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One Stayed, One Left: MSD Teachers Reflect on Five-Year Mark of Tragedy

“Who I was before is not who I am now, and some of the changes I experienced due to what happened are just part of me at this point,” said English teacher Dara Hass, who had three students in her classroom die on Feb. 14, 2018.

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They come once a month. Volunteers still take care of the tribute garden at the northeast corner of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School campus. They pull weeds, plant new shrubs and flowers, and place memorial stones, and no one seems to even glance at the building behind them, where the calamity happened.

“I can’t believe it’s been five years, so for me, that event stays very fresh in my mind all the time,” said Dara Hass, who teaches English at the school.

“There’s a little bit of disappointment in thinking that distance and time heals everything, and it doesn’t,” said Kim Krawczyk, who taught math at Douglas before moving away.

For teachers who were inside the 1200 building, who experienced the terror first-hand, the emotional wounds will always be with them. Krawczyk was teaching a geometry lesson in room 1257, directly across the hall from Scott Beigel’s room on the third floor, when the screaming and gunshots began.

“I was counting every one of those bullets because I had 25 pairs of eyes looking at me and I didn’t want anything to happen to one of those kids,” Krawczyk recalled.

“I remember seeing the students injured, and I remember texting my husband goodbye, and my parents goodbye,” Hass said.

The first classroom hit by bullets was room 1216 on the first floor, Dara Hass’s room. A normal day was suddenly ripped apart, leaving traumatic memories behind.

“It happened so fast, that everyone just had to find something to hide behind so quickly, and I remember the students crying and the students being so scared and me being terrified but I’m trying to hold it together,” Hass said.

The visions come and go in their minds.

“It’s the SWAT guy coming in the room, taking my kids past things they had to see and go through on the way out,” Krawczyk said.

“The police came in, escorted my students out, it was hard for me to leave because I didn’t want to leave until all my students could leave, and some of my students weren’t leaving,” Hass recalled.

Three students died in her classroom: Alex Schachter, Alaina Petty, and Alyssa Alhadeff. Despite that searing experience, Hass elected to continue teaching at Douglas, where she feels supported.

“I feel very connected to the staff there and that we’re all in this together, we’re all a family,” Hass said.

Krawczyk stayed at Douglas for three more years, until the freshmen she was with that day graduated. Now she teaches in Orlando, with a service dog at her side in the classroom. She just could not park in the staff lot and walks past the crime scene anymore.

“Every single time I walked past that building it was a new experiment in what pain feels like,” Krawczyk said. “Think about the deepest, darkest sad that you could feel, and I just didn’t want to do that to myself anymore.”

For teachers like Hass, and there are about a dozen who experienced the worst part of Feb. 14, 2018 and are still teaching at Douglas, it’s all about learning coping strategies to essentially ignore the 1200 building and the horrors it represents.

“I’ve learned to just, that it’s a building and it’s up and it’s there, but my trauma, it doesn’t connect to it anymore, and I think that has helped me to get through and to get on campus,” Hass explained.

Hass and Krawczyk said they are routinely triggered by sounds, by movements in the hallway, and by random thoughts.

“Who I was before is not who I am now, and some of the changes I experienced due to what happened are just part of me at this point,” Hass said.

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