From lowering flags and moments of silence to all-out protests, students nationwide are trying to find ways to honor the 21 people killed in the Texas elementary school shooting.
At Hopkins Junior High School in Fremont, the school community set up a symbolic classroom featuring 21 chairs, representing the 19 children and two teachers who were killed in Tuesday's shooting.
Students placed cut-out hearts on the chairs, some with messages like 'My heart goes out to the families.'" The messages were held in place by rocks from the school's garden of peace.
"I wrote just a kind message like, 'We will forever remember you in our hearts and we won’t forget this moment,'" student Riley Ta said.
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Students and staff believe the display offers students a way to understand and process what happened and cope with the loss.
"We are a junior high school. We have kids that are at different emotional and maturity levels, so some kids we knew might come to school and know nothing about the events and others may have had a chance to talk to their parents about it already, so this would be a place that would be welcome to everyone," Principal Corey Brown said.
Teachers in the Fremont Unified School District have been equipped with resources to help them talk about the shooting and address their students' fears.
"It also creates an opportunity for our students and our staff to embrace each other and grieve together," Superintendent CJ Cammack said.
For the parents, the district sent out letters of reassurance, all in the hopes of offering some solace at a time when nearly every parent and child is afraid and unsure about what happens next.
"In the back of your mind, you're always going to think, 'Is something going to happen today at his school?'” parent Andy Ta said.
