COLUMBIA, S.C. — Teachers across the nation and right here in the Midlands are still struggling with the mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas this week that left 19 students and two teachers dead.
A recent University of South Carolina graduate Hannah Lawson, talks about how she feels following the shooting.
Lawson says the mass shooting was a wake-up call into what could happen in her future classroom, saying, “As a future teacher it really makes you think about the fact that there’s going to be a handful of students that are going to be in my care and my responsibility.”
She went on to say, “It’s made me realize the weight of what I'm stepping into.”
Majoring in early childhood education, she says she was never taught to be a protector for the most vulnerable. “Stepping into a classroom and I'm going to end up having to take on all this responsibility in addition to teaching them standards and the curriculum," said Lawson.
Dr. Reginald Williams, Professor of Early Childhood at South Carolina State University, says future educators learn violence prevention training. He said, “Now they have to deal with emotional education how do you cope with these things, how do you cope with these violent images.”
Telling NEWS19 what future educators are taught, saying, “We are taught that those are the kind of safety measures that need to be utilized in order to train students in order to deal with these crisis situations.”
He says safety and security training needs to continue once education students become educators.
“Because there’s such an emotional lightening rod that hits the situation, they must pivot very quickly, a lot them do feel like they're unprepared.”
Lawson agrees, saying future teachers need more guidance on how to deal with possible security risks, saying, “I do think it would be really great to prepare future educators in that way and to be able to talk to them about how to have those conversations with children who are so young.”
Hannah says she is applying for jobs now and hopes to be in the classroom by the start of the new school year.