In this timely episode of the Educator's Playbook, we confront the pervasive issue of gun violence and its reverberating effects across K-12 education. With an alarming 44,367 gun violence deaths reported in the US last year, of which 1,686 were children and teens, the weight of this crisis is palpable in classrooms across the nation. As educators and students grapple with the grief and trauma stemming from these tragedies, the question arises: How does the education community navigate such turbulent waters? Joining the conversation is Jasmine Marshall-Butler, who shares insights from her Ph.D. research on the profound effect that losing students to gun violence has on educators. Also sharing her story is documentary filmmaker Shameka Sawyer, founder of the 5 Shorts Project. She shares her perspective on the broader implications for the school environment and community. This episode serves as a poignant reflection on a pressing societal issue, emphasizing the need for support, understanding and proactive measures in our schools. We realize it's an activating topic, so please be careful when listening. We've included some additional resources below.

FEATURING:

• Jasmine Marshall-Butler, Associate Director of the Urban Teaching Apprenticeship Program (UTAP), University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education    
• Shameka Sawyer, Founder & Executive Director, 5 Shorts Project

NEWSLETTER:

• Subscribe to the Educator's Playbook newsletter for ongoing resources and content

RELATED PLAYBOOKS:

• No. 58: How teachers can talk about violence at the Capitol (01-07-21)
• No. 40: Bringing Restorative Justice into Your Classroom (02-06-20)
• No. 31: How parents can help adolescents struggling with anxiety (11-08-19)
• No. 21: Creating meaningful classroom discussions (03-17-17)

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

• The Victim Connect Resource Center: a referral helpline where crime victims can learn about their rights and options confidentially and compassionately. Check out their interactive VictimConnect Resource Map online for additional resources or contact the VictimConnect Resource Center by phone or text at 1-855-4-VICTIM for more information or assistance in locating services that can help after you lose a loved one or are experiencing grief
• National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children
• The National Alliance For Children's Grief: provides information on supporting children through grief, including a national database of in-person grief support programs, camps and community resources

Hi everyone. A quick content warning. In this episode of Educator's Playbook, we'll be discussing guns and death from gun violence. We're mindful that these are activating topics, so please proceed with caution. We'll have resources available for you linked in the show notes.

This is the Educator's Playbook from the Penn Graduate School of Education. I'm your host, Kimberly McGlonn. After finishing my PhD in curriculum and instruction, I spent 20 years as a high school English teacher in both urban and suburban schools. Whether they're owned for hunting, kept as part of a collection or for personal protection, guns are a ubiquitous part of American culture found in every community across the nation. But there's another side to that too. Last year there were 44,367 gun violence deaths in the US, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

Of those deaths, 1,686 were children and teens. Grief is a difficult emotion to handle even without the element of violence. Teachers and students are being forced to grapple with these tragedies more and more as violence in the surrounding community or even in the news works its way into our classrooms. Gun violence, it's a dark cloud. It hangs over everything. My first guest to help us navigate these difficult waters is Jasmine Marshall-Butler. She joins us now to discuss her PhD research, which examines the impact that losing students to gun violence can have on educators.

Jasmine, thanks so much for coming in today. Can you introduce yourself?

Yes. So I am Jasmine. I currently work at Penn, but previous to that I was a classroom teacher, high school English teacher in Chicago.

Me too.

Yes. Yes. English teachers.

Not Chicago, but English teacher.

And then I came back to New Jersey to teach for a year and some change.

I mean, I know for me, I think about all of the things I had to hold, the ways in which I had to position myself as a cheerleader and as a coach to hold my students' grief and my students' excitement and anxieties, all the things, and I think about your work as a teacher, but also your research and how it thinks about, centers the experience of teachers. It would be helpful, I think, for me and our listeners if you could just contextualize what it is that you're studying.

What is your guiding research question and what are you learning?

I mean, I learned a lot of things in just figuring out that this is what I wanted to study. I mean, I built on a personal experience or a few personal experiences in Chicago. So my big research question is just what are the experiences of Black women teachers who've lost a student to community violence? How do they cope with it? How do they tell their story? Do they tell their story? Because what I found is most of them don't. You hold it in, you show up the next day, even though you're grieving. You're really upset, but you can't show that because you've got 26 kids in front of you every period who need you.

