Transcript
Kevin: Since the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, more than 338,000 students in the United States have experienced gun violence in school. School shootings lead to an increase in student absenteeism, antidepressant drug usage, and lower test scores. Research also shows that students exposed to school shootings are less likely to graduate high school, go to college, and be employed. What challenges do survivors of school shootings face? What resources are available to help survivors thrive? And what can parents and schools do to support students after tragedy? This is what "I What I Want to Know," and today I'm joined by Zoe Touray to find out.
Zoe: A lot of the older generation tend to not necessarily listen to the younger generation, just because I think they may think that we're naive at times or that we might not be able to get things done. And to that, I say it's been very interesting to kind of watch people watch us do such amazing things.
Kevin: Since the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, more than 338,000 students in the United States have experienced gun violence in school. School shootings lead to an increase in student absenteeism, antidepressant drug usage, and lower test scores. Research also shows that students exposed to school shootings are less likely to graduate high school, go to college, and be employed. What challenges do survivors of school shootings face? What resources are available to help survivors thrive? And what can parents and schools do to support students after tragedy? This is what "I What I Want to Know," and today I'm joined by Zoe Touray to find out.
Zoe Touray is the founder of S.E.E, Survivors Embracing Each Other, an organization dedicated to building a community of compassion for survivors. Zoe survived the November 2021 Oxford High School shooting in Michigan and is on a mission to preserve the innocence of America's students. Now she travels throughout the nation to advocate for safer schools, increased crisis and trauma prevention and intervention services for students and staff. She joins us today to share how we can support students after tragedy. Zoe, welcome to the show.
Zoe: Of course. Thank you.
Kevin: So, Zoe, there's so much I want to unpack with you. But first of all, just sort of the basics. What is your age now?
Zoe: I'm 19 now.
Kevin: You're 19. And so, and are you still in Michigan?
Zoe: I'm in Michigan right now for break actually, but I go to North Carolina A&T for school.
Kevin: Okay. So you are in college, and obviously, you know, you're part of our special series of episodes on school safety. I really wanted to have a student on who's experienced it. You experienced the tragedy and the trauma associated with the Oxford school shootings in 2021. I wanted to ask you, you took that experience and channeled it into activism. Before that incident, were you an activist?
Zoe: Before the incident, I actually was not an activist. I had no political aspirations. I had no aspirations to be an activist whatsoever. I was very much a normal go to school and come home and go to sleep and start all over again.
Kevin: Obviously, this changed you. And I don't want to get too much into the details, but just listening to other interviews and hearing your story, you know, it made my heart stop the fact that you had to actually climb out of a window to get away. Isn't that right?
Zoe: I did. I think that people, there's a definitely a big misconception about the size of the window, but it was still traumatic in itself. We have these, at Oxford, especially in the classroom that we were in, these almost life-size windows. So it was more of a two-inch step, but it was still the matter of going out of a window and running across the courtyard into another building or side of the building. So that was a thing in itself.
Kevin: That experience, and I mentioned this in the opening of the show, is now an experience that over 338,000 students in this country have to go through. And, you know, at some point maybe we'll talk about the politics of gun legislation and all of that, but you now are involved in activism and you talk with other students who've been through it. Talk about some of your takeaways in conversations you've had with students who had to endure that type of similar tragedy, and in many instances, like you, run away from it.
Zoe: I think that there's a very big similarity between the survivors that I've encountered and just the facts of our stories and exactly what happened. And I know that the struggles that each of us went through are a little different and our variations of our stories are different. So, for instance, I may have jumped out of a window when someone else may have been right by the shooting. So, for instance, I didn't hear any shots that went off. And so that's another level of trauma that wasn't unlocked for me that was unlocked for some younger students, maybe or even older students. And so that's something I can never even comprehend and would never want to imagine.
But I think one of the biggest takeaways, when listening to other survivors that I've met, is that each of us are so strong and we have our own power. And the fact that we've decided to continue to keep going and go through such amazing things as or things like activism after going through something so horrific. So, for example, one of the survivors that I met from Uvalde, she should be 11 now. And so seeing her go through something so tragic at such a younger age than I was because I was 17 and she was 9 at the time. And so having to go through that at 9 and what I went through at 17 and feeling like a big blubbering baby just makes all the difference. So being able to see her speak on Capitol Hill and go to the White House and meet the President, she's probably one of my biggest aspirations and one of my biggest inspirations in what I want to be because I tell her all the time I want to be like her when I grow up.
