Canton High School students help ‘fill the rooms with love’ at Stoneman Douglas

Canton High School students sent dozens of letters to Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS.

Diane Wolk-Rogers is a social studies teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. A few days after the shooting at the school on Valentine’s Day that left 14 students and three faculty members dead, Wolk-Rogers posted a message on a Facebook page for Advanced Placement Psychology teachers. She wasn’t sharing teaching strategies or looking for advice. Instead she was hoping that her fellow teachers could ask their students to write letters of support for the MSD students that she would display in the school for them to see when the school reopened and they returned.

In her post, Wolk-Rogers wrote in part, “I would like to greet them all on the first day back with letters of support from fellow students. Not the email kind or the texting kind, but real letters handwritten and signed by kids from our amazing community. I want them to hold the envelopes addressed from around the world to see that they are not alone and there are still kind and caring people in this world.”

Maryann Byrne, a faculty member in the social studies department at Canton High School who also teaches AP Psychology, read the post and decided to contact Wolk-Rogers. Byrne learned that social studies classrooms at MSD had been impacted — including one in which an AP Psychology class was taught and another in which a class on the Holocaust met. She shared the emails with CHS Principal Derek Folan and Social Studies Department Chairperson Pat Connor, who both supported the idea of CHS students writing to students at Stoneman Douglas.

Byrne learned about the request for letters during February vacation week, so she reached out to her students via Google Classroom. She wrote that she was going to be in the CHS cafeteria from 10 a.m. to noon on Wednesday, February 21, and invited them to join her in helping Wolk-Rogers to “fill the rooms with love” at MSD by writing letters of support or dropping them off at the school. Senior Kate Devine, president of the National Honor Society, contacted other NHS students, and Connor sent Byrne’s letter to the students in his U.S. history classes.

Twenty students arrived at CHS that morning ready to write to the students in Florida. They also brought letters from 10 students who were away for vacation and unable to attend. Another student who was away sent her letter directly to MSD. The CHS students addressed their letters to students in AP Psychology, AP European History, AP U.S. History, psychology, and U.S. history classes.

The CHS students told the Florida students that they had friends in Massachusetts and that they were sending love, thoughts and prayers to them. They wanted the students to know that people all over the United States as well as around the world were thinking of them, that their voices were being heard, and that they are resilient and powerful individuals who deserve all the love and support in the world. They hoped that the MSD students were taking time to heal from the tragedy. One student quoted Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Only in the darkness can you see the stars.”

Byrne felt that the students dealt with the challenge of writing the letters well. “I think the fact that we had a group of students writing the letters together helped,” she said. “Although the students were responding to a tragic event, they projected positive energy and kindness throughout the morning, in keeping with the spirit and purpose of the letters.”

She said that many of the students said that they wanted to do something positive in response to the shooting at MSD. “My impression was that, in an authentic way for the CHS students, the letter-writing and conversations were outlets for them to work out their thoughts and emotions regarding the incident,” she said.

She added that she is very proud of them. “For me, it was gratifying that the students took the time to not only write the letters, but to come together as a group to do so,” Byrne said. “They’re very kind and giving people.”

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Posted by Mary Ann Price on Mar 9 2018. Filed under Features. Both comments and pings are currently closed.