Teachers at Sunset Park said Tuesday that classes are going as usual, but are preparing for difficult talks the next day. Credit … Hillary Swift for The New York Times
For Shahana Ghosh, a first-grade teacher at PS 24 in Sunset Park, just two blocks from the metro station where Tuesday’s shooting took place, the day began like any other.
After a morning meeting with the other teachers, her students sat down for an hour at 8:10 a.m., ready to take reading and math lessons. Half an hour later, a message appeared in the PA system: The school was entering a “shelter on the spot” – a type of blockade in which classes continue as usual, but no one can enter or leave the building.
At around 9 a.m., Ms. Ghosh’s colleague, who was not at school on Tuesday, sent her a message explaining why: A shooting took place at 36th Street Subway Station.
“It was very, very difficult today,” Ms. Ghosh said. “It didn’t look like anything I was doing.”
Because the children in her class were so young, no news was made to scare them, and Mrs. Ghosh had to put on a calm face for the rest of the day. When her students began to notice that her phone was constantly ringing, she occupied them by announcing the game time.
“I try very hard to stay and not show my fear,” Ms. Ghosh said. “The kids were playing with Play-Doh at the end of the day and they wanted to show me the ice cream they made, and I said to myself, ‘I’m texting your mother and trying to make sure she can take you, but thank you!'”
Ani Tang, a fourth- and fifth-grade teacher at a school about a mile from the shooting, also defended her students from across history after their school received a shelter order, telling her students it was just an exercise.
“We were all scared,” she said. “We kept it as normal as possible.”
Although Ms. Tang managed to keep her students busy with art lessons and research projects, some of her students noticed that something was wrong. Some wondered why they could not go out to rest on a sunny day and why the blockade training would last several hours.
At the end of the day, Ms. Tang warned her students that it could take longer for them to return home and that their families, friends or other relatives may be there to pick them up. Immediately one of her students asked her if there had been a shooting.
“I told the truth, but not the whole truth,” she said. “I said everyone was fine, no one died because I didn’t want to scare the students.
“I told my children specifically that I want their parents to tell them,” she added.
After all trains in the area were closed after school opened, Ms. Tang eventually took a ferry home, and Ms. Ghosh asked her cousin to take her.
Ms. Ghosh, who was trying to relax from the chaos of the day by making dinner, said she was beginning to think about how she would talk to her first-graders about the shooting. She will probably focus the conversation on expressing her feelings, she said, and explaining what to do if they find themselves in a situation like this.
“I think we will have to talk about who hurt others and why this is happening,” Ms Ghosh said. This is a big question that these children have all the time: “Why did you do this?” Which is the most difficult question of all, because we have no answer. “
Ms Tang, who said she planned to decompress with another teacher friend tonight, said she had no idea how she would start talking to her students about shooting in class tomorrow – but she knew her students would ask her questions. Tomorrow, she added, should be Picture Day.
“We have to look happy and I’m not sure how that will happen,” she said. “I guess there will be students who are absent because it’s really scary.”
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