Counseling Statement to Read to Students About Florida Shooting
Resources for Talking and Education Well-nigh the Schoolhouse Shooting in Florida
Updated: Feb. 20, 2018: We have continued to add together to this post since we outset published it on Feb. 15, and have included many more resources around the part of student voice. We accept also added a related Educatee Stance question to which your class is invited to answer: Can High School Students Brand a Existent Touch on on the Problem of Gun Violence in the United States?
Please permit us know what we may exist missing, or postal service your own thoughts, ideas or experiences.
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By at present your students know virtually the Feb. xiv shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. How are yous addressing it in your classroom? Please permit us know in the comments.
Nosotros asked that question on social media on the morning time of Feb. 15, and immediately got communication from several teachers.
Cheryl M. Morin wrote:
This forenoon, I'll be asking them what they have heard, creating opportunity to verbalize as well as acknowledge their feelings. We'll spend some time either writing or drawing every bit a mode to release the energy. Nosotros'll review lockdown procedures for our schoolhouse. We volition do this daily.
We also heard from Clara Green, a social emotional learning coach in Atlanta's public schools. She sent this email to the teachers she supports:
I am absolutely heartbroken by the horrific school shooting in Parkland, Florida. This morning, it is more than critical than always than we make students experience welcomed at schoolhouse. Many of your students may come to school with strong emotions and questions and we must provide a condom space for them to cope with this traumatic event.
In talking about this event with elementary-aged students, she and the American School Counselor Association recommend doing the following:
• Trying to go on routines as normal equally possible. Kids gain security from the predictability of routine, including attending school.
• Limiting exposure to tv and the news.
• Beingness honest with kids and share with them as much information as they are developmentally able to handle.
• Listening to kids' fears and concerns.
• Reassuring kids that the world is a good identify to be, but that there are people who do bad things.
• Rebuilding and reaffirming attachments and relationships.
Another teacher, Kristin Chase Runyon, said she will be doing the following:
Reviewing Alice (Active Shooter Civilian Response Training) protocol
Reminding students to report alert signs of mental wellness issues and possible threats to an adult
Explaining why my classroom door will remain locked every solar day from at present on considering it is the merely tool we have to protect our students within the classroom.
And Stacy Matros Hardcastle wrote about the office of school in students' lives:
Nosotros take to brand our schools places where students feel a human being connection. Places where they would never, ever call back to bring a gun to campus.
If at that place is e'er even a whisper that someone has the plan to bring a gun, our teachers and students should be able to communicate freely with law enforcement so that those plans are stopped. There need to be policies that would have allowed physical intervention as shortly every bit yesterday'southward shooter posted one of the many disturbing things he did on his social media.
Nosotros need to protect each other.
Because The Learning Network is for students xiii and older, the resources below focus on understanding this shooting and its implications, just parents and teachers of younger students might find this communication, published past The Times after the shooting in Newton, Conn., helpful. Our friends at Scholastic also offering these Resource for Responding to Violence and Tragedy.
Before addressing whatsoever traumatic result with students of any historic period, however, yous might read our advice on talking about sensitive issues in the news.
We have also created a forum where students can share their thoughts. Invite yours to postal service answers to the question, "What Is Your Reaction to the Mortiferous Shooting at a Florida High School?"
We volition continue to update this mail service.
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Understand What Happened and React to It
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To larn more nigh the shooting on February. xiv and its aftermath, students might read the article "Florida School Shooting Death Toll Is at 17 and Could Rise" and answer these questions:
1. How many people were killed and injured in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.?
ii. Who was the gunman? What weapons did he employ? What has he been charged with?
three. What bear witness do the law have that shows the assault was premeditated, or planned?
four. How does this schoolhouse shooting compare with others in modern United States history?
5. What were the initial responses of parents and school officials to the assail?
6. How did students draw the scene inside the school?
7. Afterward learning more well-nigh what happened, what are your reactions to this tragedy?
You can keep to follow the latest updates here, and your students tin can mail service their thoughts about what they read in reply to this related Student Opinion question: "What Is Your Reaction to the Deadly Shooting at a Florida High School?"
