Welcome to the Classroom Narratives Healing and Education Podcast, the space where education meets resilience.
I'm Dr. Joey Weisler, and in each episode, we dive deep into the personal stories of educators, students,
leaders, and frontline advocates who are navigating the complexities within modern education.
Whether you're just starting your teaching journey or are a seasoned professional looking for inspiration,
we'll explore how to foster meaningful change, prevent burnout, and build trauma-informed communities within our schools.
Now, let's take a seat at the front of the classroom as we get started.
Hey, welcome back to the program, everyone.
And this week, I'm deeply honored to welcome on Florida House Representative Christine Hunschofsky for a conversation.
And as the former mayor of Parkland and now a Florida state representative,
Christine has been a tireless advocate for mental health, education reform, and public safety.
And her leadership and ongoing work in fostering community resilience and legislative action
have made her a beacon of hope and progress.
And it's really a true privilege for me to have Christine speak with me today because I've known her
even before her work in politics as a childhood friend of her son, Michael.
So, Christine, welcome, and I'm looking forward to our audiences being inspired by what you do in leadership.
Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to our discussion.
Absolutely. It's going to be a really powerful one.
So, Christine, you were our mayor of the city of Parkland in the aftermath of the events that took place on February 14th, 2018.
And as one of your followers on social media, you were speaking very heavily during that time
about the importance of taking care of ourselves, supporting others,
and really trying to help break that stigma for those in need in terms of the importance of getting professional help and therapeutic services when needed.
And so I wanted to ask if you can take us back to that point in time and just try and humanize as a leader
how you managed to maintain your own wellness after that event,
and what advice would you give to other community leaders as well in the onset of tragedy and taking care of themselves?
Yeah, that's a great question.
Initially, I have to confess I did not take good care of myself at all.
When something like this happens, especially so close to home, especially with families who you know,
it's very hard to differentiate between your role as mayor and knowing that I'm also a mom,
and this is literally my worst nightmare.
And in the way that I chose to lead in the aftermath is to really just humanize what happened to our community
so that members of the community could see that everybody was dealing with this in their own way
and that we had to give ourselves and each other some grace in that process,
but also to humanize it to the world beyond our area for people looking in.
I remember thinking of the other mass shootings that had happened prior to ours
and always remembering that they talked about the killer,
and they talked about it in such a non-human way that I really wanted people to understand
that there were real people, real families, real members of the community who were devastated by this
and whose lives would never be the same again.
And I encouraged, you know, we had people arguing with each other in our community about what should be done,
and somebody did too much of this, and somebody didn't do enough of that,
and I know when a massive trauma like this happens to a community,
that division comes very much in the wake of it.
It's very normal in a traumatic situation, especially something of this magnitude,
and I just wanted the community to realize that there was help available,
that it was important that we take care of ourselves,
it was important that, you know, we take a deep breath before we rush to judge
the intentions of another person whose shoes we don't walk in.
And at one point, I did trauma therapy myself,
and I actually took a picture of it while I was going through it and posted it on social media
to not just kind of tell other people what they should do,
but let people know that everyone was dealing with some sort of trauma from this,
and that it was okay and actually necessary to get the help you needed,
because how could you take care of your loved ones if you weren't taking care of yourself?
Absolutely, yeah, and Christine, you're making me think about a conversation
that you had through New York City, it was Zoom, because it was June 2020, mid-COVID,
but I listened into it, and one thing that you made an observation on with Tony Montalto,
also on that call, who is the president of the organization Stand With Parkland,
you mentioned that it's really hard to analyze trauma on individual levels, because,
to some respect, we don't study it enough as we should.
And you mentioned that because of that, there is a big division that was occurring
through different trauma lenses throughout the community, and I was curious if you could
just mention what those were and how they were rectified.
Yeah, for example, what I learned from this tragedy was that you can have a mass trauma,
but how individuals react to it is very specific to that individual,
and previous traumas they've been through, addressed or unaddressed,
it was all about giving people grace, meeting people where they are, and so when someone
would get upset at someone else, I would always go back to, do you think they're in pain as well?
And we don't know why their pain is leading them in this direction versus the direction
you're going in, and that we all had the right to grieve in our own way and process in our own way.
So for some people, they wanted to protest, for other people, they didn't want to protest,
some people wanted to be public, some people wanted to be private, and I guess my point was
that everybody's path to healing will be different, and that we had to offer and allow as many paths
as possible. For example, at the one-year commemoration, we had a multitude of options
for people to kind of grieve in a communal way, whether it was at the Temple of Time,
whether it was doing a charity project of packing food, whether it was being with the therapy dogs,
whether it was art or music, whether it was painting rocks, or maybe it was just sitting
somewhere in a peaceful area by yourself, and we wanted to have as many options as possible for
people recognizing that everybody grieves and processes this trauma in their own way,
and that we needed to have space for that.
Absolutely, and I know under your leadership as well, we established the Eagles Haven,
and I believe they're going to speak with us as well in the near future because I too am a part of
the courses that they offer. The Eagles Haven offers free courses to the community in arts,
painting, I take guitar class there, and it's all just a way to help people recognize what options
are there for them, so I'm so glad you brought that up as well because I believe Eagles Haven
will echo you when their time comes.
And Christine, one thing we've already mentioned on this conversation here are just different ways
to provide psychological first aid as a leader. Under your leadership, what does psychological
first aid look like, and based upon your experiences, what can other leaders take from that and feel
inspired for themselves?
I don't know if it was psychological first aid, but I tried to go to every community event
possible in that time. I went to as many funerals as I could, and I was very happy to be able to
attend as many funerals as I could. I went to as many school safety meetings as possible.
