Survival Simulations In The Art Room

Hi,

Last week, something so obvious hit me in such a visceral way I'm almost embarrassed to bring it up. I felt like an idiot. I still feel like an idiot.

Last week, I picked up and shot an AK47 for the first time. And as I did so, I realised that it only exists to kill people. And to kill lots of people, in fairly rapid succession, one after the other. There is no other reason it exists. None. Zero.

I have a fear that if we don't state the obvious out loud, the obvious somehow becomes less obvious – the result being we allow a bunch of horrific shit to go on in front of us while we watch on in a kind of fugue state.

So I find it helpful to state the obvious out loud sometimes – which is what today is about. Maybe you can join me in the comments with your own obvious stuff.

Before we get to the AK47, a few other obvious things that need stating. First, it's disgusting to see all the racists who turned up to anti-immigration rallies across Australia yesterday. Someone I care for deeply in Melbourne sent me this photo, and the crowd there all looked exactly as you'd expect.

Secondly, I think it's important to note that Israel continues to be as abhorrent as we've come to expect. Israel has killed 242 journalists since October 7, 2023 – a week ago killing five reporters who were at a hospital in southern Gaza. They included Mariam Dagga who freelanced for AP, and Hussam al-Masri, a photographer at Reuters.

As rescuers rushed into help, Israel killed all of them as well. Benjamin Netanyahu did his usual thing and claimed they were all Hamas.

Back to the AK47.

I was filming for a project I'm working on, and as part of that ended up in some guy's personal underground gun range where I was handed an AK47 to shoot.

Initially my mind turned to the action films I've seen and loved, right back to Die Hard as a kid, to John Wick as an adult. So I took the gun, and held it in my hands. It was heavy but not that heavy, and it looked cool. I was shown how to fill up the magazine and load the chamber – before lining up the laser sight and training it on a target.

Pop pop up.

Kick kick kick.

As the smell of gunpowder hit me in the face, it also hit me that particular model of gun is a super-popular choice if you want to kill a load of children. Which makes sense, as humans designed this gun purely for killing other humans. And for some reason, at some point, Americans decided they loved this gun and everyone should get to have one.

A child-killing machine in my hands. It hit me like a tonne of bricks. I felt sick, I wanted to cry. I put the gun down, I will never shoot one again. I'm not sure why mass shootings came to mind; Minnesota was still days away. Maybe it was the fact the target I was shooting at was the silhouette of a human being.

Again: Obvious.

And so a few days later, I reached out to Ash. She reads Webworm, she listens to Flightless Bird, and I knew she'd been an American high school teacher for years, before she'd left. She left because she was sick of preparing to die all the time.

I asked Ash to write some words, and this is what she wrote. I feel proud to have them here on Webworm.

David.

Running Survival Simulations In The Art Room

by Ash.

My name’s Ash. I used to teach high school visual arts in Virginia, USA.

Ten years total, two school districts, thousands of high school art students, and I never cracked a $50,000 a year salary. In the US, being a public school educator means you “serve” our country’s children the same way the military “serves” our country: by following orders from the topdown.

National and state education standards of learning trickle down to your district, then to your school, then straight into your classroom. The “core” subjects like math, science, and English have their curricula mostly pre-written and tightly bound to state-mandated tests, which determine your school’s funding and your program’s survival.

I taught in a different world: visual arts.

I had creative freedom to write my own curriculum, tie it to state standards, and instead of high-stakes testing at the end of the year, we’d host massive community art festivals. Think pottery wheels, scavenger hunts, food trucks, live theatre and marching band performances. I poured myself into creating spaces where kids could lead, think critically and make decisions, and step into their own power. It became my identity. And yet even in our little creative sanctuary, we were preparing for war in between drawing and painting.

But about halfway through my teaching career, something brutal became clear: my role as a teacher wasn’t just about nurturing creative humans anymore. It was about keeping them alive. Somewhere along the years, “lockdown drills” quietly became “active shooter drills,” as if we’d collectively accepted the reality that this isn’t hypothetical anymore. It’s coming.

