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Teacher Who Survived Sandy Hook Speaks About Hope At UConn-Stamford

STAMFORD, Conn., -- In a powerful speech in Stamford, a teacher from Greenwich who survived the Sandy Hook School shootings nearly two years ago said she looks to hope instead of despair as she deals with the aftermath of the massacre that claimed the lives of 26 young students and teachers.

Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis, a teacher who survived the Sandy Hook School shooting, speaks at a conference on trauma and healing at UConn-Stamford Wednesday.

Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis, a teacher who survived the Sandy Hook School shooting, speaks at a conference on trauma and healing at UConn-Stamford Wednesday.

Photo Credit: Frank MacEachern
Jamison Monroe Jr., founder and CEO of Newport Academy, speaks at a conference on trauma and healing at UConn-Stamford Wednesday.

Jamison Monroe Jr., founder and CEO of Newport Academy, speaks at a conference on trauma and healing at UConn-Stamford Wednesday.

Photo Credit: Frank MacEachern
Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis, a teacher who survived the Sandy Hook School shooting, speaks at a conference on trauma and healing at UConn-Stamford Wednesday.

Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis, a teacher who survived the Sandy Hook School shooting, speaks at a conference on trauma and healing at UConn-Stamford Wednesday.

Photo Credit: Frank MacEachern

That hope was something Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis said she turned to as she hid with her Grade 1 students in a tiny bathroom to escape the shootings in the school on the morning of Dec. 14, 2012. 

"In a moment that I was sure was our last, I wanted them to hear something positive, something hopeful, not the gunfire on the other side of the wall," she told a roomful of professionals gathered for a conference on trauma and healing at UConn-Stamford on Wednesday.

"So I said: 'I am so grateful to be your teacher and I am so happy you are in my class and I love you very much.' I wanted the last thing they heard to be something of hope and to be something positive," she said.

Roig-DeBellis was speaking at a forum called Trauma, Resilience and Recovery: Putting the Pieces Together. It was organized by Newport Academy.

Roig-DeBellis said she was "left reeling" after the shootings and searched for a way to deal with that devastating day. 

"I was left reeling, searching for purpose, for meaning," she said. She decided to create a nonprofit: Classes4Classes, which seeks to connect students from different schools by engaging in projects to help one another.

Jamison Monroe Jr., founder and CEO of Newport Academy, said he was a young person who once needed help. He said he struggled with substance abuse throughout his teenage years and into his 20s.

He founded Newport Academy in Newport, Calif., in 2008 to help teens and young adults like himself. Addiction and forms of self-abuse provide a short-term coping mechanism for people who are struggling with trauma, Monroe said.

"What are those causes and conditions? I will stand up here and tell you it's trauma. Period,” he told the audience of about 80 people gathered in a conference room at UConn-Stamford.

Newport established a presence in the state when the East Coast Newport Academy opened in Bethlehem last year. A new school will also open in Darien in January aimed at students ages 14 to 19. It will start with a few students and eventually expand to 20. The independent school will draw on teenagers from throughout the Metro New York area and will offer counseling combined with education.

"The kids that end up at Newport Academy have been dealt a little tougher hands then others, typically not of their own choosing," Monroe said.

The academy wants to lead the students from "a dark place to a light place."

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