The Oklahoma Reader 58-1 Spring 2022

Overview & Insights FROM THE EDITORS Dear Readers, As we were involved in the final processes of putting this issue together, our country—our world— was rocked by events in Uvalde, Texas. Sadly, mass shootings are much too common (witness Buffalo, New York, just ten days earlier), but this one—THIS one—hit home in a way others perhaps have not. As always, there has been the kneejerk reaction to “DO SOMETHING,” and almost everyone has a pet solution. But perhaps, this time, we just need to spend some time doing what Dr. Shelbie Witte suggested on her Twitter feed: “Sit with it.” We need to give ourselves time to grieve, to ask the why and how questions, to look inside ourselves and determine to what extent we share responsibility for where we are as a nation, that this can happen over and over again. Dr. Tim Rasinski took the time to post a staggering list of school shootings on Facebook, most of which we are not even aware of. We don’t pretend to have the answers, but we know that the solution must be multi-faceted and must be the result of deep, unhasty thought processes over time that involve all community stakeholders.

In the meantime, given the frame and focus of this journal, we would like to focus on the teachers of Robb Elementary for a moment—not just the two who died literally placing their bodies between the shooter and “their kids,” but the surviving teachers, the ones who will go back into those classrooms in the fall, despite their own emotional turmoil, and pick up where they left off. We can get some idea of what they are experiencing through a Sandy Hook teacher, Mary Ann Jacob, who reported years later after the Sandy Hook shooting, “When those of us who survived went home later that day, the first thing we had to do was be strong for our own children, several of whom also survived the shooting that day . . .” (Kleinman, 2018, n. p.). But what comes next?

Susie Ehrens, a Sandy Hook parent whose first grader was completely traumatized by the events she experienced, wanted the best teacher she could find for her daughter to begin second grade. She found her in Abbey Clements, teacher-survivor, who herself reported, “the aftermath of such tragedy is larger and darker than you might imagine. I had to do something to be part of the solution” (Kleinman 2018, n. p.); Clements went on to become an activist in a gun-violence-prevention group but also continues to teach. “Educators teach peace and nonviolence. We teach 3