Tackling gun violence is work that Hartford Public Schools educators say they sadly know well.
Just this week, two students were shot and killed outside of school.
Police investigating, yellow tape: it was a devastating scene for two school communities, after 19-year-old Lavante Brown and 16-year-old Aydin Davis were shot and killed during a party at an apartment on Saturday.
As police investigate the shootings, family and friends reel, many grieving at a vigil Monday. Both teens attended schools in Hartford.
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“Gun violence can have a huge impact on children,” Jocelyn Sailor, district social work coach, said. “A lot of students are experiencing gun violence in their community, and that then comes with them inside of the schools.”
Social workers are part of the school district’s Crisis Intervention Team, on hand to help in the wake of such loss.
The cases they work on do not always involve student victims: sometimes it is a kid’s family member, friend or a child has witnessed violence in their neighborhood.
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“That can affect students in various ways, in regards to feeling safe to walking back and forth to school,” Sailor said.
Beyond feeling physically unsafe and disconnected from their community, these social workers say the trauma is evident in other ways, too.
“It can actually affect the architecture of the brain,” Sailor said. “Which then relates to their academics. So It may be hard to focus on school, they're feeling stressed out, they're having various symptoms of depression or anxiety.”
They say trauma can also manifest in problems regulating emotions and behavior.
“Their day to day response to stressors might be exaggerated, because of the events that they've been exposed to,” Joanne Tremblay Jackson, director of Student Support Services, said.
Superintendent Dr. Leslie Torres-Rodriguez has also witnessed all of these devastating effects on students.
“Gun violence impact is multifaceted in this complex, and it impacts our community in several ways,” Torres-Rodriguez said.
Even before the latest violence that led to the loss of two students, she said gun violence is a pervasive problem for Hartford schools.
“It is. It something that our students come to school with,” Torres-Rodriguez said. “We don't want that to happen for any of our young people.”
The best way schools can respond, she says, is with mental health support. It is why the school district works with partner organizations like COMPASS Peacebuilders, The Village For Families & Children and Mothers Against Violence, among many others.
“It is not a one-time intervention,” Torres-Rodriguez said. “It is responding to the incident, but also it's creating a community, a culture in the school, that is responsive to students that live in trauma.”
Within Hartford Pubic Schools, efforts go toward tackling gun violence on three levels: prevention, small group work in classrooms and specialized clinical work for trauma.
“It all starts fostering that sense of belonging, so students know who they can go to when something seems like it's not right,” Sailor said.
The team, hoping to build a bridge of trust, not just to respond to tragedy, but to evade it.
“That's not the answer. That's not the solution,” Tremblay Jackson said. “Helping our young people see that there are other means to negotiate, and get ahead in life, and protect each other, without having to resort to guns and violence.”