Especially as you said, we hold so much. You're a counselor, you're a mom. Do you have bus fare today? I didn't bring lunch today. What are you eating? You're doing all these things for your students on top of grieving. How do you make space for it? What do you do? I know in my case, I left the classroom because I was like, I cannot balance all of these things and still be me and still be a mom and still come home to my own children. I couldn't do it all. The teachers that I spoke to in my study also feel like they can't do it all, and some are just like I don't know what to do.

And my school didn't really provide resources, the district sent someone for one day and then we never saw anybody again.

Yeah. Then that makes a lot of sense. So, so, so much sense.

I learned that you can't do this work alone, and that is something that I already knew just as a teacher in general, you can't do this work alone. You need the community. You need the parents. You need the rest of the school to really help you be successful. But thinking about teachers who have experienced violence over and over and over again and just see empty spaces in their classroom, I definitely learn you need people. And that's really the big message that all of my study participants said. They were all Black women from different parts of the country all experiencing the same thing.

Whether it's your coworkers, your family, other teacher, friends that work in other schools, you need people. When I was going through it, I didn't have anybody. I didn't talk to anybody about it. I kind of kept it in and I think that's what pushed me to say, I don't want to do this anymore because I did not have those outlets. Teachers need those outlets.

This research you've done across the country, I'd love to know the places where you were interacting with teachers and what did it really kind of reveal to you about this scope of this crisis?

Most of my teachers are from Chicago because that's where I have lots of connections. I have two teachers from Philly. I have someone from LA, from Brooklyn, so kind of tried to get all over or as much as I could, but this is not something that happens in isolation. This isn't just a Philly problem, it's not just a Chicago problem and it's not just happening to teachers in urban schools. You should think about those mass shootings that happened in these small suburban places. This is just happening and the resources may be a bit different when you look at a teacher in Chicago and you look at a teacher maybe in suburban Texas, but the experience is the same.

Was there a moment in particular that was really pivotal in getting you to decide that this would be the research topic that you would focus on? Was there an incident? Is there a memory? Was there something you read? What was that catalyst?

A little bit of everything. A little bit of everything you just said. I was so with my program getting my EDD and it's for working professionals and they're like, do something that's related to your job because it'll make things a little easier for you. And I'm like, I really had to sit down and think about what gets me going, what is an issue that I'm really passionate about that I need to learn more about so that I can affect change? This was the issue, and like I said before, I lost a couple students to community violence when I was teaching in Chicago.

And I think about them all the time and I think about how those experiences, because there were three, how they shaped my work as an educator and what I do and why I do the things that I do, and I'm like, this is what I need to write about. It just kind of came together for me and I talked to my professor about it. That was really the first time that I had ever sat down with someone and talked about my experiences with losing a student. That was 2019 and I had been in the classroom since 2012.

In those seven years, I had never ever talked to anyone and said those words out loud. My student died and I'm upset. Never said it to a family member, a friend, my boyfriend at the time now husband, never said it. And it just felt like weight was coming off of me as I was explaining to her what happened and why I wanted to do it, and I was like, this felt amazing to just say it. And I cannot imagine how many other Black women like me, teachers who have never said it but need to say it so they can feel relief. I can move forward.

Yeah. In that 20 years I was a teacher, I've lost one student to gun violence, one former student to gun violence. It's a nuanced way of having to be in relationship with loss. Just the nature of having to be in such close proximity to violence. How do we persevere through that? So what have you learned in your research about what are the tools that teachers need to tap into to figure out how to return to the classroom when the student is missing or what sits in their place is communal grief?

A lot of the teachers that I've talked to have gone to therapy because who else are you going to talk to? You talk to your other teacher friends, yes, they understand, but really that's just a small group of people. You might have three teacher friends that you're really close to, and those are the only people who would really understand what happened and how you're feeling, and you don't want to dump that grief on them. And sometimes there are stigmas around therapy, and I know a lot of the teachers that I spoke to said that they didn't use the therapists that came in that were sent from the district because it felt like they were taking away resources from the students.

