Kim Krawczyk was teaching a math lesson for her freshman students on a Wednesday in 2018 when shots rang out in the building. The attack on Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., would leave 14 students and three staff members dead.
While no shots were fired into her classroom that day, she and her students were traumatized, and she says school shootings like the one last week in Uvalde, Texas, resurface the experience for them.
"We know exactly what it feels like, to have that fear, to have that panic, to hold out hope. To lose our friends and colleagues," she says. "You just want to believe as a survivor that no one will ever have to go through this again."
Unfortunately, many families and teachers have in the four years since the Parkland shooting, and more likely will in the future.
"In the coming days you will work your schedules around funerals. You'll have to fill out victim reports and organize fundraisers. You'll struggle to get out of bed and forget what day it is," Krawczyk wrote in an essay for Business Insider. "You will walk your dog. You will hate God; you will thank God. You will find the fire to move forward."