I tried to sit down and write anything coherent… anything meaningful… anything that might somehow find the words to make sense of what happened today.

Nothing came. Anger, shock, sadness… but nothing meaningful.

Our schools are supposed to be sacred places. I believe — always have believed — that they are our secular cathedrals where people come together around the process of learning. At their best, they represent the idea that the vast body of knowledge, the transfer of that knowledge, the application of that knowledge, the quest for that knowledge can make our world a better place. I’ve spent my professional career in service of that ideal.

Days like today remind us that the need for safe schools move across age ranges, across racial and socio-economic boundaries, across geographic boundaries. They remind us that our schools, as much as we wish them to be safe havens from the dangers of the world, too often are not. And they remind us of how much more work we have left to do.

Moments like this are when you hug your children — your students and your "real" children — and hope for a better world, one where this kind of tragedy and violence doesn’t have to happen — not in our schools, not anywhere.

More than anything else, my thoughts are with the members of the Virginia Tech community, their loved ones and all whose lives have been touched by this terrible, terrible tragedy.