Addison Dune, adjunct faculty for the College of Education in Educational Psychology, quoted in K-12 Dive, Higher Ed Dive, “Waiting for the next thing’: What it’s like teaching after a mass shooting”
K-12 Dive, Higher Ed Dive, 5/26
‘Waiting for the next thing’: What it’s like teaching after a mass shooting
By Naaz Modan
On Wednesday morning, teachers and students nationwide filed into school hallways and classrooms less than 24 hours after news of another mass school shooting poured out of Uvalde, Texas. Students were required to take final exams, and teachers were expected to grade papers and continue instruction. From the outside, maybe, it looked like business as usual. But many teachers were experiencing emotions ranging from fear and helplessness to stress and nervousness. Nothing is new about the range of emotional, physical and behavioral side effects reported by educators across the nation in the wake of the Uvalde massacre. It is a ripple effect that many teachers have described experiencing after similar mass school shootings: Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Sante Fe, Oxford. That’ because those reactions are all symptoms of trauma response, according to Addison Duane, a former elementary school teacher with a Ph.D. in educational psychology and now a professor at Wayne State University. Duane’s research and expertise includes trauma and racism in schools. The trauma experienced after a school shooting can be layered on top of pre-existing traumas resulting from systemic racism, especially for those who work in or are members of communities that have been historically marginalized, like Black, Hispanic and low-income students. Robb Elementary School is a case in point: It is 90% Hispanic and 87% economically disadvantaged, according to school district data. Layering of trauma is now “a ubiquitous part of the U.S. experience,” Duane said.