After Oxford High shooting, Michigan teachers ask: How do we keep going?

Two days after the Nov. 30 shooting at Oxford High School, advanced placement U.S. history and civics teacher Richard Mui arrived at his own high school 60 miles away to find his students distraught.

Overnight, threats of violence directed at schools across the state had started to spread across social media. Dozens of Michigan school districts had already determined that the threats were not credible but some cancelled classes for the day out of an abundance of caution. Many people did not know about the threats until after they arrived at school.

After his first-hour class at Canton High School, Mui went downstairs to share the students’ concerns with the administration and found a long line of students already outside the attendance office being excused and picked up early by their parents.

The students were “more nervous than I’ve seen them in a classroom before,” Mui said. “That’s when it kind of hit home for me. I have students in the class that are asking about safety procedures, ‘Can we lock the door?’ and things like that, which I don’t think the students ever cared about, whether the doors locked or not.”

MORE: How Michigan educators are talking to students about the Oxford school shooting

By 8:50 a.m. that morning, Plymouth-Canton Community Schools announced the decision to dismiss its three high schools at 9:30 a.m., writing to students, staff and families that although law enforcement had determined that there was no direct threat, “the fear and anxiety at the P-CEP campus has caused significant disruption to the learning environment.”

Situations like these are becoming routine in Michigan as the state continues to grapple with the after-effects of the state’s deadliest school attack in nearly a century. In the days and weeks following the shootings at Oxford High School, as copycat threats, bomb threats, and real and suspected weapons on campus locked down schools and cancel classes, teachers, parents, and students around Michigan worry about managing an educational environment already fragile from nearly two years of pandemic shutdowns and disruptions. Threats of school violence Dec. 17 were deemed not credible by the Department of Homeland Security, but they still prompted heightened school security or closures in several states across the country, including in Michigan, where the state police acknowledged the threat.

Much of the stress and uncertainty falls on educators. In interviews across the state, teachers told the PBS NewsHour they are tired, frustrated, and angry about continued gun violence in schools. In addition to their usual lessons – and answering students’ questions about school shootings – teachers also have their own questions: How much can teachers manage? And what are the consequences if they don’t?

“I’m now seeing things from the teacher perspective and the parent perspective,” Stacey Olsen, a social studies teacher at Seaholm High School in Birmingham, said. “That’s giving me even more to contemplate. The professional has become even more personal.”

Students have questions

Ryan Werenka, an advanced placement government and political science teacher at Troy High School for 22 years, told the PBS NewsHour that every year, a historic event occurs – national, international, or in this case very local – that forces him to set aside his lesson plan and debrief with his students to help them process the information, their thoughts, and their feelings. The day after the shooting at Oxford was that day.

He said students were unnerved because the shootings happened so close, about 20 miles from their school. Other students expressed fear about whether they were safe on school grounds, while some students were just trying to process why this happened and understand what would happen next.

“I do my best in those circumstances to try and help them to process things and to answer questions,” Werenka said. “They know I’m going to answer things honestly.”

WATCH MORE: Dozens of suburban Detroit schools close amid threats after high school shooting

For Olsen, the day after the shooting at Oxford High School, her students had many questions about protocol and what they should do in case of a shooting at their school.

“I told them to remember what we learned in ALICE [active shooter preparedness] training, which is pretty much to just react to any situation as it happens,” Olsen said.

ALICE stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate, and is used in many area school districts. Founded in 2000, ALICE training was developed in response to the shootings at Columbine High School to train students and teachers on multiple strategies to proactively respond to an active shooter. The state requires three lockdown emergency drills a year. Despite controversies about the too-realistic active shooter simulations for teachers, Oxford Public Schools, Birmingham Public Schools, and Troy School District have been using ALICE training since 2018. Washtenaw County schools have used the training since 2013.

“The good thing and the bad thing about ALlCE training is you’re told to react to the situation that’s happening, rather than the old old way, which was a one-size-fits-all, everybody-hides-in-the-corner approach,” Olsen added.

Students inside a classroom at Forest High School in Marion County, Florida barricaded the door with tables and desks. Photo by Twitter user @PSupremeYT.

