwide civics lesson in real-time. We’re all learning. The question is which lessons are sinking in.

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By Faith Alone

By faith alone

Today

26 people died in a church

A young reporter stood in front of crime scene tape and said,

We don’t yet know

We know

We know Vegas

and Charleston

Aurora

and Sandy Hook

We know

Bump stocks

and neo-Nazis

Assault rifles

and the mentally ill

We know

At work my boss asked each of us

to pick a song that represented friendship

And my colleague picked a hymn

It’s a song I know

Today

all I want is for someone to come join me

in the silence

Tomorrow

the newspapers will publish photos

the pundits will proffer solutions

the politicians will pray

Tomorrow

and tomorrow

What’s Hidden from Hidden Figures

As we get set for the Oscars tomorrow, remember this: Movies are big, shiny things. Everyday reality is small and messy. No one gets a big, shiny victory without fighting the small, messy, everyday battles.

I can’t say I in any way watched a full slate of Oscar films this year; I almost never do. I am excited to go see I Am Not Your Negro tomorrow. Anything I’ve ever read by James Baldwin has struck me as incredibly poetic and profound, and I know I haven’t seen enough film of him to understand what he was like in his own voice, so I look forward to starting to rectify that.

I have already made time for La La Land (I have a soft spot for both musicals and romantic comedies, and I was pleasantly surprised to see this one deviate a bit from the normal boy-meets-girl tropes); Moonlight (A friend one described Rachel McKibbens’ poem “The Widower” as an emotional bitch slap; there’s a reason I use that poem to teach figurative language. If I taught film study, I would teach this film for the same reason; it’s that powerful); and Hidden Figures.

I suppose I could have started with that. I could have started with “I just came home from watching Hidden Figures…” but that opening doesn’t make sense to me for several reasons. One, I didn’t read exhaustively about the film before I went to see it because I wanted to experience it as a movie before I decided to pick it apart, but I did do enough pre-reading to know that “based on true events” is, as always, an admission that liberties have been taken with the narrative. The resulting omissions and edits left me feeling decidedly bittersweet about this particular success story.

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Transitions

Consider the following an attempt to break out of my own filter bubble and to honestly consider how a young woman, newly made very powerful, feels about her father.

The poem below is an experiment in persona poetry. I love reading persona poetry (and using it to teach students about point of view), but sometimes I find writing persona poetry to be problematic. I think that’s because I’ve put so much time into reminding myself that we all have our own filters and therefore it’s nearly impossible to truly know another’s mind; writing in someone else’s voice can feel presumptuous. However, it is an excellent way to build empathy. Consider the following an attempt to break out of my own filter bubble and to honestly consider how a young woman, newly made very powerful, feels about her father. *Photo Credit on featured image: Michael Vadon

Ivanka Trump, on my father

My father trusts me

He trusts me with the family business

just as much as he trusts my brothers

He trusts me to be in the room

He trusts me to meet with foreign leaders

He trusts that I will be successful

that I will give him good advice

He trusts that I will be respectful

Respectful of my father

Respectful of my husband

Respectful of my chosen religion, in all its beauty

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