Students talk about next steps after Parkland Shooting
February 14, 2018, students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School life’s changed for good. A year later students and are still impacted from this traumatic incident. Since the one year anniversary of the Parkland shooting that made headlines for weeks, there have been about four to five victims to take their life.
“It is sad to hear that these students are still impacted this badly after a year,” senior Kyla Wasson said. “ If this happens to Northern I would not know how to feel and what to do after.”
While some students that were affected by this event cannot return to school or are still very upset, a few other students have spoke out against gun violence.
David Hogg is a student who leads a group of other students to protest gun violence.
“To me they have a lot of courage,” senior Naomi Robbins said. “For them to stand up and continuing to fight a year later shows how strong they are.”
The question is what would Northern do if something like this happened? Do we get more counselors, add another class to help students cope?
“Right now the student to counselor ratio is not where it should be,” social studies teacher Lindsay Lester said. “We have 1500 students and only 4 main counselors. If this happened at Northern we would have to bring in more counselors.”
Not only would we need more counselors but people who are experts and know how to deal with teens dealing with traumatic experiences.
“I have not had to go to counselors for anything, but I know students who have crazy lives,” freshman Ashton Hawthorn said. “The counselors do a good job about helping students now but if they had 10 times more students hurting then it would be more chaotic.”
Not that we want this to happen but if it did, Northern and its faculty need to be prepared to not only help themselves but also the students that are going to be affected. Whether it is getting more counselors or having NSTEP to have little meetings and do fun things to help students cope.