Content warning: The embedded video depicts scenes of school shootings and gun violence.
Familiar back-to-school supplies such as pencils, scissors and gym socks are recast as emergency survival tools in a devastating new public service announcement from the Sandy Hook Promise, an anti-violence nonprofit founded by the parents of victims of the Sandy Hook shootings in 2012.
In the PSA, “Back to School Essentials,” young students breezily show off their new school supplies before the tone veers into something much darker: A boy marveling over his new sneakers is running down the hallway not to dodge a hall monitor but a gunman. The ad reflects a grim reality for the network of survivors from the more than 228,000 students who have experienced a school shootingsince the massacre at Columbine High School in 1999.
“Back to School” debuted on NBC during the Wednesday morning broadcast of the “Today” show alongside an interview with Sandy Hook Promise co-founder Nicole Hockley. Hockley’s 6-year-old son, Dylan, was among the 20 children and six adults who were killed in the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
View the complete September 18 article by Kim Bellware on The Washington Post website here.