Kevin: I say children are resilient, but the human species is resilient. But when you go through that type of tragedy, and I say this for a number of students who may be listening and they may have to go through drills in their classroom and preparation for all that, talk a little bit about the days and weeks following, because you alluded to the fact that in talking with that 11-year-old girl at Uvalde and, you know, you would break down and children have been known to get upset. But talk about those immediate days following and what you had to undergo in order to bring yourself back to some stability.
Zoe: I think the days after, I would never . . . I think I get this question a lot, and I think people tend to want to hear a lie versus the truth. It definitely is very, very hard to kind of bounce back from what you used to do. And I think especially for me, and I know for a lot of other younger people, I think we feel like we have to be a lot stronger than we actually do. And so I think I tried to put on mask a lot of the times and feel like I had to be grown up because I was 17 going on 18. And so I felt like even though I went through this traumatic thing, I was getting ready to go off to college by myself, and I knew that I was going far away. And so I felt like I have to be strong for everybody around me and I have to be strong for myself and I shouldn't let something this minuscule get to me, which back then that is the craziest thinking.
But I know that I went through a lot of mental hurdles, and one of the biggest helps or one of the biggest things that was beneficial to me, although it may sound somewhat childish, was kind of getting back to somewhat normalcy, was hanging out with friends a lot. And so little things that we used to do, like we have Meijer, and so we used to do this thing where we'd go to Meijer on the weekends and quite literally just goof around. And so we'd get on skateboards and go around Meijer riding on skateboards, which is probably something we should not have been doing at all, and just buying stuff and going to the movies and going skating and going bowling.
So different things like that and making sure that we could kind of get somewhat back to normalcy of what we did before the shooting was a very big help for me. But I think also starting therapy, although I did start a year late because I was very unsure of it. But once starting, it has been one of the biggest helps for me.
Kevin: Now it's interesting you talk about just doing fun stuff, young people stuff, kids stuff. Was that part of what led you to help found the organization S.E.E?
Zoe: It is. It very much is. So S.E.E started back actually this past November. So we come up on our year mark just recently. And so S.E.E started because I actually started with the group March for Our Lives, which we'll probably get into at some point. But I started with them, and meeting other survivors within March was also one of the biggest helps for me getting over everything that I went through just because I didn't have someone who could guide me in the survivor space because my mother and my father, although they were very helpful, they didn't understand what I'd gone through and they couldn't help me in that way. And so meeting other survivors who were able to kind of coach me through what I was going through and coaching with my feelings and so many gave me the idea of therapy.
It gave me the idea for S.E.E, but I had no idea what I wanted to do with it. And so after the Robb Elementary shooting in Uvalde, that's when S.E.E kind of really came into fruition because I had seen these younger students and I wanted to be able to help them in the way that Parkland survivors and Columbine survivors and Sandy Hook survivors helped me. And so that's when S.E.E came to life.
We got the idea to do a Survivors United Play Day, which is basically our take on field days that we used to have when we were younger. So we had things like tug of war, limbo, soccer games, anything from A to Z that was fun, that can go through students from any ages and any ranges.
S.E.E started with me and I think my publicist and my mom. And so we got together, and I think it was probably two months before November, so maybe September or October even. And I sat down with my publicist and my mom, and I told them I want to do something for these kids. I don't know what it is yet, but I want to go down and do this field day type of thing. Let's figure it out.
And they both, I don't think they looked at me with any judgment, but they were just very confused because they're like, "How soon do you want to do this? We have to raise money. Who do you know? You don't know that many people in the survivor space. How are you going to put this together?" And I was like, "I don't know. We're going to figure it out."
And so, lo and behold, I don't know how it happened. But two months later we raised money, we got funds, we partnered with another group that actually came out of my high school called the Oxford Legacy. And so that's where a lot of IB students got together and made, I want to say, 1,300 handmade blankets. And they had been wanting to go to Uvalde to give them to the Robb students. And so we partnered with them. We had so many amazing sponsors. So American Airlines donated tickets. We had Therapy Animals of San Antonio bring out their dogs. And we had Little Caesars bring this big, almost converted semi-truck, and they turned it into a Love Kitchen.
