Caleb Burroughs

There are a lot of things that teachers get to experience in the course of their careers. One of those things is not supposed to be the death of a student. Caleb Burroughs was a student at our school and was shot and killed by a gang this spring. I didn't teach Caleb, but I knew who he was and his death sparked a sequence of events at our school that made quite an impression on me. I wrote this the night I got home from school after our staff and students spent the day reeling from the shock of Caleb's death.



There are certain things that I do that always make me feel at peace. One of those things is writing and the other is gardening.

I look out over my backyard and get excited that I see the hostas reappear and the shrubs that I’ve planted leaf out and turn green and the surprise results of birds relocating the seeds of plants from my neighbor’s yard into mine. Nurturing and growing the plants in the garden seems to give me a focused activity that allows me to forget the pressures of the day for a minute and usually whatever problem I had when I started seems trivial in comparison when I’ve finished playing in the dirt.

I can’t fix this, though, what we’ve all experienced in the last couple of days. No one needs to tell us that it’s tragic, such a pointless act, so senseless. But the interesting thing is that almost always there is illumination. Stay with me for a minute.

There are many mornings when I walk to the mailroom to get my homeroom folders and check my mailbox and go back to my classroom and I get so irritated at how loud and obnoxious the kids are. I hear them scream at each other down the hall, just as you pass by their open mouths or laugh so loud and how they bang into you, oblivious that you are next to them and I just sigh and think to myself how I can’t wait to get to my quiet classroom; quiet for just a few minutes before school starts.

But I missed that today. The halls weren’t loud. There was no laughter that filled my eardrums, or screaming or bumping into me. Oh, the kids were there, but they weren’t making any sound. But they spoke volumes.

They spoke volumes about how touched they were that Caleb was their friend. They spoke volumes about how important it was that their peers just stand or sit beside them and be together with them in the silence. They spoke volumes about how much they rely on us to be their shoulder to cry on and the ear they need to hear what they have to say. They spoke volumes about their caring nature and how they knew it was important that they were there for each other. They spoke volumes about how they really know what’s right and wrong in the world and how it deeply affects them and others. They spoke volumes as they, we, have tried to make sense of it all today.

And I’m always awed by the fact that despite all the complaining and moaning that we as staff do at the enormous pile of work that we have, the hands on all of our time and the minutiae of our days as educators that when there is a need for us to all figuratively link arms and create a safety net for our students (and for us) that the net is strong as ever. It’s woven with the collective thoughts that we’re in this together.

I knew who Caleb was. I didn’t have him in class, but I had a few brief interactions with him and I knew that he was a decent, kind young man.

If you think long enough about all the bad things that happen all over the world, it makes one not want to even be part of this earth. My advice (even as a journalist with a background in television news) is… don’t watch the news. But the news is pervasive. Especially when we’re part of it.

But we only get a few rides around this sun of ours and it’s over. Some get more of a ride than others. We’re all packed in the backseat and we’re not driving. But we’re good company and we’re all in this together. The idea is to watch and appreciate the scenery as it’s going by, sometimes stopping to get out and stretch a little before getting back in, but take your time to enjoy the company along the way.

I have a video production colleague who starts every semester by telling the kids, “there’s only one of me and around 30 of you. That means that each one of you gets about 1/30 of my time, energy and attention. But I get 30 times that time, energy and attention from you because there is only one of me. I got the better end of the deal, if you ask me, getting to learn from you.”

And that’s the point, isn’t it? That we all learn from each other on these few trips around the sun that we have. I saw a student body today that was emotional, supportive, caring and passionate. A student body who felt strongly that wrong had been done and they felt it with every bone in their body. A student body who realized that they need each other (and us) and need to be open to emotion and feeling. And a staff who held them up when they began to wobble or lean. It reinforced my belief in the good in everyone. That’s what I chose to focus on in this situation. I have too. The alternative makes me too depressed.

The truth is that we can’t make sense of it. Maybe the whole point of tragedy is that it gives people a chance to reconnect and strengthen our support system. A chance to check in with each other when we get too distant. A tune up, so to speak. I’m certainly not trivializing what happened into a “moral to the story” but I felt the strength of a couple thousand people, all experiencing the same thing today. It was comforting, even in the grief.

I think that as educators, we influence the kids who we teach in ways we don’t even know just as much as they influence us. We don’t always know whether we make a difference or not, but all of us hope to. We have an amazing job because we get to make a positive difference in people who are still growing and maturing. We also get to be recipients of new, fresh, innocent perspectives from people who are mostly untouched by cynicism and rejection and a lifetime of bumps and bruises in the road. They are not censored. We’re very lucky.

So I’ll continue to nurture and grow those things that I can hopefully make a difference in…where I hope to have an influence. This includes the plants in my garden and the kids in my classroom and I’ll continue to have pride in this wonderful school, filled with wonderful people that is South Cobb.