School Shooting Survivors Form Crisis Team to Support Traumatized Teachers

Nearly 400,000 children have experienced gun violence at school since the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School. But no such data exists to account for the teachers alongside them, even those who have been injured protecting their students. There is, however, a dedicated team of teachers applying their experience of surviving that nightmare to support newer members of the trauma club none of them ever wanted to join. They’re the inaugural crisis team of Teachers Unify to End Gun Violence, a collective of educators and school staff across the nation demanding gun reform that will keep schools and communities safe. Chalkbeat was at a recent meeting in Philadelphia. 

Kiki Leyba, who helped his students find safety back at Columbine in 1999, is a part of the crisis team. He remembers going right back into the classroom to teach and being totally unprepared for it. Now, after years of recovery spent connecting with other survivors, he’s ready to help others find their healing. “They don’t have to be alone with those thoughts or those fears in the aftermath of gun violence,” Leyba said. “There are others out there who they can connect with.”

That’s where the crisis team at Teachers Unify will be indispensable – offering peer support. “It’s the people that you don’t have to explain ‘this is why I feel the way I do’ … they just get it,” said gun violence researcher Jaclyn Schildkraut, who studies mass shootings. “And so sometimes you can just sit there with these folks and not have to say a word, and still feel more supported than going to therapy.”

In the wake of these tragedies, teachers also bear the responsibility of being the adult on duty for their students, who might be afraid or grieving. Peers of their own can help them navigate those new challenges. “What do you say when they say the things that they say?” explained Abbey Clements, co-founder of Teachers Unify and a Sandy Hook survivor. “Why did this happen? … Why is there a desk removed? Why aren’t we stopping at somebody’s bus stop on a bus route?”

A trauma-trained psychologist and other experts have been teaching the crisis team how to offer peer support and facilitate group conversations, as well as how to manage feelings of their own that might resurface while helping others. The crisis line offers educator callers conversations with members of this new team, as well as help from professionals.

“With all of the balls that are being juggled in the aftermath [of a school shooting], supporting teachers might be one of the lowest things on that priority list,” Schildkraut added. This new team aims to meet that often-forgotten need.