The Remembrance: Notes of a Teacher

We met Jennifer Koss on a quiet afternoon at the UWM Golda Meir Library. A former Milwaukee Public Schools teacher of 17 years, she greeted us with the warmth of someone used to listening, observing, and carrying more stories than most people ever will. We sat around a table in a small study room, and for the next hour, she let us into the world she lived in as an MPS teacher, a world shaped by kids, chaos, grief, love, and a city that has not always protected its young.

Jennifer started teaching in 2006, ten years in middle school, seven in high school. When we asked what drew her into education, her answer was simple: good teachers. “I always had the privilege of good teachers growing up,” she said, “and that instilled the passion and love of learning in me.”

Teaching had always felt right. She didn’t just teach, she coached varsity volleyball, ran chess club, debate, forensics, student council, homecoming, link crew, and prom. She poured herself into her schools.

But somewhere along the way, love for teaching became tangled with something darker. Jennifer keeps a document on her phone, just a simple notes app file. Inside it are the names of her students who have died.

“As bad as it sounds, I didn’t want to forget anybody,” she told us. Next to each name is a cause: murder, suicide, accident, or cancer. It’s long enough to scroll. In the 2021–2022 school year alone, she lost 16 current or former students.

Her first student death came in 2012. She taught him in middle school. He was only 16 when he was shot and killed in a drug deal gone wrong. She remembers a student walking into class and quietly revealing he had died.

“The funeral changed something in me,” she said softly. Seeing a teenager in a casket would change anyone, but what struck her even more were the boys who showed up alone, dressed however they could manage, trying to process a friend’s death without adults to guide them.

For eight or nine of them, she was the one who walked them up to the casket. She became the parent they needed in that moment. In her first six years of teaching, she lost no students.

Since 2012, she has lost more than 60. When we asked why the deaths began to increase, she didn’t hesitate: the impact of COVID isolation and more. “COVID messed up children so bad,” she said. The lack of socialization, the parentification as kids cared for siblings, the grief.

“There was so much trauma from COVID that was not dealt with. Nobody was the same after COVID. The spark I would see in kids was gone.” But it wasn’t just COVID. It was Milwaukee. It was a city where children felt confined. “There is a lack of safe third spaces for kids,” she explained.

They can’t go to the mall alone, the movies alone, or many community spaces without adults. “So, what do they do? Dumb stuff and get in trouble.” She laughed lightly, remembering being IDs at the mall in her late 20s.

“Boredom leads to dumb decisions.” And then there is social media, what she calls “the downfall of kids.” When she started teaching, kids fought and then forgave. Now fights are filmed, posted, and replayed online forever.

“You have to save face,” she said.

That pressure, combined with how quickly posts go viral, can escalate conflict into gunfire. “Because the gun is there and readily accessible, it ends up leading to a shooting even if that’s not what they set out to do.”

As a teacher, her understanding of violence is different. “This is going to sound weird, but I can understand it,” she said. Not agree with it, but understand the anger, the trauma. “Those that need the most love is going to show that in the most un-loving of ways.”

Teachers see the childhood behind the behavior. They see the hurt. In her classroom, gun violence was not theoretical. There were drive-bys during recess. The car backfired, which sent the kids to the floor. Six weeks of class spent answering the question, “How has crime affected your life?”

She remembers starting a memorial wall where students wrote the names of loved ones lost to violence.

“The violence was something that affected us every day in different ways,” she said.

Her students wanted change. They organized rallies, marches, and projects. “They were like, we want to do something about this… we don’t want this to become our reality every day.” When we asked what Milwaukee could do, Jennifer’s answer was clear: invest in what works.

She told us about violence interrupters in Chicago, trained former gang members stationed in high-violence neighborhoods who mediated conflicts before they escalated. Some neighborhoods saw a 40–70% drop in homicides. Milwaukee has a similar program, but it’s too small. It needs to grow.

She spoke passionately about job programs, GED access, and transportation. “If you remove people from the environmental factors that might be holding them back, they can actually focus on things.”

Cutting Job Corps was, in her view, devastating. When people can’t make money, they turn to violence. Free GED programs with transportation, she said, could save lives. But many of Milwaukee’s existing resources are hidden.

“I feel so many people are trying, but so much is hidden,” she said. There are programs like the $2 ride service that few residents know about, or Owens Place for 16–24-year-olds, which she says is “highly underused.”

As our conversation ended, Jennifer didn’t sound hopeless, just heartbroken and determined. She has seen the worst of what children carry and still believes they deserve better. More spaces. More chances. More guidance. More adults who won’t forget them. She remembers her students by name. And she refuses to stop fighting for the ones still here.