How do you help children cope with the unfathomable violence and cascading emotions from the shooting deaths of 10 Black people in a grocery store on a sunny Saturday afternoon?
In Buffalo, administrators spent the following Sunday into the evening preparing resources for principals and teachers to address the massacre at the Tops Markets that hit close to home. Two employees of the district were among the victims.
Normal lesson plans were thrown out, and the past week was spent dealing with students' feelings and trying to heal children from pre-K to 12th grade. Teachers will take time to listen to students this week, too.
Suburban schools also helped their students try to make sense of the senseless killings spawned by racial hate. There were moments of silence, announcements over the PA system and conversations in class.
But the trauma was particularly raw in Buffalo, where many knew or knew of someone who died.
“You could hear the upset in their voices: ‘I can’t believe he came all the way to our city, our community, to do this,’ ” said Ruyvette Townsend, an attendance teacher at Leonardo daVinci High School.
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Some students talked of having no mercy for the gunman, an 18-year-old who traveled from Broome County to carry out the shootings and who described himself as a white supremacist. Some said they felt sorry for him.
“We try to reassure the children that they’re safe, this is a safe place,” Townsend said.
Students outside the city also grappled with the tragedy.
West Seneca West High School teacher Joseph Cantafio always challenges his students by bringing up the other side to their positions. But not last week.
“This is one time where there are not two sides,” he said.
In Cantafio’s college-level sociology class taught in conjunction with Syracuse University, students talked about the mass shooting that occurred just a few miles away.
What really surprised student Abdullah Kamil was that the rest of the country was taking sides on guns and mental health issues in the wake of the shootings.
“And Buffalo, we were just really grieving," he said. “We’re just all grieving instead of tearing each other apart, and kind of picking sides and intentionally creating animosity between each other.”
Catherine McDonnell was in Syracuse when the shootings occurred, and did not realize the enormity of it until she went to social media.
“I didn’t realize how close it was to my mom’s school, and her school was on his list in his notes," she said of other potential targets Payton Gendron had listed in online postings. "And when we heard about the deaths, and knew some of them, it was just very personal.”
And it’s different when something like this happens here, she said.
“Coming to school like, it was very heavy, but it needed to be talked about for sure,” she said.
Gabriella Filipski was working at Chef’s on Seneca Street when her father texted her about the mass shooting. She said everyone was talking about it, with perspectives from city residents and others.
“It was a terrible thing that happened and it doesn’t matter where you live,” she said. “It’s something that needs to be talked about.”
There was a range of emotions, depending on the age of the students.
“A lot, for the little ones, was a little bit more shock and not knowing what to say and how to react,” said Buffalo Associate Superintendent of School Leadership John Gonzalez. “As the students got older, they were more willing to engage in conversation and bring up the incident themselves.”
“It’s not business as usual, it’s about more right now than reading, math and arithmetic,” Buffalo Interim Superintendent Tonja Williams said.
Administrators created a compendium of resources to help teachers in the district’s 60 schools reflect on the horrible events and to form lessons around them, said Associate Superintendent Fatima Morrell.
“In those lessons, we create opportunities for social emotional learning and healing, as well as deep dives into understanding racism and how systemic racism plays a role in perpetuating white supremacy, and what does white supremacy mean and how do we combat it,” Morrell said.
Students also had the chance to talk about what happened in healing circles, and through the arts.
“We know that many of our students process their emotions in different ways and may not be ready to discuss what they're feeling. But we do know that students find an outlet through art and music and poetry and writing,” said Chief Academic Officer Anne Botticelli.
In Buffalo, some parents were afraid to send their children to school, and some kids were scared to go. And as bogus threats spread on social media throughout the week, some students left school early.
The threats “added a layer of extreme discomfort and worry that was obviously so unnecessary and added to the trauma that people were already experiencing,” Gonzalez said.
The Williamsville Central School District, like Buffalo, has done extensive work in trauma informed care.
“It is about the relationship we have with our students when a tragedy like this happens,” said Rosa D’Abate, coordinator of student services. “Like everybody, students were scared or fearful, some that understood it, some that didn’t."
Peter Stuhlmiller teaches social studies to juniors and seniors at Kenmore West High School. His AP government students were starting public policy research papers, and pivoted their topics to the role gun control plays in the country.
After the shooting at Tops, “these are not just academic questions anymore,” he said.
The students also are looking into the role of social media and the responsibility of social media companies, and whether there should be more federal regulations on social media.
“They’re in shock that kids could be susceptible to this kind of stuff, to the point where this kid had so much premeditation based on hate. It’s mind boggling for them and they're trying to wrap their heads around it just like the rest of us,” Stuhlmiller said.
Helping students does not rely on a one-size-fits-all approach but is tailored to their individual needs, said West Seneca Superintendent Matthew Bystrak.
West Seneca School Superintendent Matthew Bystrak at West Seneca West High School in West Seneca Friday, May 20, 2022.
“You’ve got nine buildings in this district and there are nine different ways of supporting kids,” Bystrak said. “It’s really up to the experts that work most closely with the kids: our principles, our teachers, the clerks in the office.”
And it's not just students who were hurting. Teachers were having a difficult time, too. For some, it was too painful to talk about.
"A lot of teachers are saying it was hard to come back, but they were glad that they did," said Buffalo Teachers Federation President Philip Rumore.
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'You could hear the upset in their voices' as students grapple with mass shooting - Buffalo News
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