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Recognize and Honor the Victims and Heroes
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Have students read nearly the 14 children and iii adults who lost their lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High Schoolhouse and call back about the different ways they could be commemorated.
Students might create a collage or bulletin board contour of the victims, perhaps modeling them on a Times feature like the almanac Lives They Lived or the Portraits of Grief series, which profiled those lost in the 9/xi terrorist attacks.
Amid this tragedy, in that location are also stories of smashing backbone and benignancy. Encourage your students to look for "the helpers" — those that risked their own lives and condom to assistance others. What heroic acts have they read about?
What acts of service can students offering to recognize, honor and celebrate the victims? Brainstorm ways yous may exist able to offer condolences to the families or the community of Parkland, Fla., or exercise a related service learning project that grows out of students' thoughts and feelings about these events, the victims' lives, the needs of school communities, or actions they can take to prevent tragedies like this in the future.
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School Shootings in Context
Invite students to report the graphic in a higher place. What does it say virtually school shootings in the United States? What does that make them think and feel? Why?
In the related article, Jugal K. Patel writes:
More than than xl "agile shooter" episodes in schools have been recorded in the United States since 2000, co-ordinate to F.B.I. and news reports. Two 15-twelvemonth-old students were killed and 18 more people were injured last month in a school in rural Benton, Ky. The shootings accept get common plenty that many schools, including Stoneman Douglas Loftier, run annual drills in which students practise huddling in classrooms behind locked doors.
With the Parkland shooting, 3 of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern The states history accept come in the last five months.
In fact, lockdown drills are at present such a common feature of the school feel that a high schoolhouse student who was 1 of the winners of our Editorial Contest last year wrote an essay, "Stopping Bullets With Locked Doors and Silence Is Already Pulling the Trigger." In information technology she argues:
It has become very familiar for loftier-schoolhouse students to practice the infamous level-three lockdown. In all cases, we all share the semi-nervous chuckle of "wow, maybe nosotros get Swiss-cheesed today" and sit in a corner, stare at our phones and text our friends. Merely very recently, after a brilliant dream — more a nightmare — of a schoolhouse shooting, did I realize that sitting in the dark and stopping bullets with locked doors and silence is the verbal opposite of what 1 would want to do. It wasn't until I stumbled upon the fact that the "people shot and killed in the Columbine library sat in that location for five minutes before the shooters entered and shot them." My school is full of able-bodied kids, and surprisingly, a great clamper that has had feel with self-defence force and fifty-fifty marksmen grooming. So why sit and wait?
Has your school been affected by gun violence? What measures do y'all take in identify to prevent futurity violence, or to respond to threats? Ask students to investigate if they can't answer that question, then talk over: Practise you think your school and customs are doing enough to foreclose hereafter shootings? If not, what else do yous remember they should exercise? What do you call up individual students can practise, if anything?
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Are We Condign "Numb" to School Shootings?
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Thousands of readers accept commented on the article about the Parkland shooting. One past Tom from Vermont sums upwardly what he'south read:
The comments hither seem and so stark and brief. Understandably and so, what is left to say? Information technology is condign and so piece of cake to see a headline like the one on this story and shrug. This is the new America. Simply is it? Something inside me still makes me think we take the resolve to turn this terrible tide.
On The Learning Network, we responded to a shooting in Benton, Ky. in January past posing the question, Are We Condign 'Numb' to School Shootings? It was in reaction to an article headlined, "School Shooting in Kentucky Was Nation's 11th of Year. Information technology Was Jan. 23." 70 students answered, and the question is even so open to comment if your students would similar to weigh in.
