The principal at Risbergska praises the teachers: “saved many lives”

Hugs, tears and feelings of guilt.

Now the adult education rector Mattias Molin, 43, tells about the days after the school council in Örebro.

He praises his employees’ efforts.

– I am convinced that has saved many lives.

Mattias Molin has a hard time describing how the last few days have been.

– Much of the time has been about taking care of staff. It is a whole staff group that is traumatized, says principal Mattias Molin.

Since Tuesday’s mass shooting, the staff has been seen every day to talk about what has happened and hug each other. Everyone has shared their experiences.

On Friday, they were all gathered at a memory.

– The need for each other has been huge, says the principal.

How do you meet traumatized teachers?

– Yes, it is not really included in the rector’s education. We are human beings and it is important to see each other, says Mattias Molin.

The Komvux school at Campus Risbergska is closed next week and the school management is unemployed for a couple of days. The lessons on the schedule have been replaced with staff care.

– It is because we can process what has happened. And there are support efforts linked to us in the management as well, and that is absolutely necessary. In some sense, we are victims of crime in this. We were there and experienced the same thing, he says.

Put out people

Initially, February 4 was a very ordinary school day.

Several students wrote national tests in the morning and the afternoon lessons had just started.

Mattias Molin sat in the lunch restaurant with colleagues when they heard the first bangs. He perceived the sounds as if someone lost metal in the floor.

– So me and a principal colleague ran towards the sound to see. We thought there was some trouble we could stave off. We came out into the big corridor and then it was out of students who screamed ‘they shoot, they shoot’.

Mattias Molin and his colleagues began to bring students out of school.

– We stood and screamed and put out as many people as we could, he says.

“They have saved many lives”

Then he barricaded himself with a colleague in a room. In the teachers’ security app, he sent updates with calls to teachers about what they would do – accommodate.

He is grateful that the employees underwent a training in PDV, ongoing deadly violence, last year.

– Personnel have expressed as well. It was there in the back of the head how to act in a chaos, in a riot, in the horror. So they have acted as rationally as you can and according to the school book, he says.

He wants to pay tribute to the teachers and other staff, who in the pressed situation were forced to make difficult decisions.

– I want to highlight their courage and leadership. Because I am convinced that has saved many lives. That’s the most important thing.

Feels feelings of guilt

Molin says that several of the teachers are burdened by debt.

– There are many who have a lot of guilt, although they have done so many good actions. ‘What if I had only done this’ or ‘just this’.

Molin takes up a situation where those who were housed behind locked doors heard people shout for help in the corridor. But could not open because of the risk of letting in the shooter.

– I know a teacher who has sat with 112 in the ear and they have said ‘do not open, do not open,’ he says.

But it is not only those who feel guilt, so do teachers who wobble or had dentist time that day.

– Many of them have feelings of guilt because they were not there or that they could not support their colleagues, he says.

“District of insanity that cannot be predicted”

He has only good words to say about how colleagues handled what is described as the worst mass shooting in Sweden’s history.

– You will surely be able to find 10,000 errors. Would we have locked a school? I don’t think it would have been crucial. Without what has been crucial, all these decisions are the staff make in the moment. Since then, in the school management, we have done everything we have been able to support the employees after the incident. There is so much good that has been done, says the principal and continues:

– And it is such a horrible situation, no one could have remedied it. After all, it is an act of insanity that cannot be predicted.

As late as Monday, the school received a reply from a recent student survey.

– It showed that the students experience a high degree of security at the school, says Molin.

It was before the deed that would change everything.

He has not been in the school premises since then.

Now it’s a crime scene.