Choosing Hope: Moving Forward from Life's Darkest Hours - Hardcover

Roig-DeBellis, Kaitlin; Fisher, Robin Gaby

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399174451 ISBN 13: 9780399174452

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2015

Synopsis

"[S]tirring...a bold, inspiring and ultimately hopeful book." 
--Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post and author of the New York Times bestseller Thrive

Kaitlin Roig-Debellis is the first-grade teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary School who saved her entire class of fifteen six- and-seven-year-olds from the tragic events that took place on December 14, 2012, by piling them into a single-occupancy bathroom within her classroom, mere feet from the brutal and indiscriminate massacre taking place outside the door. Since then, despite the unimaginably painful experiences she endured, she has chosen to share her experience with others, in the hope that they too can find light in dark moments.

Choosing Hope is a lot of things. A written witness to a tragedy that will never be forgotten. A gripping firsthand testament to the power of good over the power of destruction. An inspirational memoir by a brave young woman whose story is one of courage, heroism, faith, and resilience. And a celebration of all the people who make the choice to pass along their hope and positivity to young ones—parents, mentors, and especially teachers. There is no moving on, but there is always moving forward. And how we move forward is a choice.

"[M]oving" -Wally Lamb, New York Times bestselling author of We Are Water and She’s Come Undone

"[B]rave" -Karen Armstrong, New York Times bestselling author of Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life and The History of God

 “Although now I have witnessed the worst of mankind, instead of feeling bitter or regretful I have chosen to embrace gratitude. I believe in the power of kindness, the influence of educators and mentors, faith and God, and most of all I believe in humanity. Bad things happen to all of us, things that test us and impact us and change us, but it is not those moments that define us. It is how we choose to react to them that does.”  —Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis

About this title

About the Author:

Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis is the founder of the nonprofit Classes 4 Classes, Inc and an inspirational speaker for teachers and organizations across the country. Previously, she was a first-grade teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Roig-DeBellis contributes to a biweekly educational blog for The Huffington Post and has been honored as a Glamour magazine Woman of the Year and chosen as a “L’Oréal Paris Women of Worth.” In 2013, she received two honorary doctorate degrees and the Dedicated Teacher Award from The Chicago International Conference on Education.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Prologue

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” Alice, to the Cheshire Cat, in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
—Lewis Carroll