I wanted the community to know that they were not alone, and even if it meant at times I
got yelled at or people weren't very happy, I wanted people to know that no matter what,
we were here for them and that we were going to get through this one way or another together.
When such a mass shooting happens, it really takes away people's trust in how things should be.
I think it takes away people's core sense of feeling safe, so people were not feeling safe
all the time. It was about reassuring. It was about showing up. It was about realizing what
people were going through and trying to address it, whether it be through extra safety conversations,
making sure people were aware of trauma services around, and just doing the best we could to make
sure that people had what they needed to get them through this.
Yeah, you're reminding me now of Frank D'Angelis, who was the acting principal of
Columbine High School during his time. One thing very much like you, Christine, is that he said
that the most important thing that he could do is show up and lead from the heart.
I know at the state level that you have been working on different initiatives and mental
health. I wanted to know if you could talk to us about that and how you were inspired to be
involved in those types of projects and initiatives and where they're going to go from here.
Yeah, that's a great question. When I first got to the Florida house, we were in COVID,
so it was a very different time than it is right now. It was very quiet at the Capitol,
and I was looking for legislation. I remembered reading the third interim grand jury report
following the MSD shooting. One of the recommendations in there was to have a
commission on mental health. One of the bills I filed that session followed that recommendation
of establishing a commission on mental health, and we added substance use disorder.
Almost didn't pass, but I was able to work with committee staff and leadership, and
got the support, and it did pass. Actually, I'm currently the speaker's representative on that
commission. Over the last several years, we've made a whole bunch of recommendations for improving
access to quality mental health care and substance use disorder care. That's been important to me
because we have subject matter experts who join our meetings, help us with recommendations and
working through of how we can turn those into reality. Then those recommendations get sent to
the Senate president, the speaker of the house, and the governor in order to be turned into,
hopefully, law. We've had a lot of improvements from that standpoint. We've done a lot with school
safety, making sure that there are additional barriers to entering schools, that there are
better protocols in place, making sure that we have mental health coordinators at the school
district so that people don't fall through the cracks. Another initiative was to make sure that
anyone who is getting any sort of treatment through the school, that their caregivers are also aware
of what's available in the community, not only to the student, but also to the caregivers.
There's just been a lot of work done, and what I've appreciated about this process is the ability
to focus on school safety and also mental health. It is, for me, the reason why I'm there,
and it has been wonderful to actually see the leadership buy into that because so many families
are affected these days. Yeah, thank you so much again for letting us celebrate these efforts right
alongside you. In 2018, I was actually trained as a community member and substitute teacher
in applied suicide intervention skills training as a way to be there for subjects in school while
also keeping them safe for now, and I wanted to ask what other resources are accessible to us
throughout the community in order to remain suicide safe? Initiatives that I was made aware of
after the shooting was the Columbia Lighthouse Project, and what that is is they will give you
cards if you're like a parent or a co-worker of questions you should be asking people, and what
they found out is that talking about suicide actually can help prevent suicide. Asking someone
if they've considered suicide, if they've made a plan for suicide, and if you go online you can
print out the questions. There was once an idea that if you spoke about suicide you were causing
it to increase, but it's actually quite the opposite. It's about letting people know that
they're seen and that somebody's checking in on them, making sure they're okay, and
then if they are contemplating suicide it's an opportunity for them to talk about it and to work
together to get them the help they need. Definitely, thank you so much for that, and at the time of
this recording there was also another recent passing within our community, and again I just
want to know if you can talk to us a little bit more again about what different proactive steps
members within a community can provide each other to prevent those types of events from happening?
Yeah, I mean there are wonderful programs online with suicide prevention. I think the first thing
we need to realize is it could happen to anybody, and I think approaching it with a sense of humility
is really important. We have mental health counselors in schools, we have mental health
counselors in the community. Eagles Haven is a wonderful resource of connecting people to the
resources they need. It's also a wonderful place that if somebody's in crisis and needs to be sent
home with like a safe plan that can be done there. I think it's just important to talk about these
things. Suicide is not going away. Young people today are under a lot of different pressures.
There is increased anxiety disorder, increased depressive disorder, increased bipolar disorder,
and I think it's just really important that we're making sure that young people know that they are
worth more than the grade on their last exam, they are worth more than their GPA, they are worth more
than their SAT or ACT scores, and that we recognize that they are human beings who are dealing with a
lot of things. I don't know, Joey, if you remember, I remember my teenage years not always the best
times and that we provide them space to not only to do the things they love but also to
fail sometimes and letting them know that that's okay, that that happens to everybody
and that they have the support they need in order to get back up again.
This has been wonderful. We had a conversation today that has appeals to leaders and politicians.
We had a conversation that has appealed to teachers and even community members and artists.
So I think one population that we haven't looked at just yet, and this would be my last question,
Christine, for our takeaway in today's conversation, especially for our students listening,
who are training their minds at a much younger and local level, what are some things that we can gather from our dialogue here?
That every day is a new day. You are worth more than the sum of your test scores, your GPA, your SAT.
I think it's so important to give yourself grace when you're going through things in life
and to give others that grace as well. I think it's also important to find out the things you love to do,
what you're great at, and what you're not so great at. And remember that there is support available
if you ever need it. There are people who love you no matter what. And so please reach out if you need a helping hand
and stretch out and give a helping hand to those who might need it who are with you in class.
Thank you for joining us on the Classroom Narratives Healing and Education podcast.
If today's episode inspired you or made you think differently, I'd love to hear from you.
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