I was giving a test today, and I checked the news only to read of today's terrible event in Connecticut I looked out at my class, and a student looked back at me, smiled, went back to her test. And then I looked at my classroom door and the heavy filing cabinet that I would topple in front of it if, god forbid, I ever needed to.

The news from Connecticut has been pretty impossible to process.....as a parent, as a teacher, as a plain ol' human being......I've been sitting for the last two hours with head phones and loud music trying to keep the awful thoughts at bay. I eventually wrote, hard as it was. My prayers to the families and community of Newtown.

Newtown

On the whiteboard in neat manuscript:
December 14, 2012
Today’s weather is chilly.
A little yellow mitten
rests by the window, fallen from its cubby --
the one with the Spiderman lunchbox.
A Hello Kitty hair clip,
sits alone on the desktop
like an exclamation mark
for the carefully taped down nameplate
S-O-P-H-I-A.
And in the hallway,
hanging from a clothespin,
a fingerpaint sun smiles down
from bright blue construction paper sky.
CLap, CLap, CLap!!
There’s a man with a gun in the schoolyard.

Michael McIntyre

Dacula, GA