SANFORD, N.C. — Many teachers across North Carolina are walking into their classrooms in the mornings wondering what will happen that day.
The students who will file in from the hallway are precious parts of their lives.
That’s why the deadly shooting at a Uvalde, Texas at an elementary school resonates so much with educators.
Sheryl Davis teaches theater at a Lee County school. She loves nothing more than sharing her passion for the stage with young people.
“We talk about puppets and puppetry in a variety of worlds,” Davis said as she pointed to one of her lesson plans inside her Sanford apartment.
Davis has been teaching theater, mostly in private schools across the state, for almost 20 years.
The last three years she has worked with elementary school children in public education.
“I love seeing them get to be creative and seeing things they didn’t know, and I didn’t actually know,” Davis said.
It is the unknown that bothers her most. When she thought about the 19 children killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, May 24, Davis said she saw the faces of her own students and cried.
“The thought of not seeing them again is just really, really hard to think about,” she said. “Educators love their kids. We create little families, and we treat them as if they are our own for the whole year."
Davis said she teaches 650 students every day. She said the workday never gets easier when the threat of gun violence is always real. Her students are roughly the same age and grade as some of the children killed in Uvalde.
“Sad, it was very sad. I thought about my second-through-fourth-graders, and the thought of not seeing 19 of them is just heartbreaking,” Davis said.
Davis is also the mother of two children. Even though her son is grown, and her daughter is in middle school, she couldn’t imagine never seeing them walk through the door again.
“(I keep) thinking about them, thinking about the families that are going to go home and not have someone to pick up the shoes that they yelled about that morning or the teacher who said, ‘Hey, I need your homework,’ and it is not going to get turned in. The book bags that are not going to get collected,” she said.
“I’m angry that these kids keep dying, and nobody is willing to say, 'OK, that’s enough. We are done. We are not letting any more of our kids die,'” Davis said.
She said all of these young minds could be the next great playwright, stagehand or lead in a Broadway play if they can make it to graduation day.
“It keeps happening. We keep seeing it, keep thinking maybe this time it will change. Maybe somebody will do something, maybe finally our children will be safe, and then it happens again,” Davis said.