Kevin: Oh, wow.
Zoe: And so they made pizzas on the spot for us. It was amazing. And so we got together and we had this event two months after the initial idea, which was the best possible time ever.
Kevin: What was powerful about that, and I've seen . . . I'll be honest, when I was looking at some of the things you've been doing, I saw some of the news interviews from that and I just kept watching them because the kids, I saw the kids playing, I saw the games. I saw kids of various ages interact. I saw some of the interviews, and I said this is a good idea because sometimes adults feel like, all right, you know, we need to pass legislation, we need to do this, we need to institute safety procedures. All that stuff is good. But sort of the purity of the idea of S.E.E is let's have some time where kids can just enjoy each other and just get away from all the stuff. And from what I could tell, it was really a big success.
Zoe: It was amazing. I definitely wanted to get feedback from some of the younger students. And I also wanted to make sure that we could incorporate some sort of healing into it. And so, like you said before, not necessarily going into all the trauma at once, but even when connecting and building these relationships, because that is the idea behind S.E.E, we want to make sure that we can build and connect and continue to nurture those relationships between survivors of all ages. So I want it to be intergenerational, and that's the main goal.
And so meeting with, we had, I want to say 17 Oxford students come. And so they were current students at the time. So we had seniors and juniors, and then we had these 9, 10, 11-year-olds come together. And even when playing together, that was probably . . . my back was hurting so bad. I didn't know that I was that old, but it was the absolute best time. But making sure the kids . . .
Kevin: Now I'm not going to let you get away with that. I've got to say something to that. Okay. So I can't let that pass. I don't mean to cut you off, but, you know, I'm not going to let you claim age right now.
Zoe: It was just so . . . I think I started to realize that I was older than these students.
Kevin: Okay, there you go. Much better.
Zoe: Older than 11. Older than 10 and 11. But meeting with these students and being able to do things where we could still have somewhat conversations and asking them, you know, how do you feel, because they had to go back to school, and so, how do you feel being back in school and how do you like your teachers? So not going too much into it, but making sure that we can still keep those connections and have those conversations.
Kevin: You know, there's that part of it, but you've also gotten involved, and as I said at the top of the show is the activism. And I'm assuming, because you said you weren't really an activist or into politics before the shooting, you weren't as aware of the political dynamics of guns. And talk a little bit about your discovery, you know, once you were involved in that situation and then you wanted to try to make a difference. I'm sure now that your eyes are wide open in terms of the politics associated with gun violence.
Zoe: They are. One thing that I'll forefront with is I still have to do a lot of research. And so I definitely always have to look at articles or learn stuff from people at March. But in the beginning of the activism space, I knew absolutely nothing because growing up I think my father's very political and so he loves to watch CNN and "Morning Joe" and every single political show that I can think of. He's from West Africa, but he traveled here when he was 30 and so, or 16 I want to say. So he's been in America for a while, but he likes to keep date on things. So I don't know where that came from on my side where I wasn't very into political things. But I think that my parents somewhat shielded me from the news and from politics because they knew eventually I would have to grow up and learn about it anyway.
And so I actually had no idea that school shootings were a thing really. I knew that they had happened, but I didn't know anything about Parkland or Sandy Hook or Columbine even. And so I think that actually is an interesting topic on how we don't really realize the things that are happening until they happen to us because I had no idea about the gruesome reality until it happened to me. And so, after that, I did get thrown into very fast the political side of things. But since then, I think it's been very beneficial for me to learn these things, just because, especially being a young person in America, there's things that we need to know. And so I'm very happy that or fortunate that I can kind of learn about these things now.
Kevin: And in your conversations with elected officials, policymakers, what are some of your thoughts in terms of how we should, you know, begin to address the issue? And I'm asking you that in terms of going beyond just a particular piece of legislation or what have you. But in order for students like you to feel safe, what are some of the things that adults should consider in trying to deal with this issue?
Zoe: I think more than legislation, it is just very important for me and the spaces that I've been in recently, one of the things that I've noticed is a lot of the older generation tend to not necessarily listen to the younger generation, just because I think they may think that we're naive at times or that we might not be able to get things done. And to that, I say it's been very interesting to kind of watch people watch us do such amazing things. And so there's been so many things that March itself and other youth-led gun advocacy groups have done. And so I think it's just more about making sure that we're paying attention to our young people and our constituents because we are the people that are getting things done, and we are the new generation that's coming into this political movement.
