It's been a tough weekend. A community in Connecticut is reeling from a tragedy that is unimaginable. While we go about our lives putting up trees and wrapping presents they are planning funerals. What else they are going through, I can not even imagine, and I won't try. I haven't gone through anything like what they are. I won't put myself in their place.

I had a blog post ready to go, but it is way to cheery, blythe, and light-hearted to post just now. I will post it in a day or two. But I felt as if I needed to say something. So I will speak to one area I do know. I was a teacher. My daughter and son-in-law are teachers, as is my niece and two of my husband's cousins.

I remember one interview I had for a pre-school teaching position. It took place at night. Shortly after we began, the power went out and we were thrust into darkness. As they searched for candles or flashlights, a faceless voice said, "Mrs. Rosenberry, if this happened when you had a roomful of children, what would you do?" I thought for a moment and then answered that in a calm voice I would tell the children to be very quiet and listen to my voice. Then I would tell them to carefully walk towards my voice. Shortly after that the power came back on. (I guess I did ok. I got the job.)

Teachers handle all kinds of situations from fire drills to lock-downs. I was teaching in an elementary school on 9-11. It was so hard to know what to tell children. My daughter tried to find the right words, the right balance, for her 4th graders. Later, I listened to the stories of teachers in an elementary school near the World Trade Center as they took care of their children until parents could get there. I tried to imagine what it was like for them. A friend of mine lived in Arkansas in 1998 when the middle school in his town was targeted. He was not a teacher then, but he did become one later.

Nothing can prepare you for a school shooting, but learning how to calm children becomes inherent in the job. Drills help them set the stage and help children respond calmly when panic could ensue. Even so, there is always one child who knows 'it's just practice', but still gets really scared. We take that one by the hand and help them lead everyone else.

Now that I've said all that, I want to add that every story I've heard this weekend about teachers makes me so proud of them. They were heroes. They hid them, read stories to them, made it into a game of pretend, or told them a fox was in the hallway. They found amazing ways to keep the children calm and protect them when surely they knew it was very bad out there.

They are heroes.

But it's not over.

When school reopens, be it this week or in January, they will have to do it all over again. They will have to help their students find a sense of normalcy while validating their fears. There will be counselors all over that school, but after the parents, the classroom teacher will be a student's first counselor, and the one that will be there every day, all day, whenever a child's fear bubbles to the top.

No teacher goes into teaching thinking about protecting a classroom full of children from a crazed killer. But when fate puts them in that situation, they rise to meet it with courage, calm, and ingenuity. They do it well.