- Fifteen-year-old Parish DeVries is a freshman at Hume-Fogg Academic High School.
Editor’s note: This is a personal essay by a Nashville high school student who witnessed the final vote to allow for classroom teachers to be armed.
The metal doors slammed as we left school early. We walked down the concrete sidewalk, conversations revolving around the bill that legislators proposed to add guns to an environment citizens actively want guns removed from.
We made it to the marble staircase leading up to the capital, the building holding hundreds of thousands of lives of students in their hands.
Before going through the glass doors, security, and the crowds of journalists, we sat in the hopeful shade of the stairs. The cool marble helped to slow the racing of my heart, sweating of my palms, and the doubt in my stomach.
At 12:56 we walked in and up the indoor marble staircase to the room where all the legislators were walking in. A little girl stood across the unofficial path for legislators. She had a bright blue sparkly bow on and was missing one of her front teeth. She held a sign that said, “Don’t arm my teachers.”