Nathanie Doralus from Florida wrote:
As a student, I agree that we've become numb to the news of school shootings in the United States. My high school has already had ii lockdowns this schoolhouse year because of students bringing guns onto the campus. It happens and then often that I think many feel powerless to terminate them and then the default is to either ignore them or solemnly shake your head in silence. In some ways, I think information technology's an attempt to non live in constant fearfulness while attending school and receiving an education because no i should have to. But in other ways, I think some won't have it seriously until it hits close to domicile. If we were taking school shootings more than seriously than before, then in that location wouldn't have been eleven incidents already in the first month of this twelvemonth. Very few people take active assailant drills at my school seriously. I call back that is just an example of denial and how it's difficult to take something seriously unless it actually happens to you or someone you know. Schools can do more than than just increasing their security measures and frequently enacting drills. They can also invest in the mental wellness and well-being of their students and provide the support some of them need in club to prevent these acts of violence.
And Jocelyn Savard from North Carolina shared this perspective:
In Boston, there are a serial of billboards promoting gun violence awareness. One reads "Americans killed since the massacre at Sandy Claw" and has a live count of citizen endemic gun deaths displayed. I remember walking around a few years ago and being startled at the number. When Sandy Hook happened and my mom told me, I cried for days. Just a few days ago when the notifications showed up on my telephone about Kentucky, I barely blinked an center. Of course, my heart plummeted and I could experience humanity's downfall ane step closer only in that location was no tears, at church this weekend there was no declaration, no prayer. As a state, we take normalized school shootings then much, made books and movies out of them, make offhand comments virtually how that guy 'looks similar a school shooter', that we are rapidly becoming detached to the horror that nosotros phone call our home.
Do your students agree with these teenagers that "nosotros are rapidly becoming detached to the horror" of schoolhouse shootings? Why or why non?
How has this latest assault affected them? What do they call up we might do to proceed from becoming "discrete"?
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The Role of Students: Cellphones and Social Media
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Filming a Rampage: Students Capture Florida School Attack
Students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Loftier School in Parkland, Fla., hid in closets as a gunman fired a semiautomatic weapon into their classrooms. Seventeen people were killed.
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"So, right now, nosotros're in a school. "An active shooter. It's not a drill." "Holy sh—— … holy shit! Oh my God! Oh my God!" "Easily! Hands! Put your hands up!" "Police, police, constabulary, police." "Let me meet your easily." "Put your phones away. Put your phones away." "I just hear boom, boom, boom. And I was just like, 'What the heck was that?' Like, that can't be anything other than a gunshot." "We idea this was a drill initially because nosotros have been having rumors that there was going to exist a code red drill for a while. And we idea this was a drill at commencement. Merely and so we started seeing headlines. People started freaking out a niggling bit. "He was a sometime student of Douglas High School. He got expelled for disciplinary reasons. I don't know the specifics." "Are you Nikolas Jacob Cruz?" "Yes, ma'am." "Later this month, I will be meeting with the nation's governors and chaser generals where making our schools and our children safer will exist our top priority." "Kids were freaking out. Some kids froze. Some kids were on their phones. A lot of were on their phones simply trying to Snapchat everything because they thought it was a joke and information technology wasn't." "It's just a heartbreaking tragedy. It's a day that you pray every solar day I get upwardly that nosotros will never have to come across."
Technology has immune the public to witness mass shootings in new and terrifying ways. The students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School used their cellphones and social media accounts in real time to share their experiences and spread messages of pain, anger and gratitude, likewise as calls to action.
In "Equally Shots Band Out, a Pupil Texts: 'If I Don't Make It, I Love You,'" Audra D.S. Burch and Patricia Mazzei write:
One student hitting her record push while being led out of the school to safety by sheriff'south deputies. On her way, her cellphone's shaking camera lens passed over several bodies sprawled on the floor.
In another cellphone video, several dozen gunshots were audible non far away. "Oh my God! Oh my God!" 1 student shouted.
Like many school districts, Broward County'southward allows high school students to bring cellphones to school, so long equally they don't interfere with class piece of work. On Midweek, many students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School held onto their phones for love life every bit a 19-yr-quondam gunman, Nikolas Cruz, stalked the grounds and fatally shot 17 people. They used them to keep their terrified parents informed about what was happening. And they used them to go on a visual record of an awful crime.
Hiding in a sweltering storage room with about xl other students, she typed out a text message to her mother, Stacy, for what she thought might be the last time.
