Attempting to Carry on After the Sandy Hook Tragedy
Posted by Andrew Gardner on
It’s Monday morning, and teachers everywhere are facing the challenge of helping students come to terms with the Sandy Hook tragedy while ensuring they feel safe at school. On top of that, we’re still dealing with our own fear and sadness. So how much do we say, given that kids are returning to school with different levels of awareness? How do we acknowledge the events without going into more detail than kids can handle? How do we address feelings without adding anxiety? Do we talk about the event at all?
As we said on Friday, we recognize there’s very little we can do to help right now. We hope our movies and resources bring a small sense of normalcy to your classroom. Perhaps they lead into a meaningful conversation. Perhaps they just take everyone’s minds off things. We’ve always tried to respond to tragedies with content that can help kids make sense of what’s going on. This time, there’s really no way to make sense of it. For those of you turning to BrainPOP today, we suggest topics like Stress, Getting Help, and Anger (BrainPOP Jr.). While not directly related to the shootings, they do deal with emotions, coping, and talking about feelings.
There is no one “right” way to handle this – you know your students best. Regardless of how you choose to approach the topic in your classrooms, our hearts go out to all of you as you carry on in the face of this senseless tragedy.
Thank you for all you do.