Columbine

It's the Fourth of July and we found ourselves in Littleton, Colorado. What a sobering stop on the day our country celebrates its independence. This visit was especially significant to me, having just completed my twelfth year of teaching. I remember when this tragedy took place. I was teaching at Temple High School and watched, in my own school's library, a public high school, not so very different from my own, under attack. This event changed the definition of school safety forever. Copycat threats and attempts shook the U.S. schools for the remainder of that school year, and the introduction of practice lockdowns, bomb threat evacuations, escape routes, and the new terms such as code blue, red, and yellow joined the ranks of fire and tornado drills.
As we neared the school, we past an adjacent park full of people celebrating the fourth just as the rest of the country did today.

People conveniently parked their cars in the parking lot of the high school. We were surprised by the accessibility.

We took a few pictures of the school signs, and then we wrapped around to the other side of the building and found the new memorial library.

As Renee filmed footage of the exterior, Laura snapped photos, as I sat there paralyzed, tears streaming down my face. Sound bytes and news clips flashed through my memory: the terror of the survivors, the photos of the victims, the testimonies of those children who lost their lives because they were courageous enough, with a gun in their face, to admit that they were Christians.
I finally got out of the car and went up the stairs to the library.

Through the lobby windows, I saw beautiful painted landscapes displayed on the second level. I then looked in the windows of the Hope Columbine Memorial Library.

In one of the windows, by the door, I saw a granite memorial with the names of the ones who lost their lives and the date, April 20, 1999.

As the tears helplessly continued to fall, all I could do was pray for the families that lost loved ones, the school, and the community.
I walked around and looked in each window and thought about my own students and myself, how horrifying it would be to be terrorized by your peer, your student, to die at the hand of one of your own. I thought about the instant profiling that went on in my school and in schools around the world, automatically identifying the potential threats, the children who, without a shadow of a doubt, could and maybe would do the same in our world. Invisible children who overnight gained infamous power, smirking with the authority of finally having an identity that carried some weight. I thought about how scary the thought of going to school had become, for students and teachers alike.

I am not sure what the school looked like seven years ago, but what I saw today was a place full of windows and doors, beauty inside and out, attempts at regaining a sense of security and serenity in a place that has permanently reshaped the face of education.