And they're like, I want to make sure my kids are okay. I have to make sure that they get taken care of first and then I can take care of myself. And I think that's just like a theme with teachers, particularly Black women teachers. I have to take care of everyone else first and then I take care of myself. And for a lot of these teachers, they realize I have to put myself first because if I'm not okay, I can't stand up in front of these kids and teach all day. So a lot of them came to that realization, whether it had been through needing to take a leave of absence because they were so stressed out and burnt out.

Or finally going to a therapist who's like, you actually have PTSD, and you're like, whoa, I got to put myself first. But just that self-care, that's something that we as teacher educators really stressed for our students, take care of yourself. Teaching is tough. Teaching is probably going to be the hardest thing you ever have to do in life. Take care of yourself because if you don't, you'll burn out really quickly and find yourself not loving the space, not loving the kids, not loving education anymore, and that's not what we want for you.

So, that self-care piece, seeking the help that you need and not feeling ashamed. This is your resource. This is what's going to make you feel better and be able to get up every day and really do what you need to do. Those were the two big things. It's just having a support system.

What has your research told you about how schools as ecosystems can prepare for that and how they can respond in the face of that kind of loss? What should the school apparatus be maybe thinking about differently or preparing for with some nuance given how widespread this gun violence is in this country in this moment?

Funny you say that. The ecosystem, that is one of my theories that I'm using to sort of ground my research. Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems. So all things kind of fit into each other. So you've got yourself in the center and then you've got the school community, the neighborhood community, your students and their families, and all of those are pieces of a puzzle that fit together, that create the ecosystem. I think for schools, and I see this happening a little bit more, especially in places where there's heavy violence, tapping into that community, tapping into the neighborhoods that all this violence is happening in.

Are there organizations that are supporting survivors of gun violence supporting their families if they do end up passing away? Who's doing the work? As a school community, how do we connect with these people, especially if this is something that is happening over and over and over and over again? You need people. You need community. You need a support system. You can't do this alone as just a school. And a lot of school leaders, they don't get trained on this. There isn't a class that's like how to deal with community violence in your school building 101.

But there should be. I wish there were more of those.

I wish there was too, but there isn't. It's just like-

Not yet.

Not yet. We're working on it.

Someone's coming up with it.

Yes.

One of our listeners is working on this right now.

But there's no handbook for that. So school leaders really need to or should tap into those community resources. And the school that I previously worked at in Chicago, they are doing an amazing job of that, connecting community to the school. So they partnered with the health center, a local health center to bring resources to the school. They're partnering with organizations who are trying to promote peace in the neighborhoods. When I was there, we were doing yearly peace marches. We would walk, the entire school, students, staff, teachers through the streets of the neighborhood promoting peace.

Why do you think that kind of activism matters?

I think it matters because I know that there's a disconnect between schools and community. And communities don't necessarily trust schools to do what they're supposed to do for our children and for the community. So I know for sure that they came in with this approach, like we are of the community. All of our students are of this community. We appreciate, we love, we respect the families in this community, so we're going to do what we need to do to keep our community safe for our kids.

So it was never just about we're here and we're going to try to get these grades up. Yes, we want to do that too, but we also want to make sure-

That we're acknowledging total wellbeing.

Total wellbeing.

Yeah. And safety is a major part of that.

And when our kids walk out of this school building, they go into the community and they need to feel like they're safe. And if they don't feel like they're safe, then they come back into the school with all these other things happening, and then we've got to do some damage control. So we're going to try to strengthen our relationship with the community so that it's a fluid thing. You walk out the door, you also feel comfortable because you know we're here. We're doing things. We're trying to keep you safe. I think it has been working.

I mean they have peace warriors, people who are trained to do that nonviolent work. When they see an altercation happening, how do you defuse the situation.

Huge.

Instead of being a bystander, how do you be an upstander? How do you go in and say, okay, I've got these tools because this is what I learned at my school to solve issues in the community because this is what we need to feel safe?

I love that idea of thinking about how do we equip students with the language to move from bystander to upstander, how do we equip them to be role models and to be able to disengage, to figure out when there's a time to call for outside support. That's a whole new lexicon for tension management to avoid what might be violent conflict.

