Students Nervously Return To School After Deadly Shooting - Spokane, North Idaho News & Weather KHQ.com

Students Nervously Return To School After Deadly Shooting

MIAMI (AP) - There's a new challenge facing schoolteachers across the country today -- as they face nervous and frightened students, looking for reassurance and answers following Friday's shooting that left 20 children dead at a Connecticut elementary school.
    
In Connecticut, state education officials are providing schools around the state with written guidance to help classroom teachers address the shooting in Newtown with their students.
    
One history teacher in Florida says, "It's going to be a tough day."
    
The superintendent of a Minnesota school district says a mental health consultant will meet with school officials today.
    
Many schools will hold a moment of silence today, and will fly flags at half-staff.
    
School administrators have pledged to add police patrols, review security plans and make guidance counselors available.
    
CONNECTICUT SCHOOL SHOOTING-PARENTS
    
Parents look to ease children's fears, while also dealing with fears of their own
    
NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) - In Newtown, Conn., and around the country, parents are trying to help their children return to school without fear today, in the aftermath of Friday's deadly shooting at a Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.
    
The mother of two children who attend a different school in Newtown says she feels like "we have to get back to normal" -- but Kim Camputo adds, "I don't know if there is normal anymore." She says she'll be dropping her children off and picking them up herself for a while.
    
The mother of 10-year-old twins in a Miami suburb, Jessica Kornfeld, says parents need to hide their own fears. She says, "For them, you need to pretend that you're OK." But she adds, "It's scary."
    
She sat down with her son and daughter after school Friday, and explained to them what had happened. She told them they were safe with her. Her son replied, "But it could have been us."
    
Kornfeld says she drove the children to their elementary school over the weekend, hoping to show them it's still a safe place.