Hi, I'm Emily Baumgartner Nunn, and I'm a national health reporter for the New York Times.
After the pandemic, I came across a set of data that really startled me.
The proportion of deaths attributable to gun violence skyrocketed in kids.
It was driving up all childhood mortality across the board.
The vast majority of these shootings were happening in neighborhoods and in homes,
not so much in schools.
But there is a public health dynamic at play in the context of school shootings.
I've been able to spend a lot of time
since then reporting on how school shootings happen and what could have prevented them.
And I wanted to understand something else, too.
After the news cameras leave and the public attention fades,
what happens over time to the people who were inside that classroom and survived?
I wanted to write a story that wasn't from the perspective of a grieving parent,
and it wasn't from the perspective of a student, but it was from the perspective of a teacher.
And that's the story I'll be reading for you.
Ivy Seamus is a history teacher who survived the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas,
the high school in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were killed in 2018.
I learned that in the aftermath of the shooting,
Ivy kept a bulletproof clipboard on her desk to feel safe against future threats.
At first,