From voices in the field, Dress Rehearsals for Gun Violence: Confronting Trauma and Anxiety in America's Schools considers how damaging fear and anxiety are for those who are in our schools every day in the United States and living with both the ever present threat of a school shooting and the continuous preparations for one. This book examines those impacted directly including not just students and teachers, but preservice teachers considering teaching as a profession, college professors, support staff, and librarians. This follow up book to A Relentless Threat: Scholars Respond to Teens on Weaponized School Violence, goes in depth into the human cost of violence by exploring the fear of potential violence in our schools and what may be done to lessen that trauma and anxiety. This book includes discussion on the very real impact of false alarms, the trauma and anxiety experienced by teachers, the risks and benefits of armed shooter training, the unique challenges of non-classroom spaces, using young adult literature as a tool for processing emotions with students, and the importance of teaching critical reading skills for evaluating how school shootings are portrayed in the media.

Kjersti VanSlyke-Briggs is professor of secondary education and educational technologies at the State University of New York, Oneonta.

Elizabeth A. Bloom is professor of education and chair of the Education Program at Hartwick College in Oneonta, NY.

They are the editors of Resisting Reform: Reclaiming Public Education through Grassroots Activism.

From voices in the field, Dress Rehearsals for Gun Violence: Confronting Trauma and Anxiety in America's Schools considers how damaging fear and anxiety are for those who are in our schools every day in the United States and living with both the ever present threat of a school shooting and the continuous preparations for one. This book examines those impacted directly including not just students and teachers, but preservice teachers considering teaching as a profession, college professors, support staff, and librarians. This follow up book to A Relentless Threat: Scholars Respond to Teens on Weaponized School Violence, goes in depth into the human cost of violence by exploring the fear of potential violence in our schools and what may be done to lessen that trauma and anxiety. This book includes discussion on the very real impact of false alarms, the trauma and anxiety experienced by teachers, the risks and benefits of armed shooter training, the unique challenges of non-classroom spaces, using young adult literature as a tool for processing emotions with students, and the importance of teaching critical reading skills for evaluating how school shootings are portrayed in the media.

Foreword: Raising Generation Mass Shooting

Melissa Marietta

Chapter 2. Pearl Clutching and The Normalization of School Shootings in Young Adult Literature

Kjersti VanSlyke-Briggs, Sarah Rhodes, and Jenna Turner

Chapter 3. We Should All Care: Preservice Teachers' Perspectives on Gun Control

Nicole Waid

Chapter 4. Teacher Trauma in the Age of School Violence

Frank Thornton

Chapter 5. School Ecosystems: Including Librarians in a Proactive Approach to Addressing School Shootings