Tending to Our Students Before Tragedy Strikes

The e-mail message was direct and devastating. One of our fourth-graders had been killed in a gun accident.

“Davius had gone to a friend's house to play and apparently a gun was discharged and the bullet struck him,” my principal wrote. “He died at the scene."

I sat in stunned silence. A memory of a story Davius wrote for me in November flashed across my mind.

"One day there was a 1,200-year old man named Jam. He was as strong as an ant and he was 50-feet tall,” Davius wrote. “He liked to jump over cars, ride his dirt bike and drink 800 cans of soda in the air. He would scream, "Woo hoo!" in the air. He would go all the way to the sun and get a really dark tan. Then he would say, "Hey," to the spacemen.

I looked out the window. Davius wanted to be old, strong and daring like Jam. But life is fragile, especially when you live in communities with high rates of poverty. The world lost so much creativity, compassion and commitment by losing one little boy to a single gunshot.

My heart cried.

That day, I took a walk near my house to think. We teach our students about the life cycle of butterflies and guide them through the writer's workshop, art and music because we want them to see how the world works and to be able to express their thoughts and feelings about it.

We hope their lives will make the world work better and make it a more human place for everyone.

I held Davius’ easy smile and sharp wit in my memory.

"I don't know how the world works," I thought.

I stopped beside a flower growing through a crack in the concrete sidewalk. Its stem was frail, yet its face was noble black and its petals were brilliant yellow. It was growing where it shouldn't grow, vulnerable to a late frost, hard rain or crushing footstep. But it was growing.

Following the tragedy the faculty and administration met early in the morning to map out ways to care for our grieving students. The district sent counselors to help students touched by our loss.

In the weeks after the funeral, we dedicated a statue in our flower garden to Davius of a child reading.

All children growing up in poverty are like the flower I came across, vulnerable and strong. They need nurturing. Teach them. Work to protect them. The world works through them.

Everyday, eight children and teens die [2] from gun violence.

Those children would have filled 229 public school classrooms of 25 students each. Because of gun violence, desks now sit empty that might have held the next great scientist or writer or parent for the world.

The Children’s Defense Fund [3] encourages us to work for laws that:

• control who can obtain firearms
• close the gun-show loophole
• require consumer safety standards and childproof safety features for all firearms
• strengthen child access prevention laws that ensure guns in the home are stored safely and securely

Barton is an elementary school teacher in South Carolina.