"If I don't make information technology," she wrote, "I beloved you and I appreciate everything you did for me."
Students as well took to Twitter to mail the texts they thought might be their concluding to their family and friends:
Enquire your students:
Whare are your reactions to these firsthand accounts of the violence that took identify in Parkland, Fla.?
How have these videos impacted the public conversation effectually guns and school safety? Why exercise yous think they have had such a dramatic effect? Do y'all think the fact that your generation is so fluent in social media gives you a voice previous generations did non have? What might be the benefits and drawbacks of that if so?
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The Role of Students: "They Survived the School Shooting. At present They're Calling for Action"
On February. 15, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School implored lawmakers to act to prevent future violence, calling the frequency of school shootings in the The states "unacceptable."
"Ideas are keen, ideas are wonderful and they help you go re-elected and everything, but what's more important is actual action," the student, David Hogg, said on CNN.
Mr. Hogg, whose younger sister lost two friends in the shooting, called on politicians to act.
"We're children," he said. "You guys are the adults."
Since and then, every bit The Times writes, "youthful voices have resonated where those of longtime politicians accept largely fallen flat," and many see in that a reason for hope.
As David Leonhardt writes:
...the motion to reduce gun violence seems to have a new free energy, driven by students — who of course take provided much of the free energy for previous political movements. Individual schools have already held or planned walkouts. A nationwide protest is scheduled for March 14, with help from organizers of the Women'southward March. Teachers are also talking nigh mass protestation, as Slate'due south Dahlia Lithwick explains.
In "A 'Mass Shooting Generation' Cries Out for Change," The Times points out that teenagers today have grown up with lawmaking-carmine drills, and they have a perspective many adults practice non:
This is life for the children of the mass shooting generation. They were built-in into a world reshaped by the 1999 attack at Columbine High School in Colorado, and grew up practicing active shooter drills and huddling through lockdowns. They talked well-nigh threats and safety steps with their parents and teachers. With friends, they wondered darkly whether information technology could happen at their own schoolhouse, and who might do information technology.
Now, this generation is almost grown up. And when a gunman killed 17 students this week at Stoneman Douglas Loftier in Parkland, Fla., the get-go response of many of their classmates was not to grieve in silence, but to speak out. Their urgent voices — in goggle box interviews, on social media, even from inside a locked school office as they hid from the gunman — are now rise in the national debate over gun violence in the aftermath of nonetheless another schoolhouse shooting.
While many politicians later on the shooting were focused on mental health and safe, some vocal students at Stoneman Douglas High showed no reluctance in drawing attention to gun control.
They chosen out politicians over Twitter, with one educatee telling Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND." Shortly afterwards the shooting, Cameron Kasky, a junior at the school, and a few friends started a "Never Again" campaign on Facebook that shared stories and perspectives from other students who survived the rampage.
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They Survived the School Shooting. Now They Want Action.
Simply hours after 17 people were killed in a mass shooting at their high school in Parkland, Fla., students turned to social media to advocate for more than gun control.
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I sit down in these classrooms every 24-hour interval. Then it'due south just similar, how tin something happen like this? It was like, about 20 minutes before school was supposed to terminate. I remember it's just kind of crazy how fast it happened. Information technology didn't really seem real as it was going on. I only have this sick feeling in my gut that all that had to happen. And it'south starting to feel more and more real. It's really different when you run across something in the news and rather than seeing it happen at your school. Because it happened somewhere so close to home that it became more of a reality for me. I'thou all for freedom, but there's a difference between freedom and beingness condom. This shouldn't happen to anyone else. Like, this has to be the terminal, or one of the terminal, school shootings in the United States. I want everyone to come together and put differences bated and realize that we need to practice something about this, because kids are dying. I am upset. Merely I'yard like, using that to talk about gun control and to talk about what happened. Nosotros should get the word out, speak our minds, because that's pretty much all nosotros accept at this point is our words and ... People always say things after shootings. They talk about gun control and they talk about how things need to alter. But nothing always does and that's what'south so frustrating. I want them to stop saying that they're giving united states their prayers because that's non going to do anything for us. We demand action. It's time to put piddling things aside about partisanship and information technology's fourth dimension to think about humanity. People are just expecting to see it on the news. And nosotros should non expect this. This should not exist normal.
