Shootings Dear Rachel Maddow

PREVENTING SANDY HOOK

Rachel Maddow did a show tonight mostly on The Sandy Hook Promise Group whose goals are "to honor the 26 lives lost at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and to do everything [it] can to encourage and support common sense solutions that make...our country safer from similar acts of violence."

In response, I wrote to her:

Hi Rachel,

My dad watches your show religiously, and I wanted to say that you have a special spot in our living room....

But more importantly, I wanted to bring up ideas about how to prevent shootings from a mental health standpoint. I think these programs could mean tremendous potential for change in our society, and I hope you look into them, and pass the ideas onto the world.

Teaching Empathy & Social-Emotional Intelligence/ Emotional Literacy Programs: Basically, Social-emotional intelligence involves understanding and recognizing people's emotions and situations, caring about others in general, and wanting to help those you care about (which should be everyone, because we're all human). SE Intelligence can prevent problems with war, terrorism, crime, rape, sexual abuse, family abuse, the high divorce rate, school shootings, and can even help with poverty just by teaching people to love more, and to learn more social & self-development skills. These problems are symptoms of the lack of connection/community, empathy (and consciousness) in our current world (and perhaps too much technology, as things like facebook give the illusion of more connection, when really, it's an illusion, it's separating us). "There needs to be curriculum required by law to be taught to the students on how to treat all people and all students with respect, and teasing and bullying ought not to be tolerated."

There are many experts, projects, and curricula that address this: Roots of Empathy, Turnaround Arts Intiative, The Empathy Symbol- teaching empathy in schools, Activating Empathy: Transforming Schools to Teach What Matters, Imagine a world where every child masters empathy. Lets do it., The YESS Institute, The YES house, Summer Camps! (should be available to everyone), Wings: helping kids soar, Caring School Community, I Can Problem Solve, Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS), Strong Kids, Tolerance: teaching empathy in high school, The Challenge Day Program, David A. Levine on Teaching Empathy,Emotional Intelligence Is the Missing Piece, How Emotional Intelligence is Linked to School Success, Daniel Goleman Introduces Emotional Intelligence, Why W

e Should Teach Empathy To Improve Education (And Test Scores), Educating for Empathy, Gossip Girls and Boys Get Lessons in Empathy, Empathic Education: The Transformation of Learning in an Interconnected World

These programs not only help a person understand themselves and deal with their mental health in a better fashion, but they also help with people making friends and environments becoming less hostile. These kind of programs make way and support the addressing of bullying, poverty, war, depression, eating disorders, and so many things we could work on to help prevent shootings from happening in the first place.

If these types of programs were required in schools, everyone would benefit in the ways I've already mentioned, and also, test scores would raise because becoming more socially & emotionally intelligent has an effect on academic success. Counter-intuitively, focusing on only science, math, and english... and discarding important things like right brain activities (art, social & emotional development, exercise, creativity, community) makes people stupider, and they end up succeeding less.

Turnaround arts is one example of how art effects the brain: Academic success rates went up, and kids felt better. I did a report on this in which I found that schools with art programs spend less on art than they do on behavior management, and when art is taught, schools have a dramatic decrease in violence, no longer needing nearly as much behavior management as previously.

Shootings are a very severe symptom of a mental health epidemic... And I'm sure that nurturing the right brain of all children will help prevent the next generation from becoming shooters.

I'm aware that this isn't the only solution needed, and that it's not a complete solution, but I hope you will look into it and advocate for it.

I also think other things could help tremendously: family mentoring programs; addressing bullying community building challenge courses; projects like cityrepair.org youth groups; boy scouts boys and girls clubs; teaching mindfulness, consciousness, enlightenment, meditation, community service; nutritionists addressing vitamin deficiencies; nutritionists addressing healthy-but good tasting-food in schools and the teaching of healthy cooking; and,

more encouragement of the gluten-free diet because up to 1/3 of people have the genes for gluten intolerance and it effects mental health, yet goes undiagnosed because it doesn't always show up on tests. Doctors don't understand that most people who are gluten intolerant have extreme positive responses to going gluten-free, but hardly ever show positive on a test. For this reason, doctors think that the gluten-free diet is a fad and that going gluten free when the test is negative is just a waste of money and isn't recommended. However, when you talk to medical professionals in the field, they are clearly recommending that the gluten-free trial is the only way to know for sure, and that tests aren't accurate in picking up non-celiac gluten intolerance. Gluten intolerance is causing many many problems (over 300 symptoms, misdiagnoses

and lastly, with counseling, therapy counseling available to everyone, change the stigma on it because no one wants to just because they don't want to be the only one or the weird one. They don't want anything to be "wrong" with them, and people think that they need something to be "wrong" with them in order to go to a counselor.. When in reality, everyone should go. Schools violent video games need extreme reform; and yes, vaccinations are causing autism & allergies which sometimes cause problems as big as shootings, and should be outlawed as well.

While some of my views are controversial, I hope you'll look and consider promoting some or all. I have no intention other than helping improve the situation our country is in....It's really an epidemic, and making sure that only background checked & fully mentally okay people have access to guns... it's not going to solve the entire problem.

Thanks for reading. --and for your activism too.

Sincerely,

Michelle Monk