Are you shocked? If so, you’re not alone. The school shooting in Parkland, Florida isn’t the first this year, and sadly, it will most likely not be the last.
A lot of people may say, “Now is not the time to talk about making changes to our broken system," but since the Virginia Tech massacre, it has been our mission to build more supportive and compassionate schools to stop violence before it happens.
Psychologist Dr. Dewey Cornell at the University of Virginia has studied school violence. His research has recognized there are three psychological pathways to violence:
- Psychotic/ mental health (e.g., delusions, hallucinations, depression)
- Antisocial (e.g., aggression, anger, bullying)
- Conflict (e.g., social isolation, peer rejection)
- positive mental strengths (e.g., empathy, hope)
- caring actions (e.g., helping, empowerment, school leadership, volunteering)
- peace (e.g., positive relationships, connection with peers).
Since this year began, generous donations have been spent to provide workshops to students so they can develop solutions to address the causes of school shootings:
- At Chardon High School (east of Cleveland, Ohio)
- Kyle, Shane and Justin (of HESONWHEELS.com) delivered a school-wide assembly about our moments of caring and failing to care for others
- Students are leading initiatives to “de-norm” the very common phrase “kill myself” to build healthy minds and prevent suicide
- With the 6th anniversary of the Chardon HS shooting approaching, students wanted to help teachers feel connected and recognized on Valentine’s Day during a month that retriggers many teachers.
- At River Valley HS and Galion HS (north of Columbus, OH), students are introducing a cross-grade mentoring program to create connection between grades and reduce bullying from older to younger students.
The news of another school shooting brings back memories of our work at Virginia Tech and Chardon HS. It has been a challenging and emotional week for our team, but we feel good about the moments of empowerment during the past 6 weeks. We helped students develop their solutions to school problems:
- Building a mentoring program to create connection and to prevent school shootings.
- Changing the norm from “kill myself” to “rats” jokes to prevent suicide.
- Building strengths in middle school students to prevent drug abuse.
- Showing compassion and appreciation to teachers to help them cope 6 years after their shooting.
We are too often reminded that we are not succeeding in our overarching mission as a foundation. Please join us on our pursuit of PROACTIVELY preventing shootings at as many schools as possible