What do your students recollect about these activist teenagers and their messages? What messages or ideas resonate with them the most?
They can also read an Op-Ed in The Times by a freshman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Loftier School. In "Don't Let My Classmates' Deaths Be in Vain," Christine Yared writes:
We tin can't allow innocent people'south deaths be in vain. Nosotros need to work together beyond political parties to make sure this never happens again. We need tougher gun laws.
If a person is not onetime enough to be able to hire a car or buy a beer, then he should not be able to legally purchase a weapon of mass destruction. This could accept been prevented. If the killer had been properly treated for his mental illness, maybe this would not take happened. If at that place were proper background checks, then those who should non have guns would not take them.
We need to vote for those who are for stricter laws and kick out those who won't take action. We demand to expose the truth nigh gun violence and the abuse around guns. Please.
Invite your class to respond to the Student Opinion question we have posted: Can High Schoolhouse Students Make a Real Affect on the Problem of Gun Violence in the United States?
And if they are interested in more ideas for taking action beyond those these young people have already suggested, our lesson programme Ideas for Student Borough Action in a Time of Social Uncertainty might offer ideas.
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The AR-fifteen and Gun Control
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AR-15: The Gun Backside So Many Mass Shootings
The AR-15 assault rifle, and others like it, is commonly used in mass shootings in the Us. Here's a closer look at probable reasons.
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The AR-15-fashion burglarize has get a common weapon for consumers, just it's also become a weapon of choice for mass shooters. Gunmen have used them to impale dozens in horrific rampages across the state. Some of the factors that make the AR-15 pop with consumers may also help explain why mass murderers have opted to utilize them too. They're capable of firing rounds that can go straight through a human body and penetrate a wall behind it. They're lightweight and easy to use. Since the muzzle doesn't ascension upwards much, it doesn't take a lot of attempt to bring it back downwards, learn a proper sight line and to fire again. A weapon that's already deadly can potentially be made more dangerous past adding things like foregrips, scopes and cherry-red dot sights. The guns are expensive. But they're within attain. They price between $500 and $900. The AR-fifteen model is basically a consumer version of military-course assault rifles such as the K-16 or the M-4 carbine. They look almost identical. The large deviation: The AR-15 and its variants are semiautomatic; the G-16 and Thousand-4 can be switched to automatic or burst. AR-15-style rifles were prohibited under the set on weapons ban from 1994 to 2004. But since that ended, sales accept surged. These weapons have been branded nether the term "modern sporting rifle," which gives a weapon designed for war a consumer-friendly label. The gun is also marketed for home defense. Simply although they're conspicuously strong enough to stop an intruder, critics say AR-15-type rifles could also cause unintended impairment or even death in untrained hands. Ane affair is clear: No affair who'due south using it, it tin be an extremely lethal weapon.
The New York Times reports that the gunman who killed 17 people and injured others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School used an AR-15 set on rifle. This style of rifle was also used in the attacks in Newtown, Conn.; Aurora, Colo.; Las Vegas; and Sutherland Springs, Tex., amidst others.
Students might watch the video above, so discuss: What are some of the reasons that the AR-xv, and other weapons similar it, have become so mutual in mass shootings? How does it compare with other types of guns?
In recent years the regulation of the sale of this style of burglarize has come to the forefront of the national gun debate. In a 2017 appeal to the Connecticut Supreme Court, relatives of victims in the massacre at Sandy Claw Elementary School argued:
The companies that manufactured and sold the military-mode assault rifle used past the gunman should be held responsible for the 2012 set on.
A lawsuit filed past the relatives said that the AR-15-style Bushmaster used to carry out the shooting in Newtown, Conn., that killed 26 people, including twenty first graders, was specifically marketed as a weapon of war, with slogans and product placement in video games invoking the violence of gainsay. The lawsuit claims that such promotions were a deliberate effort to make the weapon attractive to immature men, similar Adam Lanza, the 20-year-sometime gunman.
