How do you return to school after a mass shooting? This is a question that is not often asked in news coverage of these far too frequent occurrences. It’s not even a question that is asked in most teacher training programs. Second Responders tells the stories of four teachers working in Lewiston – a working-class mill town in central Maine – who returned to school six days after a mass casualty event in 2023. As they worked to rebuild a sense of safety and community in their classrooms, they comforted students who had lost people, students who had witnessed and survived the shooting, and students whose personal histories they did not know, all while navigating their own trauma.