by Chris Tobias

Howdy.  Chris here.  This post is going to be a little off the beaten path from what we usually do here at Take Back the Sky, but as an educator, I wanted to share something that affected me very deeply, both personally and professionally.  I hope you don’t mind.

It has been a little over a year since the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut that claimed the lives of 26 of the school’s students and teachers.  Like many people, I was deeply affected by the event, more so than by any other like it before or since.  I think this was not only because of the young age of many of the victims, but also because teachers gave their lives in an effort to protect their students.

It’s unfortunate that so much controversy arose in the wake of the Newtown shooting.  All the debate about gun control vs. Americans’ right to keep and bear arms and the media’s coverage of incidents like this (and those who perpetrate them) vs. Americans’ right to free speech can sometimes cause us to lose sight of the real human tragedy.  Like most Americans, I have very strong feelings about those issues, but it is not my intention to discuss them here.  Instead, I want to talk about a project I undertook to pay tribute to those students and teachers who lost their lives at Sandy Hook Elementary, a project I dubbed “The 26 for 26 Project.”

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