From our news partners at The Seattle Times: Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son was among the 20 children murdered in the Sandy Hook school massacre, told educators in Seattle on Tuesday that one key to better schools is compassion. By Claudia Rowe.
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Bettina Hansen via The Seattle Times "Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son was among the 20 children murdered in the Newtown, Conn., school shooting, spoke to Seattle parents and educators Tuesday at the Compassionate Schools Conference." |
Anyone who sets foot in a school has seen them — the kids everyone picks on. The ones with poor hygiene, who throw tantrums or chairs. The children who seem like too much trouble.
If Scarlett Lewis had her way, each would be embraced.
Less than two years ago Lewis' son Jesse, 6, was among the 20 children murdered by Adam Lanza in Connecticut's Sandy Hook school massacre, the bloodiest in America's history. On Tuesday, she spoke to Seattle educators not about gun control, but compassion.
"I know that the shooter did not wake up December 14, 2012, on the wrong side of the bed," Lewis told a packed auditorium at Cleveland High School to kick off Seattle's first Compassionate Schools Conference.
"It took a lifetime of anger and frustration and loneliness and could have been stopped. I know that if Adam had been given a compassionate education, and been shown compassion, Sandy Hook would not have happened."
Yet in the 20 months since Lewis, 46, lost her youngest child there have been dozens of new school shootings, at least 15 of them massacres similar to Sandy Hook.
"There is an epidemic of anger out there," Lewis said, picturing Lanza as a small boy, picked on by peers, with a head full of loneliness and rage.
Her address was followed with a day of workshops exploring not merely the social but also the academic benefits of compassionate schools, places where the staff incorporate students' socio-emotional needs into daily lessons and study the effects of trauma on childhood learning. Tacoma's Manitou Park Elementary, for example, has seen test scores soar since adults began teaching children to care about one another, said Principal Mary Wilson.
That notion held particular resonance for Lily Ulmer, a fourth-grade teacher in Seattle, who was struck by discussion of a Harvard survey that found 80 percent of middle- and high-school students rated personal achievement over caring for others — and their own happiness.
"That was alarming to me," Ulmer said. "We need to start making changes, all the way down to kindergarten."