I live every day wishing I could go back to December 13, back to who I was, who my kids were, back to our school with those who were taken on that day and the life I would have never in a million years have changed.
Sometimes I wonder how all of this happened. How, after finding myself in the midst of such abject darkness, in a place where breaking free seemed unlikely, if not impossible, I was finally able to get to the light. Did my strong faith play a role in my passage from that unimaginable tragedy? Yes, it did. Did the love of my family and friends and the support of a caring community bolster me as I attempted to put one foot in front of the other in the days and weeks afterward? Of course. But what saved me, when I dropped to my lowest point and wandered aimlessly between feelings of sadness and fear and maddening frustration over not being able to answer the “Why?” of what happened, was the moment I realized I had a choice. I could allow the actions of a monster to crush my spirit and, for the rest of my life, have that terrible day in Newtown define me. Or I could decide that, even in the wake of such unspeakable malice, I could live a purposeful life by choosing hope.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was the worst mass murder of school children in the United States since the Bath School bombing in 1927, and a mournful chapter in our country’s narrative. I’ll leave it to others to write the historical account of that day. I’ve agreed to tell my story, but on my terms. I will not be exploitative: anyone who is looking for that should reach for a different book. I will bear witness to the trauma my students and I suffered, and, even more significantly, the acts of heroism that day, and the generosity of others that poured into our broken community afterward. I leave it to readers to decide whether they even want to read about what we endured in the section titled “My Darkest Hour.” You need not read those particular pages in order to capture the message of hope that I intend to convey with this book. I write about my personal experience for the purpose of clarity and perspective. It is that which led me to the path I walk today.
Six of my colleagues and twenty first-graders—six- and seven-year-olds who were still learning to tell time, and count to 120, and spell 100 words—were murdered that morning. Teachers and administrators and support staff and children who acted with great courage in the face of death. By the grace of God, my students and I survived. When the shooting began and the killer stalked down the hallway toward our classroom, leaving a trail of devastation in his wake, I stuffed my frantic students into a first-grade bathroom that was too tiny for one adult and told them to stay perfectly quiet. I was certain we were going to die.
I won’t say the shooter’s name. I never have. The only names that need to be memorialized are the innocent children and educators whose lives he took. To this day, I believe the killer came into our classroom, which was the first one in the hallway, and, thinking it was empty, moved to the next classroom, and the next, shooting everyone he saw. I’ll never know for sure.
When you hear the whisper of death, life takes on a different meaning. Not a moment passes when I don’t recognize that it could have been us who didn’t make it out of the school that day. That all of my students and I did get out alive is, in my mind, nothing short of a miracle. I honor that miracle by not taking anything for granted. Not a beautiful sunset, or the gentle sensation of a loved one’s hand reaching for mine, or the sweet sound of a child’s voice, or a kind word from a stranger. Not for a second.
Because we survived, I must live up to my responsibility to those who were silenced by using my voice to share what I have learned from standing at the precipice of death and, in doing so, making sure that day is not forgotten. Had it been my kids and me who were taken, I would have wanted someone to use his or her voice for good and to carry on the legacy of love and benevolence that, before evil visited, was the story of Sandy Hook.
In the weeks after the shooting, I waded through my sorrow, wondering if I would ever feel joy again. I spent every day asking myself, Why our school? Why innocent children? When the answers wouldn’t come, I became increasingly frustrated and angry. Until, one day, I realized I would never answer those questions and I needed to concentrate on the ones I could answer, for the sake of both my students and me. Only then could we begin healing. Two questions guided me: How do I make sure that the deeds of a madman do not prevent us from moving forward to live good and meaningful lives? And how do we gain back the sense of control that he took from us? Those two questions led me in everything I did. Rather than consuming myself with the horror of what happened, I began focusing on the good that could be done, and how I might take part in our collective healing.
When I changed my thinking, opportunities began to present themselves. I founded a nonprofit called Classes 4 Classes, a concept to teach students everywhere the importance of kindness and caring for others. In my capacity as a survivor, I was asked to speak to a group of educators, which I reluctantly accepted. I started my presentation by sharing my story of hope and saw the impact it had on the audience. One speaking engagement led to dozens. Following every appearance, people came up to me to share their personal struggles—“I was just diagnosed with cancer”; “I lost my husband”; “My son is going through a difficult time”—and to thank me for inspiring them to focus on the possibilities rather than the negativity in their lives. They would often begin by saying things such as “I know this is nothing like what you’ve been through” or “My struggle can’t compare with yours,” and I would stop them each time and say, “Pain is pain and sadness is sadness and loss is loss and we are all connected in this.”
After a few of these encounters, I decided that if, by sharing my personal story, I could help even one person through his or her darkest hour, then that was what I needed to do. I quickly realized that helping them was healing me. Sharing my message of hope became my calling. So when I was approached about writing a book, something that had never crossed my mind, I decided to seize the opportunity to be able to reach even more people.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School I knew closed its doors for good after the shooting. Our beautiful school is dust now, razed to the soil because what it came to represent was too painful for a community to bear. And while teaching is at the core of who I am, my new classroom is wherever life takes me—to elementary schools, and teacher conferences, and college commencements, and anywhere else I am asked to speak.
In my travels and, now, with my book, my purpose is to convey the importance of gratitude and endurance and, most of all, the power of choice. Yes, especially that. I know now that how you deal with life’s challenges, even those that may seem unbearable or hopeless, is your choice to make. Bad things happen to all of us, things that test us and impact us and change us, but it is not those moments that define who we are. It is how we choose to react to them that does. You can give in and give up or you can decide to live your life with intent and love and compassion for others and for yourself. You can choose hope, even in the darkest hour, and in that choice you will find light. We have that power. I do. You do. Everyone does. That is what I believe.
Ever since I was a little girl and my mom introduced me to Robert Frost, I have loved the poem “The Road Not Taken.” In that poem, Frost famously wrote,

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

When I reached a crossroads in my journey back from that terrible day in 2012, I chose hope. And that has made all the difference.
My name is Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis and this is my story.
 