Yes.

That sounds like some phenomenal work.

It is. It is. And they're still working and still growing and they're in it. And when the Parkland shooting happened, they pulled three of my former students who were in the Peace Warriors at the school and they were on the news because they were so articulate about what they wanted to see from legislators, from communities, from mayors and things like that around school violence because they had practiced in their communities having these conversations, defusing tension and things like that.

So people noticed they're leaders, they're amazing, and they're able to really say, these are the issues and here are the solutions. What are we going to do?

And that is so beautiful, but I worry about them too. Based through your own experience, but also what you've learned and what you've read, how do teachers support students who've lost a peer or who've lost a family member, a sibling or even a neighbor to gun violence? What do you think should be the approaches that the school ecosystem takes to navigate that?

That is a tough one. When something happens in the community and your entire class comes in Monday morning because such and such passed away, talk to them-

Yeah.

... Talk to the students, and sometimes you have to throw away your lesson plan. And you're like, I planned this amazing activity today, but this is not the day for it. Maybe we'll do it next week, but today I can see we're not ready. What's going on?

And you create space for learning after, right?

Absolutely.

We have to carve out pathways to being able to return to the learning and part of the learning, it is about the social emotional.

Yes. And I would say for teachers who maybe don't necessarily feel comfortable engaging in those conversations, just make the space and you'll find that students will, maybe you just pose a question, how are you feeling today? And let it go. Students will take it from there. You might have to ask some probing questions. You might have to refocus the conversation, but give them the space. And I know teachers who are not from the community and may shy away from having those conversations, but it is so important for your students to feel like you care about what's going on in their day-to-day life, especially when something as tragic as death happens and it's impacting your whole class, it's impacting the school.

It's okay to be uncomfortable, and that's where the growth happens when you're uncomfortable-

That's learning.

... But your students see, I see my teacher's uncomfortable, but she is or he is giving us this space to just talk and be and cry if we need to. And maybe the teacher will cry with us because I know I've shed a couple tears sometimes in class. It makes you human and it makes them see you in a different light and now they trust you and want to know how you're doing processing all of this, and maybe you can process it together. But like you said, slow and steady instead of ignoring it completely.

I want to thank you, Jasmine Marshall-Butler, for joining us on the Educator's Playbook. It's been fantastic to be in conversation with you and I really think you shared some insights that are going to really be transformative as teachers navigate the way forward. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks again to Jasmine for taking the time to share with us. She's so right on how we as educators often put our own healing to the side, to tend to our students, but it's important to make sure we're okay for both our students and our own sakes. Speaking of being there for our students, how can we help them cope when they've lost someone to gun violence, a family member, a friend, a neighbor? Well, Philadelphia filmmaker Shameka Sawyer is someone helping students to do just that, cope. She joins us to talk about her experience and the insights she's gained running the Bout Mine I Matter, youth gun violence deterrent program.

It's a nonprofit she launched to support students who have experienced the loss of loved ones to gun violence, something she's lived through and struggled with herself. Thank you so much for coming on to campus and talking with me today.

I'm so excited to be here. Thank you all for inviting me.

Can you introduce yourself?

Sure. So I am Shameka Sawyer. I am a local filmmaker and entrepreneur. I have a couple of ventures I'm working on, but right now I'm here to talk about the Five Shorts Project and our youth video production program called Bout Mine I Matter Project.

So in this journey of figuring out how to leverage the beauties of your life experience and the tragedies of your life's experience, how do these projects in particular, how do they unfold?

The Five Shorts Project teaches individuals how to visually tell their stories by giving them hands-on opportunities to operate video cameras, write scripts, and everything that's involved in filmmaking. The Youth Gun Violence Prevention Program came about when in May of 2020, I lost my youngest brother to gun violence and almost a year to the day after his murder, his son was shot. He survived, but I realized that there's something that we need to do as just people in the community. I know we look to our law enforcement and our elected officials to do a lot, but I think there are some things that we can actually do ourselves to help our communities.

