Time for Reflection.

While I know that teaching is hardly one of America's most dangerous jobs, sometimes it is hard to swallow all of the violence that surrounds our children and still feel like we are able to protect them. When they walk through my classroom doors, those kids become my kids.

Every day, my kids come into the classroom with so much worry and sadness and I work to help them leave it behind for seven hours. Still, my heart breaks when one student cries about going home everyday, or another tells me he has to miss school the next day because he has to go to juvenile court.

Last week, was a particularly bad one for Baltimore City Public Schools and included two school shootings. One of which was mere blocks from my school and the other was in a third grade classroom. When 8 year-olds are bringing guns to school we need to pause. We need to take action to fix our broken school system. We need to make it everyone's responsibility to protect these -- our -- children.