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‘You could hear the upset in their voices’ as students grapple with mass shooting | Education
How do you help children cope with the unfathomable violence and cascading emotions from the shooting deaths of 10 Black people in a grocery store on a sunny Saturday afternoon?
In Buffalo, administrators spent the following Sunday into the evening preparing resources for principals and teachers to address the massacre at the Tops Markets that hit close to home. Two employees of the district were among the victims.
Normal lesson plans were thrown out, and the past week was spent dealing with students’ feelings and trying to heal children from pre-K to 12th grade. Teachers will take time to listen to students this week, too.
Suburban schools also helped their students try to make sense of the senseless killings spawned by racial hate. There were moments of silence, announcements over the PA system and conversations in class.
But the trauma was particularly raw in Buffalo, where many knew or knew of someone who died.
“You could hear the upset in their voices: ‘I can’t believe he came all the way to our city, our community, to do this,’ ” said Ruyvette Townsend, an attendance teacher at Leonardo daVinci High School.
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Some students talked of having no mercy for the gunman, an 18-year-old who traveled from Broome County to carry out the shootings and who described himself as a white supremacist. Some said they felt sorry for him.
“We try to reassure the children that they’re safe, this is a safe place,” Townsend said.
Students outside the city also grappled with the tragedy.
West Seneca West High School teacher Joseph Cantafio always challenges his students by bringing up the other side to their positions. But not last week.
“This is one time where there are not two sides,” he said.
In Cantafio’s college-level sociology class taught in conjunction with Syracuse University, students talked about the mass shooting that occurred just a few miles away.
What really surprised student Abdullah Kamil was that the rest of the country was taking sides on guns and mental health issues in the wake of the shootings.
“And Buffalo, we were just really grieving,” he said. “We’re just all grieving instead of tearing each other apart, and kind of picking sides and intentionally creating animosity between each other.”
Catherine McDonnell was in Syracuse when the shootings occurred, and did not realize the enormity of it until she went to social media.
“I didn’t realize how close it was to my mom’s school, and her school was on his list in his notes,” she said of other potential targets Payton Gendron had listed in online postings. “And when we heard about the deaths, and knew some of them, it was just very personal.”
And it’s different when something like this happens here, she said.
“Coming to school like, it was very heavy, but it needed to be talked about for sure,” she said.
Gabriella Filipski was working at Chef’s on Seneca Street when her father texted her about the mass shooting. She said everyone was talking about it, with perspectives from city residents and others.
“It was a terrible thing that happened and it doesn’t matter where you live,” she said. “It’s something that needs to be talked about.”
There was a range of emotions, depending on the age of the students.
“A lot, for the little ones, was a little bit more shock and not knowing what to say and how to react,” said Buffalo Associate Superintendent of School Leadership John Gonzalez. “As the students got older, they were more willing to engage in conversation and bring up the incident themselves.”
“It’s not business as usual, it’s about more right now than reading, math and arithmetic,” Buffalo Interim Superintendent Tonja Williams said.
Administrators created a compendium of resources to help teachers in the district’s 60 schools reflect on the horrible events and to form lessons around them, said Associate Superintendent Fatima Morrell.
“In those lessons, we create opportunities for social emotional learning and healing, as well as deep dives into understanding racism and how systemic racism plays a role in perpetuating white supremacy, and what does white supremacy mean and how do we combat it,” Morrell said.
Students also had the chance to talk about what happened in healing circles, and through the arts.
“We know that many of our students process their emotions in different ways and may not be ready to discuss what they’re feeling. But we do know that students find an outlet through art and music and poetry and writing,” said Chief Academic Officer Anne Botticelli.
In Buffalo, some parents were afraid to send their children to school, and some kids were scared to go. And as bogus threats spread on social media throughout the week, some students left school early.
The threats “added a layer of extreme discomfort and worry that was obviously so unnecessary and added to the trauma that people were already experiencing,” Gonzalez said.
The Williamsville Central School District, like Buffalo, has done extensive work in trauma informed care.
