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Would I Do It?
Meditations on Gun Violence and Teaching in America
Ella Smith
My world is wracked with gun violence. Everyday, about 132 people die from gun-related
injuries in the United States of America (CDC, 2022). It lives ever present in the front of my
mind. Everyone I know has intimate personal trauma related to guns. Some of my best friends
are survivors of school shootings. My rival high school was Columbine (yes THE Columbine
High School).
Gun violence has never been far from me. It has also never been closer to me. As of writing this,
ten minutes away from my home, there was a police shooting. But it’s more than that. I am a
pre-k teacher. I teach 4-year-olds. Everyday, I go into work and I wonder “will this be the day I
have to make that choice?” We all know the one I’m talking about. To die, protecting my kids.
Or to live, everyday, with the guilt that I could have done more. While we all experience, and
live with, the inevitability of gun violence in America, I think teachers have been dealt the worst
hand. We go to work, everyday, underpaid and undervalued, just to know that it’s very possible
we will never return home. Never see the outside world again. That we may die. It won’t be a
quiet, easy passing either. It will be messy and violent and loud. And that that is what our
country has decided is acceptable.
What an impossible proposition. For those of you who are not teachers. You may think I’m being
dramatic. But I’m not. There have been more people killed by gun violence on K-12 campuses
than days so far in this school year. Teachers are being asked to make an impossible choice. Our
loved ones, are being asked to worry, every day, about us never coming home.
I can never stop thinking about Sandy Hook. It is never more than a blink away. Those tiny
bodies. Kaitlin Roig, terrified, barricading herself in the bathroom with 15 students and begging
them to remain silent. “Mommy, I'm okay, but all my friends are dead.” I remember when my
mom told me about it. We were in my elementary school parking lot. Picking up my brother. He
was late from basketball practice. And we were talking about school shootings. She told me how
it happened. She told me how it felt. In 2012, my younger brother was six. He was the same age
as those children. I saw genuine fear in her eyes. I wonder, did she imagine holding her own
child’s body? Did she think about what she would have done, if given that impossible choice.
I never stop thinking of Uvalde. How Irma Garcia tried her very best to protect her students.
Losing her life. She tried so hard to ensure that her kids were safe. How does her family mourn?
Do they ever wish she had made a different choice? Just hightailed it out at the first sound of
violence. Left the kids to fend for themselves
I can’t stop thinking about my kids. What would they think if they saw that? Me, trying to save
them, but failing. Me, fighting as hard as I could, only to meet a violent, painful end. How am I
supposed to communicate that to them? That this is just a fact of life. The sky is blue, gravity
holds us to the Earth, and their lives will, at some point, be irreversibly changed by gun violence.
Do these parents expect me to die for their children?
More than that, how can I justify this to the people I love most in the world? That I would
willingly give up my life for these babies that they’ve never met. Would I be looked at as a hero?
As a victim? As an inevitable statistic? Would someone call my death a “false flag?” Say that I
deserved it? Would my family think that what I did was silly? I worry that any choice I make
would be the wrong one.
As a Jewish individual, I follow the concept of tikkun olam. The idea that the world will be
better, has to be better, and that it is our job to make it so. For me, this is all encompassing. It
encourages me to engage in work for social justice and education. But what does it say about
throwing yourself in front of a military grade weapon? Of letting your body get ripped to shreds
to save others.
Would I do it? Without question. Is that a terrifying concept to me? Absolutely. But I know I
would. I wouldn’t even think about it. Those are my babies. I spend all day teaching them how to
be people. I work hard to help them learn how to write their letters, deal with big feelings, and
how to handle what the world throws at them. Of course I would throw myself in front of a bullet
for them. And I don’t know how to feel about that.
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Posted On: October 13th 2026, 06:05 am
would I do it? meditations on gun violence and teaching in america by ella smith

in light of the recent shooting in Fort Collins, I was having some big thoughts and big feelings that I could really only get out by writing

(if this is too hard to read, it’s also in the alt text of this post)

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