December 14, 2012

The morning sun rising over Long Island Sound on December 14 was even more breathtaking than usual. That big, red ball, pitched against a cloudless blue sky, was so striking that I stopped on my way out of the house, dropped my lunch bag and car keys on the kitchen counter, and grabbed my phone to snap a few pictures. My step had a skip as I pushed out the door and walked to my car to head to school. Could life get any better? I was twenty-nine years old, engaged to the man of my dreams, and working in a job I would have done for free, I loved it so much.
As I pulled out of the driveway to begin the drive to Newtown, my thoughts returned to the previous weekend when my mom and I traveled from Greenwich to Westhampton to make wedding preparations. It had been a magical weekend.
First, we’d met with a florist and chosen all white roses and dahlias and hydrangeas for the flower arrangements, then we’d gone to the beach and booked the date for the following August at a beautiful place called the Oceanbleu. The restaurant is built high on the dunes and, standing there, looking out over the water, I had pictured my dad and I taking that long walk down the beach to where Nick and our guests would be waiting. The following day, we’d met Dad and Nick for our annual Christmas brunch and gone over all our plans. I could hardly wait for summer to come, but first we had the holidays to look forward to.
The drive to Sandy Hook took fifty minutes on a good day on I-84, and that day traffic was light. Taking exit 10 off I-84, as usual, I meandered through the Newtown countryside, excited to start the day. As I turned onto Dickinson Drive, I glanced at my dashboard clock. It was 7:45. I parked my car in the teachers’ lot, reached for my pile of books and papers, and proceeded to the school’s main entrance, through the double doors, past the main office, and across the hall to my classroom. Dropping my books on my desk, I went right to work. Our reading specialist was coming to observe my class and I wanted to make sure everything was ready for her visit. The year before, Sandy Hook had adopted the Reading Workshop program, which gives students the tools they need for more independent reading and comprehension skills. The reading specialist was scheduled to arrive at 9:45 and spend an hour or so monitoring how the program was working, specifically, whether the students were engaged in what they were reading and thinking critically about what they had read. It was an important day for my students and me, and I wanted to make sure everything was in order. For instance, that their reading bins had the proper material, and that the lesson I’d prepared for the workshop was comprehensive enough. I was so busy that I hadn’t even taken the time to greet a group of my coworkers as they walked back and forth between the main office and a nearby conference room where a meeting was being held. By the time the buses arrived and my students filed into our classroom, a few minutes before nine, I felt ready for the day. At 9:10, like clockwork, the announcements came over the PA system, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance and a moment of silence.
“Good morning, Fantastic Friends!” I said, just before taking attendance.
“Good morning, Miss Roig!” they replied.
Only one of my students was missing—a boy who was away skiing with his family. After attendance, my students settled in to do their morning work until I played the song to signal morning meeting. They gathered around my chair, excited to get started. I picked up a pile of cards, each one with a different greeting written on it, and fanned them out the way a magician does a deck of playing cards before a magic trick. The cards said things like ¡Hola! and Bonjour and High Five! One student picked a card from the deck, and whatever was written on it was the day’s greeting. The student with the card then greeted the classmate seated beside him or her, and then that child greeted the next child in the circle, and so on. I always reminded my students that when they were greeting one another to look their classmates in the eyes, speak kindly, and offer a firm but not too hard handshake.
That morning, the card chosen was Ball Roll, a special card and one of the kids’ favorites, which meant they got to roll a ball to one another as they said their good mornings. The student seated next to me was always excited about being able to greet the teacher. That morning, it was the little girl with cascades of brown curly hair who always wore pink. “Good morning, Miss Roig,” she said, in her tinkling first-grade voice. I loved that moment. You can’t help but be happy after looking into the eager eyes of a sweet, smiling first-grader.
After that, we moved on to sharing time, a few minutes when the students got to share personal stories with one another. Because the Christmas season and Hanukkah were upon us, the theme that day was “Our Holiday Traditions.” One of my students, a rambunctious boy with chestnut-colored eyes and foot-long lashes, smart as a whip, had been chattering about Christmas since September, and now it was just eleven days away. He was wild with anticipation. He told the story of his cousins coming to spend the holidays, squealing as he spoke. (For the last three months, when it was his turn, he told the same story, but his classmates didn’t seem to mind, or, if they did, they were kind enough not to say so!) As was our routine, three students got to share stories and the others were expected to make comments and ask questions. The others talked about making cookies, and visiting Santa, and listening for reindeer, and lighting the menorah, and visits with family members and friends. At the end of each presentation the storyteller addressed his or her classmates, saying, “Thank you for my comments and questions.” It was an important way of instilling in the children the appropriate way to share and speak with their peers.
Next on the schedule was Morning Message, a time when we discussed what the day was to bring. That day, of course, we talked about the visit from our reading specialist and how important it was for us to impress her with our reading skills. “Let’s get excited about today!” I said. “You’re going to shine!” It was 9:30, fifteen minutes before the “big test.” The students were eager to show off their reading skills and the books they had tucked in their bags, ready to read.
But we never got that far.
 
First comes the initial blast of gunfire, then the sound of shattering glass. The hair on my arms stands up. I know right away what I am hearing. Columbine is happening in the place we called Pleasantville. How can it be? Someone with a weapon is shooting their way into our perfect school. My classroom is the first one in the building. We are in grave danger, I think, sitting targets. I jump up, run to the door, pull it closed, and switch of...

About this edition

• Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0399174451
• ISBN 13: 9780399174452
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272