“It is about the relationship we have with our students when a tragedy like this happens,” said Rosa D’Abate, coordinator of student services. “Like everybody, students were scared or fearful, some that understood it, some that didn’t.”
Peter Stuhlmiller teaches social studies to juniors and seniors at Kenmore West High School. His AP government students were starting public policy research papers, and pivoted their topics to the role gun control plays in the country.
After the shooting at Tops, “these are not just academic questions anymore,” he said.
The students also are looking into the role of social media and the responsibility of social media companies, and whether there should be more federal regulations on social media.
“They’re in shock that kids could be susceptible to this kind of stuff, to the point where this kid had so much premeditation based on hate. It’s mind boggling for them and they’re trying to wrap their heads around it just like the rest of us,” Stuhlmiller said.
Helping students does not rely on a one-size-fits-all approach but is tailored to their individual needs, said West Seneca Superintendent Matthew Bystrak.
West Seneca School Superintendent Matthew Bystrak at West Seneca West High School in West Seneca Friday, May 20, 2022.
“You’ve got nine buildings in this district and there are nine different ways of supporting kids,” Bystrak said. “It’s really up to the experts that work most closely with the kids: our principles, our teachers, the clerks in the office.”
And it’s not just students who were hurting. Teachers were having a difficult time, too. For some, it was too painful to talk about.
“A lot of teachers are saying it was hard to come back, but they were glad that they did,” said Buffalo Teachers Federation President Philip Rumore.
Why some US Blacks and Latinos remain COVID-19 ‘vaccine deliberate’
Much has been made about people of color being hesitant to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Numbers have shown that Black and Latino vaccination rates are lagging behind those of white people in America.
About 40% of Black people and 45% of Latinos have been at least partially vaccinated as of Aug. 16, compared to 50% of white people, according to the latest data by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
And as of Aug. 16, 72% of people eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine were at least partially vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So far, researchers only have race or ethnicity data of 58% of the vaccinated population, of which 58% is white, 10% Black and 17% Hispanic.
There have been myriad efforts to explain the racial and ethnic vaccine rate disparity. Misinformation online has been blamed. Throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, many were exposed to a slew of misleading health information, including hoaxes about the COVID-19 vaccines, some specifically targeted at Blacks and Latinos. Other experts identify structural barriers to vaccines, including health literacy, vaccine safety concerns, and physical access as contributing factors. Distrust of the medical system and government was also cited as an underlying source of vaccine disparity.
Misinformation plays a small role in vaccine deliberation in people of color, study finds
Recent research by First Draft, a nonprofit focused on combating misinformation, found misinformation to only play a small role in vaccine deliberation among Black and Latino communities, but it also concluded that the role of misinformation should not be understated as it may be effective on people who exhibit higher levels of mistrust in institutions.
Brandi Collins-Dexter, a digital ethnographer who tracks the spread of disinformation within the Black community, said many vaccine hoaxes draw on both historical and modern instances of racism.
One such hoax that circulated among the Black community claimed that the vaccines could lead to issues with fertility, piggybacking on the Black genocide frame, Reuters reported.
Latinos have also been subject to widespread vaccine-related misinformation due to social media platforms’ lack of ability to accurately detect misinformation written in Spanish. A study conducted by Change Research on behalf of Voto Latino, in March found that 51% of unvaccinated Latino respondents stated they would not get vaccinated against COVID-19 and found the primary agent driving such resistance was Facebook and its role in spreading misinformation.
In 2020, an analysis by Avaaz, a nonprofit organization that investigates disinformation, found that Facebook did not post warning labels on 70% of Spanish-language misinformation, compared to 29% of English-language content.
For instance, a Facebook post written in Spanish claimed that one could kill the virus by drinking a lot of water and gargling with water, salt or vinegar, according to the Avaaz report. Though the original post has been taken down, its clones continue to replicate online.
