It started on Facebook, as so many things do these days.
A few of my former students are my Facebook friends. Last Saturday, I noticed that one by one, they’d started joining a group entitled “R.I.P Sydney Tabakin 9/18/10.”
Even though I didn’t know Sydney, the sense of dread loomed as the Facebook group grew exponentially with names that I recognized as Homestead students. The news reports had yet to identify the teenage girl who had died earlier that day in a car accident, but I called my friend and colleague anyway: “I’m not sure, but I think we lost a student today.”
My heart sank as she recognized Sydney’s name as one of her former students.
Not long afterward came the call from our principal confirming the terrible news.
This is my 17th year in the classroom, and I’ve lost students and colleagues alike, many to tragedies like this. But no amount of education or experience could have prepared me for the scene at school the Monday morning after this happened.
As I drove into the parking lot just after 6:00 a.m., I could still see the candles from Sunday night’s vigil burning at our school’s main entrance. I stopped for a moment to reflect. Flowers, photos, notes and even a toboggan stood in her memory. A second, smaller collection of candles illuminated Sydney’s parking space.
After an emotional faculty meeting before school began, we all took a deep breath and got ready for the most challenging part of the day: seeing our students.
Some were sobbing. Others were red-eyed as if they had no tears left. Still others looked stunned. And a few went about their business as if nothing had happened.
The terrible quiet in the hallways was the worst.
One of my classes is full of seniors, many of whom had known Sydney since kindergarten, and I pondered what to do with them. Did they want to talk? Or by the time their mid-morning class had begun, would they be talked out? I’d bought Play-doh as a different means of playing Pictionary in German at some point and had left it sitting on the table.
As so often is the case, I let the students guide me. They’ve been my students since they were freshmen, and in that time we’ve come together as a little German class family. One student made a simple request: “Frau, can we just play with the Play-doh and watch the videos we’ve made for German class over the years?”
And so it was. If making snowmen and seeing their younger selves on screen helped them to take a small step closer to making some sense of this tragedy, I was on board. How could seeing a room full of red-eyed 17-year-olds playing with Play-doh not melt your heart? How I wish I could have frozen that moment for them, protecting them from a world where their friends are there one day and gone the next, insulating them from the harsh realities of life.
And if only for a moment, I wished I could join them there too.