Simply being willing to talk with students was a comfort for them, but Olsen had to admit to her students that she did not feel adequately prepared to respond, either. Comparing the situation to airplane safety procedures where the flight attendant says to put on one’s own oxygen mask before helping someone else with their mask, Olsen said, “I don’t feel like I’ve prepared myself adequately to be able to address and comfort children. I feel insecure, personally.”

According to the Birmingham Public Schools website, in addition to ALICE training with local law enforcement, the school district has installed new secure entry vestibules at each school, more than 1,000 new “smart cameras” with 24-hour video surveillance covering the interior and exterior of our buildings, a new emergency communication system for local police municipalities that improves response time and provides first responders with relevant information, and many Family Resources from the State of Michigan Department of Education.

Mui’s civics class happened to have a gun control versus gun rights debate during the unit they were learning right before the Oxford shooting. “So before we started class, I asked the students had they thought about the debate as it related to what happened in Oxford,” Mui said. “They unfortunately hadn’t. But as the discussion went on, it was the same in terms of, who’s responsible? What rights do individuals still possess? And when those rights conflict or when those rights conflict with the safety of others, how do we manage that?”

“And again, schools are different,” Mui adds.

Teachers have questions, too

Jason Towler is a teacher consultant for Washtenaw Intermediate School District’s young adult project, as well as a parent of a first grade boy in Plymouth-Canton Community Schools. When he got the call from his son’s school district on December 2 that the high schools were being dismissed in about 30 minutes, he and his wife were both teaching. His wife teaches at a middle school.

“As a teacher and educator, [I] know that that’s a huge problem if they’re cancelling school,” Towler said, “with a 30-minute window…Holy. Wow.”

They wondered whether to go get their son from school, even though the elementary schools themselves were not closing. They decided to let their son finish his school day to try to keep things as normal as possible for him. After a year of virtual kindergarten, they hoped to shield him a little bit longer from the idea that school might not be a safe place. But with all the anxiety following the shootings at Oxford High, he wondered, “What are we doing here? Why aren’t we all just maybe taking a day here?”

READ MORE: Schools respond to emergency threats on TikTok

When her school district cancelled classes, Olsen had to take that Thursday off, because although her school was still in session, her children’s schools were not. She spent the afternoon with her children making gingerbread houses together.

“I actually have gotten more information from my son, who is 15, and what he saw on social media last night versus what I got from my employer,” Olsen said. “My son was getting screenshots of stuff, and kids being alarmed, and a lot of it was spreading rumors. But from my employer, all I got was, ‘We have investigated the threats, Birmingham was not mentioned by name, so we feel that it’s safe to come to the building today.’”

Olsen said that as much as she would want teachers to jump in and be a hero to save students during a shooting, she does not have the training to know how to do that, and a one-day in-service training or lecture would not be enough.

“I’m not a psychologist. I’m a historian and an educator. And I don’t think that most teachers are equipped for it,” Olsen said. “We don’t have that training, and to think that we do is irresponsible.”

Teachers are committed to their students and will do what it takes. “I don’t know a teacher who wouldn’t take a bullet for one of our students, without a thought. It’s just the way it is. We’re very passionate,” Towler said. “When your kids are with us, they’re our kids.”

For example, many teachers will not even take a day off if the school cannot get a substitute teacher to take care of their classroom, Towler said. There was a substitute teacher shortage before the pandemic, but COVID-19 has made things worse.

“Twenty-four years in education,” Towler said. “And this by far is the craziest, tensest, most burnout year I’ve ever had. I can’t really tell you why. With all the things with COVID and the fighting, it’s hard to be a teacher in the middle of all these politics things when that’s just not our game. That’s not what we’re here for.”

READ MORE: Thoughts from a Michigan teacher on the Oxford shooting

The teachers and staff at Troy High School, about 20 miles south of Oxford High School, knew the day after the shooting at Oxford High School was going to be a tough day, Werenka said, and it was. Some live in Oxford Township, and some knew teachers that teach at Oxford High. Teachers were sad, angry, and struggling with a range of emotions themselves, as well as helping their students deal with the same. Werenka was grateful that his principal was understanding and reassured teachers that their classes would be covered if they needed to take some time.