The Markup, a nonprofit organization using a data-driven approach to investigate tech companies like Facebook, found in May that Facebook was still full of anti-vaccine groups and misinformation despite the company’s commitment to shut down unauthorized health groups and curb COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.
“The most common reason respondents gave for not wanting to get vaccinated, or being unsure about getting vaccinated, is fear that the vaccine is not safe… 37% of Latinx respondents said they had seen material or information that made them think the COVID-19 vaccine is not very safe or not very effective,” said Lauren Goldstein, the lead researcher on the Voto Latino poll.
The federal government, recognizing the racial and cultural disparity in vaccination rates, has organized outreach programs to try and reach out to minority communities that have been more reluctant to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. For example, the Department of Health and Human Services launched “culturally resonant” mass media campaigns in partnership with trusted messengers like faith leaders to reinforce the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines, according to a report published by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.
The federal government has also addressed structural barriers to getting vaccinated – including transportation, time and vaccine site locations – by expanding mobile vaccine options to homebound individuals and setting up pop-up vaccine clinics in underserved areas.
But the challenges in reaching these communities are more deeply rooted and go beyond disinformation – many simply lack access, experts say.
‘Time to stop blaming the vaccine hesitant’
Though the media frequently places blame for the Black community’s distrust on the notorious Tuskegee syphilis study in 1932, the current distrust stems from more contemporary issues such as access, said Karen Lincoln, a professor at University of Southern California specializing in social work.
According to preliminary results from a voter survey conducted by HIT Strategies, the majority of Black respondents are willing to get vaccinated and do not know how, waiting to see how the vaccine develops over time, or could be incentivized immediately.
“It is time to stop blaming vaccine-hesitant individuals and arm people with the information and tools they need to overcome the real and perceived barriers that they are experiencing,” said Terrance Woodbury, founding partner and CEO of HIT Strategies.
“The most common reason respondents gave for not wanting to get vaccinated, or being unsure about getting vaccinated, is fear that the vaccine is not safe… 37% of Latinx respondents said they had seen material or information that made them think the COVID-19 vaccine is not very safe or not very effective,” said Lauren Goldstein, the lead researcher on the poll.
For older African American adults, culturally tailored health information – using plain or colloquial language – can help enhance understanding and receptiveness, Lincoln said, but there is currently a lack of structured intervention with tailored information about the vaccines.
“There’s no real focus on tailoring information or an overall focus on language because the expectation is that if we speak English, we can read English. And that’s not necessarily the case,” said Lincoln.
In addition to gaps in health literacy, Lincoln said that the older adults she works with cite a variety of reasons for waiting on getting vaccinated. Some are more concerned about other medical or personal issues, for instance, in which case vaccines are simply not a priority, said Lincoln.
But an underlying sense of distrust toward medical institutions always persists, Lincoln said, which is no different during the COVID-19 pandemic.
When vaccinations first became available, there was not enough focus on equitable distribution, during which white and affluent people got vaccinated first. So when vaccine sites later started popping up in Black neighborhoods, some may have experienced a cognitive dissonance between the existing health gaps and a sudden heightened level of concern for the Black community, Lincoln said.
“It’s really hard to reconcile. What does that mean and what do I believe? It can cause a level of confusion and I think that feeds into this larger discussion around hesitancy,” Lincoln said.
For Latinos as well, mistrust toward official institutions may play a role in engendering vaccine deliberation. The First Draft research found that often, vaccination sites are perceived as “deportation traps” by Latinos, especially by undocumented immigrants.
Though there are hopes that the formal Food and Drugs Administration approval of the Pfizer vaccine would increase vaccination rates, Lincoln said those who were already distrustful of official institutions may remain hesitant.
“There are other factors that we need to consider to ensure that people have true access to the vaccine,” said Lincoln.
US life expectancy at record low; Blacks, Latinos most affected
Public health experts discuss the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Black communities.
USA TODAY
A study published Thursday found life expectancy in the United States dropped to its lowest level in 15 years, and even lower for Black Americans and Latinos, during the first half of the coronavirus pandemic.