And I feel like our young people are affected the most, so I created the Bout Mine I Matter youth video production program, which is viewed as a program that helps teens directly impacted by gun violence learn video production by creating a short documentary about solutions for gun violence. With that, the participants, I pay them a stipend for being a part of it. I provide lunch, I provide transportation. Anything they need to be a part of the program that may cause a hardship for them, I cover that.

That's fantastic.

Thank you. And just to give you context about the name, my youngest brother, he was a rapper. He went by the name of Tang and he had a clothing line and he named it Bout Mine. So one of his goals was to actually do this, reach back into the community and talk to young people about making better choices, but he just never got the chance to do it. So I figured this would be a great way to keep his vision alive

And to stay in community and conversation about why his life mattered.

Right.

Right? Like Bout Mine, I matter. It's that it's full circle in that way. What is that journey like for them? How do you meet them? How do they come into your care?

So a lot of it is word of mouth. I'll put the post out on social media and people will see it and they'll refer people over. Participants, they fill out a form to join and it gives us some background information about what they've been through and what they're looking to get out of this. And from there, we only have about six kids because that is how much my funding will allow at the moment. So it's fairly small, but it's okay because I think with us having a small group, we're more able to give the participants a chance to really learn the craft of filmmaking

And to really, I would imagine having a smaller cohort allows for more intimacy, which allows for more vulnerability, which offers an opportunity for more healing.

Right. Agreed.

What are the demographics? Are they from all over the city? Who are the symphony of young people that you're able to support?

So for our first year, we had kids from the northwest section of Philadelphia, so that's Germantown, Mount Airy, West Oak Lane, boys and girls, anyone can join.

I think about what none of us can escape, which is that we live in a nation, more specifically in a city, that is really struggling with ultimately what is poverty, which is manifesting itself in crime and violent crime that is gun related. What are you learning about how video production and the skills related to video production can work as an antidote to some of that anxiety, the anger, the sadness, all the things that I think are being manifested in the violence?

Right. I think it's an outlet. It gives the participants the opportunity to really hone in and focus on their creativity and then transferring that visually to get an audience to understand where they're coming from. Being able to provide that outlet, it helps because I feel like a lot of our young people hold things in and then many of them feel like they're always being talked down to. And with this project, they take the reins, they figure out how we're going to produce it, if we're going to have guests who they are, what is the story going to be.

So they get to really dig deep into their thoughts and what they would like to see come from this documentary, and I think it makes them feel like they can accomplish more. Especially some of our young people, they feel like if you're not from a certain area or you don't have a certain background, then certain opportunities aren't available for you. But I think through this project it shows that if you have the passion, the creativity, tenacity, perseverance, you can definitely make a film and it doesn't take a ton of money to do so.

And you can still get your voice and your message out there without feeling like you don't measure up to everyone else.

When I think about what you talked about with film, I think about the opportunity it gives young people to even experience the idea of editing. When I think about the gun violence crisis, I think about all the ways in which people are making impulsive decisions. They haven't been able to cultivate an ability to pause and to recalculate and then to redo, and these decisions become so final. And so the idea that that's one of those core skills that I hadn't thought about before this conversation as something that teaching students about film and what it means to be a filmmaker could provide young people both in terms of the creative outlet, but also the skill development-

Right.

... As being so innovative. And in some ways, you're a talented filmmaker. So I imagine some of the educators who are listening to this podcast, it may not be within their skillset, but it doesn't mean they can't facilitate supporting young people and figuring out how to explore the quintessential kind of filmmaking skills that could be useful to life.

Right. Agreed. Because editing is, it's very tedious and it really does make you have to stop, think, and just not act impulsively if you want your product to relate to your audience the way that you want it to.

You have to plan. And I think that that's another one of those skills that as we think about how larger communities can either replicate with what you're doing or support what you're doing, all of those tools support you feeling safe, but also you being able to center other people's safety.

Right. I totally agree.

Since you began Bout Mine I Matter, what are some moments that really affirm why what you're doing is important?

My nephew, the one who was shot, he is part of the program simply because I feel like I need to be there for him because of what he's experienced. And so just listening to him talk about his experiences and talk about how the program itself has helped him to deal with some of the things that he's going through, that felt affirming for me. And to hear the other participants talk about just how they see society, because we talk in death about what does this world look like to you? What is it from your perspective? What are you noticing? And they all have different perceptions.

