I became a teacher because I wanted to change lives. I never imagined I would have to prepare to save them.

In college, I learned how to teach a child to read. How to meet them where they are. How to celebrate the smallest victories that other people might miss. I learned how to make a classroom feel like home and how to be the steady voice when the world feels too loud.

But no one taught me how to explain to a child why we practice hiding from someone who wants to hurt us.

I am a special education teacher, and lockdown drills are not simple in my classroom.

Some of my students cannot stay quiet. Some cannot sit still. Some communicate through sounds, movement, or a hand reaching for mine. Some will cry when they are scared. Some will laugh when they are nervous. Some cannot independently run, hide, or understand the danger unfolding around them.

And yet, we practice the same emergency procedures designed for children who can.

I am expected to count the children, check the lock, study the windows, memorize the escape route, and somehow make it all feel normal while planning how to keep my students alive.

I have thought about which students I could carry. Which ones would need my hand. Which ones might freeze. Which ones would not understand why I was asking them to be silent.

I have thought about how I could use my own body to shield them.

These are not thoughts a teacher should have to carry. And these are not choices a child should ever have to face.

I remember practicing lockdown drills when I was a child. Now, years later, I am the adult leading them.

And I cannot accept that another generation of children is growing up learning how to survive inside their classrooms.

We need to prevent gun violence before it reaches our schools. We also need to acknowledge that our current emergency preparedness systems do not adequately address the needs of every student.

I am calling on state and federal lawmakers to advance comprehensive school safety measures that include:

1. Stronger safe firearm storage requirements that help prevent unauthorized access to firearms, particularly by children and individuals who may use them to cause harm.
2. Federal Funding for Physical Classroom Protection: Create a dedicated federal grant program to help schools install and maintain independently evaluated safety improvements, including reinforced classroom doors, secure entry systems, accessible protective spaces, and other evidence-based protective infrastructure.
3. Federal Funding for Disability-Inclusive Emergency Preparedness: Provide dedicated funding for specialized emergency equipment, accessible evacuation systems, staff training, individualized emergency response planning, and the personnel necessary to assist students who cannot independently respond during emergencies.
4. Mandatory School Safety and Accessibility Assessments: Require schools to undergo regular independent assessments of their physical security and their ability to protect students with disabilities. Schools must develop funded plans to correct identified deficiencies.
5. Prioritized Funding for Under-Resourced Schools: Ensure that schools serving high-need populations and schools lacking adequate safety infrastructure receive priority funding. A child’s safety should not depend on their school’s budget or ZIP code.
6. Federal Accountability and Implementation Deadlines: Require participating schools and districts to document how safety funding is spent, demonstrate completed improvements, and report progress toward national safety standards.

Our Message Is Simple

If we cannot prevent every act of gun violence, we must do more to protect the children and educators who are vulnerable to it.

Fund the protection. Fund the preparation. Protect every child.

We cannot continue placing the responsibility for surviving school shootings entirely on the shoulders of educators and children. We cannot keep telling teachers to run, hide, and fight without acknowledging that some of the children standing beside us cannot do those things.  And we cannot call a school safety plan inclusive if it leaves our most vulnerable students behind.

I do not want to become a hero.

I want to grow old and watch my students grow up.

I want to teach children how to read, not how to survive gunfire.

I want my students to remember the books we read, the things we created, and the moments they realized they were capable of something they once thought impossible.

Not the sound of a lockdown alarm.

Our students deserve better. Our teachers deserve better. And children with disabilities deserve more than being an afterthought in conversations about school safety.

If you believe children should not have to learn survival before they can learn to read, please sign this petition. If you believe every child deserves to be protected, regardless of their ability to run, hide, or fight, please sign and share this petition. Because school safety should never depend on a child’s ability to save themselves.