Month: November 2022
Oxford Strong: One Year In
Stories by Brenda Ortega, MEA Voice Editor In the months after a troubled student opened fire with a semiautomatic weapon in the hallways of Oxford High School one year ago, destroying lives and devastating the community, the long process of grieving and healing began. It will continue over many years ahead. Read the stories below […]
Lauren Jasinski: ‘It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done’
A public policy nerd since college, Lauren Jasinski always expected to expand her career beyond a high school classroom. But the devastating shooting at Oxford High School sped up her departure from teaching civics, world history, and AP Comparative Government. “I love working with high school students; I think I’m good at it. I’m incredibly […]
Jim Gibbons: ‘It’s harder this year than last year’
Jim Gibbons could talk for hours about all of the good things happening at Oxford High School, but one year after a horrific school shooting killed four students and injured eight other people, the local union president admits nothing has gotten easier. “Our students and our staff are resilient as all get-out,” he said. “We […]
Audrey Wright: ‘We don’t have to live like this’
At Thanksgiving dinner one year ago, MEA member Audrey Wright sat with a family member who witnessed the school shooting in Parkland, Florida in 2018. Little did Wright know, within a few days her own daughter would become a survivor, too. A 26-year English teacher in nearby Troy, Wright has three children who all have […]
Teacher injured in Oxford school shooting shares story of trauma, change
By Molly Darnell Last year I woke up on the morning of Nov. 30 as a wife, mother, educator, friend and colleague. By the time I would come home, three unrecognizable labels had been given to me: victim, wounded, and survivor. It would take me almost a full year to accept them as part of […]
Dylan Morris: ‘We’re making connections and meeting with people’
One of the first people to call Dylan Morris for a check-in after he’d fled Oxford High School following a deadly shooting last year was U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin. Then a junior, Morris knew the congresswoman from his work as chairman of the Michigan High School Democrats. “She was asking me if I was OK, […]
Zoe Touray: ‘They don’t have to go through it alone’
Zoe Touray’s first solo trip away from home after she graduated from Oxford High School last spring took her to Washington, D.C. in June to speak at a Moms Demand Action rally before hundreds of people on a stage next to U.S. senators and congresspeople. There she met other young activists from the 2018 school […]
Megan Pavlock: ‘It helps to direct our energy towards good’
Back in May, when 19 fourth graders and two teachers were murdered by an 18-year-old gunman at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Oxford High School junior Megan Pavlock felt “overwhelming sadness” that gun violence somehow keeps happening in schools and no one stops it. Pavlock and her classmates in the International Baccalaureate programme had […]
Pro-Education Candidates Surf the Blue Wave
Educators Win Legislative Seats to Clinch Democratic Majority By Zach Crim MEA Public Affairs When Jaime Churches’ alarm went off at 6 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 9, in many ways it was just another day preparing to teach her fifth-grade class in Gross Ile. But the hundreds of notifications on her phone betrayed the climactic […]