I drew the above illustration in 2012 when the Sandy Hook school shooting took place where twenty children – six and seven-year-olds – and six adult staff members were killed. There have been 948 school shootings since the Sandy Hook tragedy ten years ago. More than 311,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since the Columbine High School shooting in 1999.¹

Since Scarlett Lewis lost her own child in the Sandy Hook school shooting, she has been turning her trauma into activism by inspiring educators and parents to invest their time, energy and resources in social and emotional learning. She believes that her son would never have died had the shooter gone to a school with social and emotional learning in which he learned to identify, understand and manage anger in healthy ways.

Please watch the following short video produced by Equip Our Kids of Scarlett Lewis sharing her story and what she’s learned about the ways we can prevent future school violence. We are all responsible for taking action to prevent yet another community from suffering such heartbreaking and avoidable loss. Our hearts go out to all those impacted by the losses in Uvalde, TX at Robb Elementary School.

Reference:

1. Woodrow Cox, J., Rich, S., Chiu, A., Thacker, H., Chong, L., Muyskens, J. & Ulmanu, M. (2022). School shootings database. The Washington Post, May 25.