ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how Columbine student survivors who are teachers experience trauma after surviving a school shooting. Data revealed that participants’ lives have been shaped and traumatized by the shooting and affects them professionally, personally, physically, and philosophically. Participants shared how the shooting affects them professionally around the themes of career decisions, organizing class around safety, and still experiencing the school setting as a traumatic space. All participants shared how the Columbine shooting affected them personally in their relationships outside of school, some sharing gratitude for people in their lives, and most sharing how the experience affected parenting. Most participants were affected physically by the trauma of the Columbine shooting in the categories of being different in public settings, numbing their feelings, and engaging in dangerous coping mechanisms. Philosophical responses to the trauma were also mentioned around categories of orienting the year around the date of the shooting, minimizing their trauma, wondering who they would have been, anger and blame, fear of the future and the unknown, understanding it as a one-time event, making them more empathetic, how it affected their memories of high school, and addressing if “We’re no different than non-survivors.”
