My student was murdered on Monday. I can’t stop thinking about it.

On Monday, one of my eighth graders was a victim of gun violence. A stray bullet from a drive by shooting. She’s gone. They grew up in the inner city and violence is a norm around here. I’m from the city too. But I’ve never lost a student to murder before. <br><br>I have been trying to process her death all week. I’m an English teacher and she was a good writer. She wrote a poem last year about living in the city. <br><br>“Don’t you hear the music? It’s the sound of the city. Gunshots and fireworks. This is ordinary.”<br><br>I keep thinking about these lines. Why is this ordinary? I want to scream that this is not ordinary. But it is. <br><br>I’m just so tired of losing our children to gun violence. What can I do? How can I stop this. I have hundreds of students and I want to save them all. But I can’t. Someone murdered one of my babies on Monday.