For Teachers, Newtown Shootings Prompt Reflection, Outreach

Mourners grieve after paying respects at the wake for Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victim Victoria Soto on Tuesday in Stratford, Conn. Ms. Soto, 27, was a teacher at the school who died during Friday's shooting after reportedly trying to shield her pupils from the gunman.
—Charles Krupa/AP
By Liana Heitin

Teachers do plenty of things for students that are not in their job descriptions. They bandage scraped knees, remember birthdays, give out their cell phone numbers, purchase classroom supplies, attend athletic events, and organize school festivals. But Victoria Soto, a 27-year-old 1st grade teacher in Newtown, Conn., went as far as a teacher could possibly go, putting her body between her students and a spray of bullets.

Soto was one of the 26 victims of the Dec. 14 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Her picture and the accounts of her heroics—in which she reportedly hid students in closets before the shooter entered her classroom and shot her—have spread widely and become central components of the nation’s mental and emotional understanding of what happened that day in Newtown.

And Soto wasn’t the only educator at Sandy Hook to sacrifice her life for her students. Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, the principal, and Mary Sherlach, the school psychologist, ran into the hallway from a meeting upon hearing gunshots. Both were killed. Three other faculty members at the school were also gunned down as they tried...

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