Remembering the 33 Victims of Virginia Tech

The senseless act of violence that struck Virginia Tech on Monday has affected the entire nation. News reports and talk radio is full of discussion about why this person committed these acts and if the university could have acted differently after the first round of attacks to prevent the horrible act that was to come later. We are, of course, reminded of the school violence at Columbine and the tragedy that occurred there. We are also forced to ask some difficult questions concerning student, albeit, public safety in this nation. The truth is, our culture is such that even though there were indications that this student was mentally disturbed there was little that the school or the authorities could have done about it. I heard an interesting caller on a call-in radio show who went to the University of Miami. She said that she had begun thinking about her own school and the possibility of something like this happening there. She realized that with such a large campus and little or no way to watch over each and every student as they go to and from classes, there was little that law enforcement could do to prevent an attack like this. In the end, it was up to her and her fellow students to police themselves. We live in a post 9/11 world. I've heard many people say that if they were on a plane today after 9/11, they would definitely react different to a hijacking situation than pre-9/11. In such a situation, they would no longer think that if they complied they would be saved - instead, they would meet the attack head on. I fear a festering of the innocence in America concerning violence as more and more incidents occur with extreme violence at its root.

What can we can do as educators? We help our students realize that this was an isolated incident and that the chance of extreme violence happening at their school is very rare. We need to give them a chance to talk about things. Many of us have seniors who are getting ready to go off the college for the first time. We need to help them get out their scared feelings and look at ways that they can cope with them. While sane individuals cannot truly understand the mind of a killer such as this, we need to help our students move past trying to understand why he did it and instead reassure them that the important thing, the courageous thing, is to continue with their life and their path. My thoughts and prayers go out to the 33 souls who were killed, to their family and friends, and to the survivors who witnessed this terrible tragedy.

Even though this was an act of violence and not considered an official act of terrorism, the article titled Helping Children Cope with Terrorism has a lot of ideas and information that you could adapt in your classroom to help your students.