Data through June 2020 shows life expectancy at birth for the total U.S. population fell from 2019 by a year to 77.8 years, the lowest since 2006, according to researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.
Life expectancy for Black populations declined the most from 2019 – by 2.7 years, to 72 years – its lowest level since 2001. Latinos experienced the second-biggest decline, falling 1.9 years since 2019 to a life expectancy of 79.9 years, lower than when it was first recorded in 2006.
The disparities highlighted in the study add to the mounting evidence of COVID-19’s disproportional effect on Blacks and Latinos, health experts say.
“It was disturbing to see that gains that have been made for the Black community and decreasing the gap between life expectancy for African Americans and (white) Americans over the past six years had come to a halt,” said Dr. Leon McDougle, president of the National Medical Association.
Black Americans are hospitalized with COVID-19 at 2.9 times the rate of white Americans and die at 1.9 times the rate, according to CDC data. Latinos are hospitalized at more than three times the rate and die more than twice the rate of white Americans.
While the life expectancy gap between Black, Latino and white populations were narrowing before the pandemic, overall life expectancy was steadily declining because of a variety of public health issues, said Michal Engelman, associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Life expectancy in the U.S. decreased from 2014 to 2017 by .3 years and slightly increased 2018 through 2019 by .2 years, according to CDC data. Instead of improving on those modest gains in 2020, Engelman said, the nation saw a backslide because of the pandemic.
“This has been an issue of concern for a while, that we weren’t making progress and we were sliding a little bit backwards,” she said. “After a couple of years of worrisome declines, we dropped as a country a whole year just in the first half of 2020.”
‘Just not equal at all’: Vaccine rollout in Chicago a microcosm of racial disparities nationwide
What does endemic mean? Health officials say the coronavirus will likely become endemic in the next several years.
Health experts fear U.S. life expectancy in 2020 as a whole will be worsethan the half-year numbers because they do not account for the fall and winter surges that led to record COVID-19 deaths.
A study published in early February predicted the pandemic would reduce overall life expectancy by 1.13 years in 2020, with life expectancy for Black and Latino populations three to four times lower than white Americans.
According to the report, published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, COVID-19 was expected to reverse more than 10 years of progress in closing the Black-white gap, and cut the life expectancy advantage Latinos have over other racial groups and ethnicities by more than 70%.
But study co-author Noreen Goldman, professor of demography and public affairs at Princeton University, says fallout from thepandemic may be worse becauseher study doesn’t account for indirectly attributed deaths.
“It is interesting that the two estimates are so close to one another but … I think (and fear) that the final estimate for the decline in life expectancy in 2020 will be non-trivially higher,” she said.
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There’s skepticism in Black, Latino communities about COVID-19 vaccines, but women of color can help swing the momentum
USA TODAY
Goldman also worriesthe U.S. is in for a long road to recovery. Deaths in January 2021 exceeded any monthly total in 2020, and they continue to be relatively high in February despite the rollout of vaccines and a decrease in COVID-19 cases.
Those who have recovered from the disease also may develop long-term health problems, Goldman said, creating new illnesses and worsening preexisting health conditions.
“In addition, the huge social and economic impacts of the pandemic will almost certainly have a detrimental impact on health and survival for years to come,” she said. “I imagine the U.S. can eventually recover, but recovery will not happen quickly.”
But recovery is possible, health experts say. The Biden administration is “off to a good start” with the creation of the COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force, a move that McDougle calls “long overdue.”
Engelman stresses the nation’s life expectancy goal shouldn’t be a return to pre-pandemic levels. Instead, public health policies should focus on investments to change existing infrastructures that create health inequities.
“The inequalities that existed in 2019 is what contributed to the impact,” she said. “It’s not ‘Go back to where we were’ but ‘How can we do this over again so we’re not vulnerable to pandemics in the same way?’”
Follow Adrianna Rodriguez on Twitter: @AdriannaUSAT.
Health and patient safety coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and Competition in Healthcare. The Masimo Foundation does not provide editorial input.
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