Some lawmakers even wanted teachers to be armed in the classroom. Imagine it: the art teacher, teaching 14 to 18-year-olds how to glaze pottery one moment and pulling a weapon on an active shooter the next. By my 6th year, I wasn’t just teaching drawing, painting, art history, and how to critique: I was running full-on survival simulations in the art room.

Active shooter drills look similar in all classrooms in the US: blinds are drawn quickly, the doors are locked, and 25 to 30 teenagers are pressed into dark silence at the back of the classroom out of view of windows and doors.

After the drills, it was difficult to return to learning, so most of the time they'd want to map out escape routes. We’d discuss which heavy-duty art tools could double as weapons. Most of the time, students would self-designate their role in the hypothetical chaos. Some would volunteer to be the fighters, the students who would attack an active shooter. The blockers, furniture-movers that would barricade our classroom doors so an active shooter couldn't break through the door. And then there were the quiet ones, frozen, absorbing the unthinkable notion that they might die, and that their beloved teacher would throw her body over theirs to shield them from gunfire. Writing this now, it reads like a war manual. But that’s exactly what it was.

We’re raising kids in potential war zones and calling it school.

Four years out of the classroom now, and every school shooting still cuts straight into me. Every headline confirms what we all know: it’s not if it'll happen again, it’s when. I won't go back. I can’t keep having conversations about laying my life on the line for America’s children while working 50+ hours a week with no overtime earning potential and earning less than $50,000 and fielding debates about whether I should carry a Glock while passing out the charcoal drawing supplies.

I left during Covid, trading in my classroom skills for corporate eLearning, where I doubled my teaching salary in less than two years, got better healthcare, and finally had a richer retirement plan. But leaving doesn't untether me from this reality. Because ultimately, I can’t stop thinking about our country's children.

In 2018, after the Parkland shooting, my ex-husband and I went to Washington, DC for the March for Our Lives rally. Miley Cyrus performed. MLK’s granddaughter spoke. But what shattered me most was Emma Gonzalez’s speech.

They walked up to the microphone, looked out over the sea of 800,000 people, and stood in complete silence. One minute passed. The crowd was silent, too. Two. Four. Silence and tears. At six minutes and twenty seconds, the approximate length of the Parkland shooting massacre, Emma finally spoke. There’s something about standing in a crowd that size and collectively realizing: this country has decided our children are completely expendable and we're putting them through hell.

I encourage the viewing of this speech, knowing that the cuts/edits of this video are for the impatient, with Emma’s speech rolling first in the YouTube video, and the six minutes of silence after. The actuality of the event was that they approached the microphone, went silent for six minutes, then proceeded with the speech.

Since the Columbine massacre, which happened in the state where I now live, we’ve watched school shooting after school shooting. And lawmakers funded by the NRA? They have barely blinked.

In a nation fueled by capitalism, we’re collectively helpless against money. When the Sandy Hook massacre happened, 20 tiny first-graders were slaughtered. And yet, nothing changed. The truth is hauntingly simple: They don’t care. Not about me. Not about my students. Not about our country's children. Somehow, between launching AOL all the way to the Labubu phenomenon, we’ve normalized the unthinkable: That our children and their teachers must prepare for their own deaths.

And because school attendance is mandatory in the US, every day we require them to walk into potential war zones.

Schools in the United States have been normalized to being death traps. We’re enlisting children and teachers the same way our country enlists active-duty military, except, unlike the US military, school attendance isn’t voluntary.

Ashley sent me this essay yesterday, adding: "Even if you do not publish a story to Webworm, it's been an honor sharing my perspective with you. Hoping the rest of your weekend is centered around protecting your peace, passions, and community." It felt like this was important to get out, today. Just some very obvious words, clearly articulated. I'll never pick up an AK47 again.

Feel free to share this essay – it's not paywalled: webworm.co/survivalsimulations – it's a huge help.

The reality of moving Webworm off Substack hit me hard this weekend, looking at the day's stats:

Webworm had 4 new free subscribers, and 0 new paid subscribers.
42 people renewed their annual subscriptions yesterday.
17 people unsubscribed from all emails, and 6 cancelled renewals.

If you pay for Webworm – thanks so much, and I hope you renew when that time comes next (as long as it causes you no financial stress). It helps me keep Webworm running, and pay guest writers like Ash.