At the same time, "the National Rifle Association has taken to calling the AR-15 'America's burglarize'" and "gun owners say that the AR-15 is used for hunting, sport shooting and self-defense."
Inquire students: Do yous think AR-15-style rifles should be more strictly regulated in the United states of america? Why or why not?
Practice you call back any other measures should exist taken to restrict admission to guns? If so, what? If not, what else can be washed to prevent more mass shootings like this one?
Students might read how others responded to these questions after the shooting at Sandy Claw Unproblematic Schoolhouse in Newtown, Conn., and add their voices to the chat by commenting hither since that post is now closed.
Or, take a look at the forum on guns we posted during the 2016 election as part of our Ceremonious Chat Challenge for teenagers. We invited students to have productive, respectful conversations on several issues dividing Americans, and more than 700 responses came in to the questions we posed about gun rights, the Second Amendment and more.
Update: The Times has now published a piece that summarizes political responses: "Correct and Left React to the Gun Control Debate After the Florida Shooting."
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Only in the United States?
In "How to Reduce Shootings," the columnist Nicholas Kristof writes:
Inevitably, predictably, fatefully, another mass shooting breaks our hearts. This time, it was a school shooting in Florida on Wednesday that left at least 17 dead at the easily of 19-year-former gunman and his AR-15 semiautomatic burglarize.
Simply what is mayhap nigh heartbreaking of all is that they shouldn't be shocking. People all over the world become furious and try to harm others, but only in the United States practise we suffer such mass shootings so regularly; only in the United States do we lose one person every fifteen minutes to gun violence.
He writes that nosotros should "learn lessons from these tragedies, and so that there tin be fewer of them. In particular, I propose that nosotros endeavour a new approach to reducing gun violence — a public wellness strategy."
Invite your students to accept a look at the graphics from a visual essay he did in Nov later the church shooting in Texas. What do they see? What questions do the charts raise? To what extent practice they hold with Mr. Kristof'southward conclusions?
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The Gunman
What practice regime know and then far well-nigh the shooter? What is not nonetheless known?
In "Nikolas Cruz, Florida Shooting Suspect, Was Expelled From School," Matthew Haag and Serge F. Kovaleski write:
The man suspected of opening burn inside a Florida high school on Wednesday, killing at to the lowest degree 17 people, is a old student who had been expelled for disciplinary reasons, the regime said.
… In the hours subsequently the shooting, people who knew Mr. Cruz described him as a "troubled kid" who enjoyed showing off his firearms, bragging well-nigh killing animals and whose mother would resort to calling the police to accept them come to their home to effort to talk some sense into him. At a schoolhouse with about 3,000 students, Mr. Cruz stayed to himself and had few friends but struck fright in some students with erratic behavior and an affinity for violence.
… In the interview with the Miami news station, the student said Mr. Cruz was a junior at Stoneman Douglas Loftier School when he was expelled last yr. He said that students would joke that if anyone were to open up fire inside the school, it would be Mr. Cruz. Because of that, students feared him and mostly stayed away from him, the pupil said.
"A lot of people were saying that it would be him," the student told WFOR-Television. "They would say he would be the one to shoot up the school. Everyone predicted information technology."
In "Nikolas Cruz's Lifetime of Problem: Family Loss, Flashes of Rage," The Times writes that he has been "causing problem as long every bit anyone here could remember."
Do you lot call back this assault could have been prevented? If so, how? If not, why not?
What might school administrators, teachers and students be able to acquire from this attack to foreclose others like information technology from happening? How could they reply to students who may be showing signs of problem in school, on social media or at home?
What — if annihilation — should students practice if they come across others who display erratic behavior or inclinations toward violence?
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Related Learning Network Resources
Resources: Talking and Instruction About the Shooting in Newtown, Conn.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/15/learning/lesson-plans/resources-for-talking-and-teaching-about-the-school-shooting-in-florida.html
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