Finishing that assignment on time, organizing your locker, finding the perfect crayon for your artwork and making new friends.

These are things that students in our schools should be worrying about.

Not about the safety of their peers, teachers or themselves.

Everyone has a right to an education.

With that right, we all deserve to feel safe inside our schools.

This is the one place that some students normally know they can come to and feel safe, get a warm meal and learn something new.

Something needs to change so our kids can feel safe again.

However, that something is absolutely not bringing more guns into the schools and arming our teachers.

As a future educator I can tell you that the last thing I would ever do is have a gun in, or anywhere near my classroom.

I want my students to feel as safe as possible in their school and what should be protecting them is more laws against guns, not more guns.

When a student is getting bullied in school, we don’t encourage them to defend themselves or bully the other student back. We teach them about mediation and set up clear rules against bullying.

There are so many things we could be doing to help our students, educators and other faculty members in our schools rather than arming them with guns.

The only thing that we are teaching our students by arming our teachers is that guns belong in schools.

Which is completely and utterly wrong, when that is what we have been working to prevent for so long now.

School is a place for learning, laughter, friendship and much more.

Not a place for weapons, fear and death.

Guns will not educate our children, they will not listen to our children’s stories of what they did last weekend, they won’t dry their tears when they fall on the playground or someone is picking on them.

Teachers will do all of those things and much more.

We need to be helping our teachers with the resources and support to do all of those things, and giving them guns will only hinder their ability to do so.

There are many schools and teachers out there who are already arming their schools with firearms, safes, bulletproof vests and more.

This makes me unbearably sad and terrified for our future.

As an aspiring teacher I look forward to seeing the smiles on my students as they finally solve a problem they have been working on.

I can’t wait to spend time with my students outside and see the joy on their faces as they make snow angels, or make wishes as they blow dandelions into the wind.

I don’t look forward to the idea that a school I’ve been dreaming of teaching at has added guns to their school.

I am studying how to educate all of students in the best way possible, not how to kill an active shooter.

That is not, nor will it ever be, my job.

That’s not to say that I wouldn’t do everything in my power to protect my future students but maybe in the process of protecting them, maybe I injure one of them, a colleague or myself.

Once again, my degree is elementary education, not law enforcement.

Schools need more funding more mental health resources and more time to focus on each student as an individual, not more guns.

We need more social workers and counselors in our schools.

This will help our students to feel safe and will provide them with the ability to have someone they can count on.

This is something that needs to happen continually, not just once a quarter.

Mental health issues are what is behind the majority of these mass shootings and social workers and counselors can prevent shootings, and people dying.

More guns will only add to the number of deaths.

We also need to be able to provide our teachers with smaller class sizes so they feel they can reach every student and be there for all of them.

With that, the adequate time to educate and develop a relationship with each of those students.

The average class size that I have seen is around thirty students, and the time given to our teachers each day with those students is barely enough to teach their lessons let alone to have a strong relationship with each of them.

So it is our job as citizens to do everything we can to make these changes in our education system.

Students need to focus on their math lessons, what they are going to eat for lunch, what they will choose to play with during choice time, what college they will apply to next year and what book they should read next.

Teachers need to focus and be there for their students, keep guns out of the schools so they can be.