News stations are constantly reporting about how school shootings and school violence are sweeping their way across the nation. Students listen to stories of the attacks, but do we really know how it is affecting the students in other schools. With students focusing more on their safety rather than school work, it is hindering their learning experiences.

As school violence is becoming more prevalent in the news and around the United States many students’ decision making of whether or not to stay at school because they don’t feel safe throughout the day. According to Louis-Philippe Beland, professor at Louisiana State University, “...school shootings receive widespread media attention...” As students are using social media more and more there is not a single mass shooting that doesn’t get addressed either through social media or school the next day. Students hear these happening throughout the nation and react by fearing that these things could happen to them at school.

The survivors of these shootings are permanently wounded from the experiences that flooded their school. Heather Martin, a survivor of the all inferior Columbine Shooting, has started a The Rebels Project as a support group for those who have experienced mass shootings. Martin has spoken out and said that it took her years to really grasp what had happened and to be able to cope with what had happened during her senior year of highschool.

The parents of the students who experienced these terrible events. According to Kristin O’Keefe, a parent of a student who attended a school in Parkland, Fla, “We hugged our children tightly when they got home from school and somberly watched the news together.” The parents of these students were impacted just as much because they could have lost their children on that day.

The news always shows when a mass shooting occur but they never provide solutions for how schools across the US can help prevent these casualties. Studies show that if schools had a public health approach to school shootings it would help a tremendous amount. According to Ron Avi Astor, “Instead of waiting for people, again, to be rushed to emergency rooms, you go into the community with preventive resources. You do your best to lower the background levels of bullying and discrimination.” If schools across the country would focus more on students mental health and what is going on in and outside of the school rather than the students passings tests at the end of every school year, the nation would have a better chance at depleting mass shootings that are happening way too often. Another solution would be arming teachers with firearms.

Even if a school doesn’t get impacted directly by school violence it creates a shockwave of sadness through the entire country. When a case of school violence makes the headlines of the news it is proven that schools test scores are significantly lower for as long as 3 years, according to Beland.