September 2025

September 2025

As a school counselor in a private Catholic school, our community was in complete shock when a very similar school, Annunciation Catholic School, experienced a mass shooting on August 27th, 2025. We were preparing for the first days of school as a community. I luckily I had many resources for families and teachers on how to respond to these types of events and we as a school were able to post some helpful information for our families. At the same time, it saddens me to realize how often we needed to send these resources out to families. In wanting to share with others, the resources we sent out to families was Talking To Children About The Shooting and Parent Guidelines For Helping Youth After The Recent Shooting. Both resources are from The National Child Traumatic Stress Network. For the teachers, I encouraged 4 tips on responding to students. These 4 tips are; Listen (what do they know and clarify the facts), Validate (validate their feelings), Reassure (Explain how your school keeps kids safe) and Take Action and Empower (what can they do to help the families?). I hope this was helpful in learning how I responded to these tragic situations.