School Morning 2026

By Louise Borden, CCIRA Conference Speaker

Last August, my friend Patrick Allen invited me to write a blog post for CCIRA as I’ll be speaking to teachers this February about my work as a writer of books for young readers. The other posts I’ve read on the CCIRA website are by amazing educators who are mentors to teachers across the country. Their words are inspiring ones about engaging students, growing readers and writers, and designing strategies for lifelong learning.

I immediately worried: Whatever could I offer in a post to veteran teachers?

Due to travels and procrastination, I delayed in sending Patrick a post. Then, today, while watching a huge snowstorm from the windows of my writing room, a storm that’s affecting most of our nation, I at last found words to share with you.

Over the past decades, I’ve visited hundreds of schools across America from Maine to Florida to California. As a writer and as a visiting author, I consider engaging with students and teachers, and walking their hallways, to be an important and inspiring part of my life. Because of this, eight or so of my books have school settings. Additionally, several of my historical picture books mention school in their stories. And . . .always . . . teachers are my heroes.

In 2012, my husband and I were living in the Washington, D.C. metro area when the tragedy at Sandy Hook began to unfold on a December school morning at 9:35 a.m.

After hearing the terrible news, I recall standing outside of Union Station and looking at the American flags fluttering in the breeze around the entrance drive. And I thought about all the students and all the first graders I’d had the honor of meeting during my author visits. That very December, our oldest grandchild was a first grader – in Colorado.

Since that day, I’ve kept a list of the names of the Sandy Hook first graders near my desk. And on that paper are the names of the teachers and principal lost that morning. Over the years, while our country rushed ahead into the future, the list was my steady way of remembrance. As we sadly know, other tragic school shootings have followed.

Both of our daughters (one is a teacher) have children of school age . . . and each morning when they drop off our grandkids at school in Denver and Atlanta, there are hugs or quick goodbyes with everyone ready for the adventure of the day.

All of us – you in the teaching community – and I as a visitor walking across countless school parking lots to enter through those front doors, have seen this same morning interaction: the goodbyes and the love, between parents and their children, before the day unfolds for teachers and students.

I’ve been thinking a lot in the past few weeks about Renee Good – born in Colorado Springs – who was fatally shot in Minneapolis on January 7 after dropping off her 6 year-old son Timmy at his school.

January 7 was a Wednesday, and I assume it was a normal post-holiday vacation morning for Timmy as he said goodbye to his mom . . . a boy who had lost his father just two years before. Timmy probably entered his school with a sense of safety and familiarity and walked up the hall to his kindergarten room, maybe with classmates in their puffy winter coats beside him, chattering away with their backpacks full of kindergarten dreams . . . or maybe Timmy was alone as he hurried up the hall. Sixyear-olds always have an energy and an eagerness in their steps, yes?

I don’t know the name of Timmy’s teacher . . . or what that teacher’s classroom looks like. I don’t know anything about Timmy’s school.

I only know that Timmy’s mother, an English major who wrote poetry, was shot in the head at 9:37 a.m. Central Time . . . while Timmy was in his classroom, or maybe he was lining up with other kindergarteners to go to Library or Art.

What was he doing in that tragic moment . . . in the routine of a school morning . . . snow scattered across the landscape outside his classroom windows?

In that moment, at 9:37 a.m., Timmy’s entire educational life was a bright horizon before him.

This winter . . . kindergarten.

Then next year . . . first grade!

Each year unfolding into the upper grades.

On January 7, Timmy’s future held many teachers . . . waiting for him in their classrooms in the years to come.

I can only imagine the deep caring and love that any teacher must offer to a student who has lost his or her parent. My own dad at age 12 and his younger brother at 11 lost their father to a sudden heart attack. I’ve never reflected until today, while writing this post, on what teachers at Beechwood Elementary during that week in 1931 said to the two Walker brothers when they returned to school after the days of mourning an unexpected death.

What are the words to offer a child who is stricken with shock or grief or fear?

Thank goodness that today, in 2026, we have school counselors across the nation who have the training and the hearts to bring comfort and courage to bereaved students and their teachers.

Perhaps some of you have had to be that teacher . . . enveloping your students with compassion and patience after they’ve endured a loss at a young age.

The news stories and the politicians will debate videos and accounts and the sad moments before and after what happened at 9:27 a.m. Central Time to a 37-year-old Minneapolis mom, born in Colorado.

But we, those who will attend CCIRA in February, work in schools. It’s a true honor to learn with, and from, children. Each school morning, we walk down hallways echoing with the voices of our staff and our students.

And sometimes we walk past the classrooms of kindergarteners who are just learning what the routines and rhythms of education are all about.

We’ll remember not the politics of January 7, 2026 but in our hearts we’ll carry Timmy’s teachers, our colleagues who’ll be beside him in the days and years to come as he continues his journey of education.

And I will say prayers of thanksgiving that TEACHERS are the ones who shine lights of hope and healing in this world. Your weekdays are crammed minute by minute – and with schedules and responsibilities that neighbors and family have no clue about.

On this January Sunday, as the predicted big snow (yes, it is now here!) is sweeping across many states and school parking lots, I offer you no strategies for reading, no wise words from my work as the author of 33 children’s books.

But I thank you for being dedicated teachers – who show up on school mornings before your students are dropped off by their moms and dads with a hug or a smile or words of love.

Thank you for your classrooms, your dedication, and your passion. Let us all together beam courage across the snowy miles to Minnesota to bring healing to Timmy and to the staff at his school. In this moment on a school morning, in this one historic and tragic moment, you too, are this boy’s teacher.

I look forward to meeting you this February in Denver . . . and thanking you in person for your life work with America’s children, leading them to literacy with love.

“To consider yourself a writer as you move about the world is . . .a beautiful way to live, a form of open-mindedness, even in terrible times. Here life is, going on all around. It is a form of writing itself; if you do it, you are a writer. It’s likely to lead to putting words down on a page, at least a few, but even if it doesn’t, it can make you feel alive. Lucky. Luck you can make yourself.” – Elizabeth McCracken from A LONG GAME – Notes on Writing Fiction

Louise Borden graduated from Denison University with a degree in history. She taught first graders and preschoolers and later was a part-owner of a bookstore in Cincinnati, Ohio. In addition to writing children’s books, she also speaks regularly to young students about the writing process. Her books include Good Luck, Mrs. K!, which won the Christopher Medal, and The A+ Custodian. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, and you can visit her at LouiseBorden.com.