Werenka was especially angry at the people who made threats against schools, as jokes or to try to get a day off school. “How dare you? There are people up in Oxford in legitimate pain and there are four families planning funerals,” Werenka said. And the fact that you would make these baseless threats, what kind of person are you?”

Werenka was touched when one of his former student teachers reached out to check in on how he was doing after the shootings. She now teaches in Knoxville, Tennessee, at a school that had a shooting last year.

“I’m like, it didn’t happen in Troy, I’m fine. She knew I was going to be upset, though,” Werenka said. “She said it’s really important for the kids to know [that] if they know someone has that intent or has a weapon, they say something. And so that was her piece of advice that I passed along.”

A call for solutions

With continuing COVID concerns, trying to catch students up from the past year and a half of virtual schooling, substitute teacher shortages, taking care of students’ mental health issues, safety issues around school shootings and threats, teachers are facing new and more persistent challenges than they have in years past. Teachers say they understand why so many teachers have been leaving the profession. Teachers want solutions that will help them take care of their students and that will keep teachers and students safe.

“There are not a lot of perks to go into teaching, especially with all the new things you need with COVID and worrying about if someone is going to come in and shoot you. I mean, it’s insane,” Towler said.

Towler wishes every parent would try substitute teaching for a day to see how much teachers have to do and go through ALICE training to understand the impact of normalizing active shooter preparedness training like a tornado drill or a fall-out drill. ALICE teacher training is more comprehensive than student training and includes how to attack back with things in the classroom, like throwing a keyboard or using a laptop like a boomerang to ward off an attacker, but ALICE teacher simulations have also been criticized for traumatizing teachers. “It’s insane the things we have to go through. We’ve had police officers pretend to shoot blanks in the buildings, and they’re very traumatizing,” Towler said. “The safety blanket of school is gone.”

“Maybe it’s because this is so fresh, but I don’t think that the answer is to put more on teachers,” said Olsen. “[We need] to consult the right experts. We can’t put a Band-Aid on this situation. It has to be deep, systemic change. But I don’t know what that looks like.” Olsen said.

READ MORE: Schools across the country are struggling to find staff. Here’s why

Mya Kim, a 17-year-old senior at Salem High School in Plymouth-Canton Community Schools, was worried about the geography of the classrooms in her school, suddenly noticing how many classrooms are on the second floor and how many classrooms do not have windows or alternate escape routes. She also points towards larger solutions like gun reform, better mental health care and communication skills, like what was in the social emotional learning programs at her school.

“I’ve been toggling between anger and frustration,” Werenka said. “Because this has been happening throughout my entire teaching career and nothing substantial has really been done to prevent it. I mean, we have the ALICE training drills that we do [so] in the event of a shooter we know what to do. But from the legislative or policy side, nothing’s been done.”

Werenka said urged some common sense solutions like better background checks, more mental health resources, peer mediation programs, studies, research, and continued attention to the issue, not just in the days after the latest school shooting. “Just the inaction is maddening,” Werenka said.

Chien-An Yuan, a parent of eighth-grade twins at Clague Middle School in Ann Arbor, wishes his children only had to worry about the usual things that middle schoolers worry about. “Lockdowns, mass shootings. Are we really ok sacrificing children to the second amendment? Is that really who we are?”

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Mui called for patience, tolerance, and love as schools continue to deal with challenges stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, the recent shootings, and continuing threats. “We’re all in different places,” Mui said. “Some people are ready to move on, and we could respect that, but then there are some people that are still processing, that had different experiences with COVID and different experiences now processing the shooting. If we could meet people where they’re at.”

As for Werenka, the 2021 Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History Michigan History Teacher of the year, he’s returned to a speech that Robert Kennedy gave in Cleveland the day after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

“It’s in the first paragraph of the speech about the mindless menace of violence that stains our streets and that affects our country, something like that,” Werenka said. “That really resonated with me as a way to frame. For me, it helped to process things.”

“I always, always try to teach my students to be good citizens,” Werenka said. “Trying to help them to process basic humanity. I think that’s going to have to become a bigger component of what we do, to educate them as a whole person. That’s sad to say that we have to do that. But unfortunately, I think it’s a product of the times.”