I hope… Our school is always safe… Violence is never the answer… People find better ways to handle anger or sadness… It becomes harder for bad guys to get guns… Kids never get hurt again… Those with mental illnesses get the help they need… Students are never afraid to go to school.

These are just a few of the messages students at the Bellwood-Antis Middle School wrote as part of our participation in the Hands of Hope for Sandy Hook project sponsored by UClass.org, a lesson exchange for K-12 classrooms. For those of you who missed my initial post, this lesson—authored by Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and Nicole Hockley, whose 6-year-old lost his life at the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting—was developed to encourage American children to think critically about responding to tragedies like Newtown and to work to prevent them from happening in the future.

Starting on November 14th, schools across the country were asked to have students trace their hands and inscribe them with sentences beginning with, “I hope…”. Participating schools were also urged to display these hands as a symbol of hope in their classrooms, hallways, and auditoriums. As you can see in the photo shown above, we did just that at BAMS. Of course, my sixth grade Tech Club students were thrilled to be the face of our school’s participation in this project!

Student hands were posted on UClass.org and then assembled into the super cool digital collage shown below. What a powerful statement of hope and unity!

Kudos to everyone involved in creating such a meaningful project for students across our country! And a special shout out to Leah Schrader for sharing this awesome lesson with me!