Preventing violence in public schools has been Sandy Hook Promise co-founder and CEO Nicole Hockley’s mission since 2012, when her son Dylan was among the 20 children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. She and the team at Sandy Hook Promise are now a leading voice on making schools safer places and providing mental health support for students by focusing on “upstream violence prevention.”
“It’s really about how do you help someone months, weeks or even years before they ever reach the point of thinking about hurting themselves or hurting someone else,” Hockley says on the latest episode of District Administration‘s “Talking Out of School” podcast (listen below).
“We teach students across the country to recognize the signs of someone who needs help … who is potentially on this long spectrum of violence that we know escalates over time,” she explains.
Sandy Hook Promise provides all of its “Know The Signs” training programs to schools at no cost and also sponsors student-led SAVE Promise clubs, which stands for “Students Against Violence Everywhere.” The nonprofit wants to make it as easy as possible for K12 leaders to adopt its violence-prevention initiatives.
“Once kids learn about the tools, they want to share that more widely, and continue that message throughout the school year,” she adds. “It becomes more of a communal effort rather than a heavy lift for any educator or administrator.”
In the podcast, Hockley also covers Sandy Hook Promise’s efforts to pass state and federal school safety legislation, how officials should rethink active shooter drills to prevent traumatizing students and staff and why she doesn’t like the term “gun control.”
You can listen to the full podcast below, on Apple, Podbean or Spotify.
