NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — Former Richneck Elementary School teacher Abby Zwerner doesn't know if she'll ever step inside a classroom again. She followed in her mother's footsteps to become a teacher.
Speaking to 13News Now inside her attorney's office, Toscano Law Group, she says it's the career that was taken away from her.
"The thought never crossed my mind that I was going to be shot by a 6-year-old in my classroom," Zwerner remarked.
It was one year ago on January 6, 2023, when Zwerner was shot by a young boy in the middle of a classroom filled with kids. Since then, she has fought to recover from bullet wounds in both her hand and chest. She's endured five surgeries and still doesn't have full use of her hand.
"It's just very slow progression, very slow growth, and getting all the functions of the hand again, which I will not get back the way it fully was," Zwerner said.
Zwerner describes her day-to-day as never knowing what she's going to feel like — not being able to get up on some days — and having many ups and downs.
The biggest toll for Zwerner comes mentally as she struggles with anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and depression. She still has nightmares and can't erase the image from her memory of the boy's face as he pulled the trigger.
"The big moment for me that stays in my head, more so than some other moments, is the look on the student's face when he pulled out the firearm," Zwerner said. "It was a haunting look."
Zwerner was drawn to teaching for an opportunity to help shape young minds, and drawn to Richneck in Newport News because her father, John David Zwerner, served as a firefighter only minutes away from the school. She said so many of her lessons were about more than ABCs or 1-2-3 but about kindness.
"When you think of education, you think of straight teaching, like what's 5 plus 2 or what's 2 plus 5," Zwerner said. "But so much is their emotional, their social [learning], teaching them when we're angry: let's think, let's try to figure out why we're angry, what happened, what's a good choice that we can make, how can we best show that in a kind way."
Those are important lessons that, for now, will have to stay on hold for Zwerner who has no desire to go back to class.
"I don't feel anywhere ready, close to stepping inside a classroom or even a school, that's really due to the anxiety, PTSD [and] fear that comes along with thinking about that."