COLUMBINE.

A YEAR OF TRAGEDY AND TRIUMPH

The students of Columbine High School know more about comebacks than anyone would ever care to learn. Since April 20, 1999, they have been trying to recover from one of the worst incidents of school violence in American history: 12 students and one teacher killed by two classmates who then shot themselves to death. But no one was prepared for the bittersweet celebration that followed the school's first state football championship on December 5, when the Columbine Rebels overcame a 14-point deficit to win 21-14. At a rally four days after the game, school principal Frank DeAngelis told his students, "It's about not giving up, and that's what Columbine High School represents."

To the rest of the world, Columbine represents something else entirely. The tragedy in Littleton, Colorado, was not the first school shooting--in nine such incidents the year before, 15 people were killed and dozens wounded. And it wasn't the last--another occurred just last month (see article, page 16). But the unprecedented scale of the mayhem at Columbine has made it the national symbol of school violence.

As the first anniversary of the shooting approaches, the school is still struggling to move beyond it. More than two dozen of its 2,000 students are classified as "homebound" for physical and psychological reasons--far more than last year--so they receive their education from tutors. Three students are still in wheelchairs. Many continue to seek therapy and religious counseling. And some have dealt with the violence by taking political action, working to enforce current gun-control laws and to pass new ones.

Meanwhile, classes proceed. "It's amazing that learning can go on where [students and teachers] saw bloodshed, or were hiding under desks, not knowing if they would see their families again," says DeAngelis. But there are occasional rough patches. "The two most noticeable things have been, academically, a lack of an ability to concentrate, and the unpredictability of the students in the classroom," says Leland Andres, who has been a vocal music teacher at the school for 27 years. "We'll go along, have two to three good weeks, and then for no reason, they're off the wall and extremely difficult to handle."

Trauma experts say the difficulties are to be expected. "A year out is when you begin to say, `Wow, life isn't back to normal yet,'" says Robin Fudge Finegan, a victims-service consultant in Denver, who has worked with Columbine students. She says it takes this long for people to realize that "there isn't going to be life as you knew it."

RETURNING TO THE SCENE

Because Columbine students finished the last academic year at nearby Chatfield High School, many didn't return to the building until late August. They found that bloodied carpets had been replaced by linoleum and that the library, the scene of much of the shooting, had been sealed behind a new wall.

Recovery has been complicated by the suicide last fall of the mother of an injured student and the apparently unrelated killing of two students this winter in a fast-food restaurant. Families have been unhappy about information that police have given directly to the media, and they've disagreed about whether memorials should include the shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

On April 20, Columbine will mark the anniversary with a morning assembly, quiet reflection time during the hour when violence took place, and an afternoon musical concert. Students will not be required to participate.

"It's been a year of hills and valleys," says DeAngelis. "I think as a school, we're learning to cope, but I truly believe we'll never get back to normal." And yet he, like his students, faculty, and staff, is not about to give up.