The Power of Personal Narrative
Write Better Now
Hi, I’m breaking format this week, for once. Our high school had a credible and serious threat yesterday, staff and teachers and kids were locked down for hours and I want to talk about how people telling their stories makes things much more real than cut-up newspaper reports.
And that’s important.
Don’t forget how powerful writing is, okay? Don’t forget how powerful you are either.
Here are Heather Chute Dillon’s words. She’s an amazing teacher at our high school that was locked down after a serious and credible threat yesterday:
Today at school, I was meant to be creating Athenian and Spartan government models using Play-doh with my students.
Instead, I spent three hours locked in a small, dark room, cowering silently against the wall behind furniture with eleven students and another teacher.
I smiled at the students and gave them thumbs-up signs while I thought about teachers and students at
Robb Elementary in Uvalde,
Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown,
Stoneman Douglas HS in Parkland,
Columbine HS in Columbine,
and the numerous other teachers and students who have senselessly lost their lives while at school.
Were they cowering in silence like I was when the lockdown started?
Did they hear a commotion in the hallway?
When did they hear gunshots?
When did they know their lives were in danger?
Was there any warning? Would I know too?
And then I returned to the moment in the room with the students who needed me now.
Would this bookend be heavy enough to stop an intruder coming into my classroom?
Could I throw that lamp?
How sturdy was that door?
Where would I tell my students to go if we needed to run?
Did I have “quiet” food I could give to the students in my room who had missed lunch and whose stomachs I could hear growling?
What if they had to go to the bathroom - could we use the recycling bin?
But wait.
What about my child? Where were they right now? Were they safe? What class were they in? Did they have their diabetes supplies with them in case this lockdown stretched on and on?
And then the parents - the poor parents who must, by now, know that we were in a lockdown and must have been beside themselves with worry about their own children. How could I reassure them that I was keeping their babies safe? I was doing what I could to protect them - how could I let them know?
When the police finally arrived and evacuated us from the room, I welcomed the light and cool air from the hallway.
I welcomed the armed men and women who guided us down the hallway to safety on a school bus to another school where parents and the media waited anxiously to see that those they loved arrived safely into their arms.
I thought of the teachers and students at
Robb Elementary in Uvalde,
Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown,
Stoneman Douglas HS in Parkland,
Columbine HS in Columbine,
and the numerous other teachers and students who have senselessly lost their lives while at school.
I realized we made it - we were all safe - we did not experience the same tragedy as so many others in our country’s schools.
And for this, I will be forever grateful, and I know we can’t let a tragedy happen again.
I hope you all stay safe.