Kevin: And clearly you're going to have a voice and that voice will be heard. Going back to those students like you, who've experienced a tragedy, you know, everyone knows that absenteeism increases, antidepressant drug usage increases. Many kids have a hard time or either don't fully recover, and they may not graduate. You were able to move on with your life, at least to the point where now you're a college student and you're progressing well. What advice would you give to any student out there who's experienced tragedy related to gun violence in order to move forward?
Zoe: I think for any student I would say the thing that works for me is, and I think this is also a very big issue in black and brown communities, it's a very big stigmatization to want to go to therapy and to want to seek help is what I've realized. And so, even for me, I never thought that I would be one of those people. But it did take me a year after just to be able to ask for help because I felt like I had to be stronger. And so I think it's important to make sure that you're reaching out to anyone, even if it's a loved or a favorite teacher because I reached out to my favorite administrator when I was having a hard day. I remember a specific day where I actually went to her office and cried in her arms, which is, again, something I never thought I would do.
But it's okay to have those moments to break down and to want to go to different people. For me, that main person was my mother because me and my mom are very close. And so, in that time, I trusted her with all of my emotions and everything that I was going through, although it might have taken time. And so although it may be hard, I think it's important to reach out to even one trusted person to tell them what you're going through and to seek the help that you do need.
Kevin: You know, as I said earlier, you're part of a series of episodes that we're doing on school safety. We've had school safety experts on to talk about metal detectors, to talk about using technology to detect if there's a gun, you know, anywhere in the area, in the parking lot. Some of the experts talk about, you know, training teachers. There's a segment out there that wants to train teachers to be armed as well. Beyond these things, from a student's perspective, and this is what I really want to know, Zoe, what could schools be doing differently that would help students face the unlikely possibility of a school gun-related violence?
Zoe: I think one of the main things for me is, and this was actually mentioned to me by another survivor in one of those many beneficial conversations was mental health check-ins are actually something that we didn't do at school, that I think would be super important to do in schools because as a young student, especially in high school and college and those changing years, you're definitely trying to navigate and figure out what you want to do with your life and go through all these changes and mental health differences. And so one thing that we didn't do at Oxford is kind of mental health check-ins with either teachers or professionals to make sure where we are and see where we're at in our lives. And I feel like that would be very important.
And the other thing is, especially after the trauma that happened at our school, we ended up meeting a lot of guidance counselors or at least our guidance counselors. And one of the things that we felt was we weren't very connected to our guidance counselors just because, at least in my four years, I'd only met my guidance counselor maybe once or twice. And so it got to the time to where they were telling us to reach out to your guidance counselors if you feel some way or reach out to certain teachers. And a lot of us didn't feel connected because there are a certain amount of students that they deal with. And at least for my counselor herself, I didn't feel super connected to her.
And so I think making sure that you can have some kind of connection with your students, even if that doesn't mean being their favorite teacher and letting them blow off class or letting them not do an assignment, working with certain students or making sure that you have somewhat of an emotional connection to your students just so they know that you are a real person, if that makes sense. And so they feel somewhat of a connection to you.
Kevin: Well said. Zoe Touray, thank you so much for joining us, and good luck to you in school. We appreciate you being on "What I Want to Know."
Zoe: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I loved it.
Kevin: Thanks for listening to "What I Want to Know." Be sure to follow and subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app so you can explore other episodes and dive into our discussions on the future of education. And write a review of the show. I also encourage you to join the conversation and let me know what you want to know using #WIWTK on social media. That's #WIWTK.
For more information on Stride and online education, visit stridelearning.com. I'm your host, Kevin P. Chavous. Thank you for joining "What I Want to Know."
Meet Zoe
Zoe Touray is the founder of S.E.E. (Survivors Embracing Each Other), an organization dedicated to building a community of compassion for survivors.
Zoe survived the November 2021 Oxford High School shooting in Michigan and is on a mission to preserve the innocence of America’s students.
Now, she travels nationwide to advocate for safer schools, increased crisis and trauma prevention, and intervention services for students and staff.
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What I Want to Know
In this podcast, you will hear from leaders in education as we talk through learning solutions for homeschool, online school, education pathways, and topics tailored specifically to online students and parents.
