In a room surrounded by 7th graders, the overwhelming comment echoes throughout the room… “We don’t come to school to study and succeed in our education; we come to school hoping that we will survive the day!”  Too often we see headlines like: “4 Killed in Georgia school shooting;” “Sandy Hook shooting survivors set to graduate from HS with mixed feelings: ‘A whole chunk of our class missing;” “Two more CT schools report incidents involving threats;” “Two CT high schools locked down for reported threats; one student ‘boasted’ about gun.” They just keep coming, locally and nationally. In 2024 alone, there have been school shootings reported by at least 32 K-12 schools and at least 13 colleges and universities. At forty-five this year, that averages more than one a week!  At the end of each horrific article I read, the thing that continues to echo in my mind is the phrase “we send our thoughts and prayers.” Thoughts and prayers… How many more times can that be repeated before it finally turns to action and young peoples’ voices are heard? I have personally heard the distressing pleas of young kids – as young as five and six – concerned about their safety in schools. As a public educator, I sit down with kids of all ages to discuss their fears for their future, covering everything from bullying to academic concerns to violence and suicide. As a public speaker and group facilitator, I’ve spent time with youth in skill-building programs, doing self reflection and empowerment exercises, and facilitating the difficult, courageous conversations around the turmoil that attending public school has become. Ace Ricker The anguish these students feel comes up in conversations time and time again and I bring it up to the administration. And yet the conversation doesn’t continue at that point. I return to some schools year after year to hear the same distressed students asking for the same things. As minors, they are too easily overlooked and silenced by the adults who are expected to care for them. Youth can only do so much outreach and advocacy on their own with the few resources they may be given access to. Embedded consistently within these conversations, I continually hear the distressing voices of youth no longer trying to learn in school but merely trying to survive long enough to leave it.Schools have implemented different strategies to combat this terror, from easy-exit windows, panic button systems in classrooms (which were put in only a week prior to the horrible shooting that happened at the Apalachee High School in Georgia), and even asking parents to supply their children with bulletproof backpacks! Every school district puts their own measures in place. There is no consistency, and actual effectiveness can vary widely based on many factors, including what kind of financial support the school has.  All of these measures focus on reducing harm during a shooting; none of them address the problem directly. And, perhaps most importantly, none of them take youth input into account.  As adults, we continually talk about what is best for our kids and youth in general, just like our parents did for us. Those assumptions lead to even more miscommunication, often causing school actions or policies to completely miss the mark and cause more harm than good. Our intent may be well-meaning, but until you ask the people it will affect – the youth – then we will not know the true impact we have on them in practice.  There is only so long we can dance around looking at gun control. Our efforts need to focus on ending gun violence altogether, not just reducing the harm from each individual incident of it. Obviously safety plans and protective measures are important, but they will never be enough to stop the headlines on their own. There is no perfect solution, but there are plenty of options to explore. The conversation has to truly start; and it has to include the young people who are most impacted by this issue in their day to day lives.  By refusing to address gun control, we are refusing to address the deepest life-or-death concerns of youth walking into their classes every day. Students are supposed to be sitting down to learn, focused on building skills and increasing knowledge. Instead, they are focused on escape plans and safety drills. Attempting to learn anything while under constant stress and fear is a difficult if not impossible task. It is not a daily task we should be asking of our teen and preteen children.  Yet, we ask this of ALL our children, of all ages, every single day. Even students who have never experienced, and will never experience, a school shooting, are traumatized from kindergarten on by lockdown drills, and share in a common fear of being the next news story. In reality, no student is safe from the threat of mass violence. This stress, trauma, and fear is not individual; it is universal, and it is impacting the way youth of today develop, learn, interact, and function.  As adults, we ask young people to ignore this. More often than not, we do this without ever acknowledging that’s what we’re really doing. We try to “protect” our students from these conversations, when it is, quite literally, their lives on the line. Telling our kids to “just not think about it” helps no one. Our children know the risks and suffer the consequences. They deserve to be part of the conversations around solutions. Let’s make sure to listen to our youth, before one more is taken away because of a bullet. Ace Ricker is a member of the Connecticut Mirror’s Community Editorial Board.