It feels really good to just listen to them. I think as adults we need to do more of that, just having those conversations with young people just so they can have the outlet, but also too so we can learn from them about what they're experiencing and what they're going through.

How has it affected you personally?

I look at being a part of this is like therapy for me. It's therapy in a way that it gives me the opportunity to take something that's so heinous and violent and finding beauty that can come of a tragic situation. It's not easy at times. Sometimes it's a little hard to hear young people talk about what they're dealing with and thinking about when I was that age. It's just a great opportunity for me to be a part of a bigger conversation and bigger picture.

And part of the solution.

Yeah.

I think that there's a community of educators who could really benefit from your insights into how they can support students who have witnessed or been harmed by gun violence.

When I first started this project, I held a focus group with some high school students and just listening to their stories where it was just so eyeopening. Because at times you can feel like even though other people are going through this, you can feel a little alone in this process. But one student mentioned about losing her family to gun violence all in one day. And I'm thinking, how are you able to operate in the class? How are you able to focus? But they show this strength. But I do also feel too that more help is needed when it comes to behavioral health, mental health.

Because when you have limited access to that, the feelings that they're holding in come out in a different way. That's another reason why I started this project as well. We had a behavioral health counselor come out and teach workshops and talk with our kids as well, just because I understand that it's not easy to talk about. And if it's a parent that's dealing with it as well, it may not be as easy to talk to a mother or a father or maybe you lost your mother or father. So it was important for me to provide at least someone who was trained to talk to young people about gun violence to come in and help them through whatever feelings they may be feeling.

But yeah, it is a process.

I think the idea of calling in outside expertise is important. I think there's a lot of pressure on teachers to be the everything. It's a really complex and rewarding role, but it's certainly one that as the rule is it's just one of those things that you got to take on is that you're going to support kids who are survivors. What are those things you'd like to see teachers do differently or do more of or do less of?

Especially for our public schools, I know that funding isn't the best for counselors, but I think for some there needs to be more empathy for our students. Because even if someone didn't have a family member impacted by gun violence, it could have been a best friend, it could have been just hearing about all of this that makes it very challenging to stay focused in class all the time.

I'd like to hear your vision for what Bout Mine I Matter can do. How do you see your work in this particular space evolving?

I see this work evolving with the teenagers, the participants taking this and making it bigger than what it is now. I would love to see the passion and love for visual storytelling and filmmaking to continue to live through their vision, where more kids will have the opportunity to learn from their peers about how to tell their stories and also process trauma in a creative way. Then more kids may feel like violence is not the answer when I'm feeling bad, maybe I just really need to talk to someone. Just think first before you take on an action.

Through this program, I'm hoping more teenagers learn to actually process what they're feeling. And then by them learning, they then transfer that on to their friends and younger family members, so we have teenagers who grow into adults understanding that you have to process these emotions.

You've done such a remarkable job of making space for your own experience in ways that are tender for you, but also creating tenderness for young people in the city of Philadelphia. And I want to thank you for that work and your commitment to standing at that front line of care.

Thank you.

But I also want to thank you for taking time to share what you're doing with Bout Mine I Matter and how you're approaching filmmaking and visual storytelling as a teaching tool.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Shameka Sawyer.

Thank you, Kimberly.

I so appreciate Shameka sharing her incredible story and for the difference she's making here in Philly. And thank you to Penn GSE's School and Community Engagement Office, which connected us with Shameka after witnessing her at work in some of the neighborhood schools impacted by gun violence.

Now this has been a heavy episode, so once again, we have gun violence resources linked in the show notes. Please remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen, share with your colleagues, and leave us a five star review to help spread the word.

You can also sign up for our newsletter and browse useful resources at educatorsplaybook.com. Educator's Playbook is produced in Philadelphia by the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education in partnership with Radio Kismet. This podcast is produced by Amy Carson. Our Mix engineer is Justin Berger. Christopher Plant is Radio Kismet's head of operations, and Ben Geise is our project manager. Matthew Vlahos is our executive producer. And I'm your host, Kimberly McGlonn. Thanks so much for listening. This has been Educator's Playbook.