Saving Sycamore: The School Shooting That Never Happened

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined today by Molly Hudgens. Molly is a nationally known speaker and expert on preventing school shootings. She's a counselor at Sycamore Middle School in Pleasant View, Tennessee, and a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor. She is the author of the new book, Saving Sycamore, The School Shooting That Never Happened.

[00:36] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:39] SPEAKER_01:

Molly, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:40] SPEAKER_00:

Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Justin, for having me today.

[00:43] SPEAKER_01:

So this is one that did make headlines, but made headlines maybe less dramatically and for a better reason than so many of the tragic school shootings that we've been reading about in the last couple of years. Take us into that story. So you were a counselor at Sycamore Middle School. And do you still work at Sycamore, I should ask?

[01:04] SPEAKER_00:

I do. I actually started at Sycamore right out of college at the ripe old age of 21. And I am now 44 and I'm still here at Sycamore and I still am the school counselor. And so my situation was that I had been a teacher here for about eight years prior to moving to the counseling department. And this was September the 28th of 2016. And I was here in my office and a 14-year-old eighth grader came to me with a fully loaded handgun and an additional magazine of ammunition and a plan to harm people here on our campus.

[01:40]

That was not certainly something that I was prepared for in many ways, but in other ways, I think that I had been. Ironically, my first year here at Sycamore was the 1999 school year when the shooting happened at Columbine High School in Colorado. And for reasons I didn't quite understand at the time, I became very interested in researching about school shootings, mostly because I couldn't quite wrap my mind around how two boys could plan something of this nature over a year's time and someone not have seen some type of red flags. And so from 1999 until 2009, I researched shootings, reading every book that I could find or publication by law enforcement, by mental health experts, by educators connected to these tragedies.

[02:32]

And I was hoping to gain some insight. It was my belief that it could be possible to prevent a school shooting if you were able to intervene in the life of a child before something like that happened. So after 10 years of research, I wrote a training and I traveled all over Tennessee doing that training pretty much for anybody who would listen to me. It was called, ironically, Recognizing Red Flags and Educators' Role in Preventing School Violence. And it was an in-depth psychological analysis of about 32 school shooters. So that morning of September 28th, when that child came to me here in the counseling department, I had a moment where not my life flashed before my eyes, but all the years of research flashed before my eyes.

[03:20]

And I thought to myself, I was being prepared for such a time as this. Because in those 10 years, not many people We're talking a lot about school crisis plans. Columbine really made people start to set up and focus more on what our schools were doing to take preventative action. And so in some ways, I felt like I was Noah building the ark when nobody had ever seen it rain. But then after this incident happened, people began to realize that things like this were possible. So that morning when he came to me, We talked for a while.

[03:59]

I knew fairly early into the situation that he had a gun. He told me that he did. And I got up from my... I was seated at my desk and he was seated across from me in a chair.

[04:11]

And I got up and walked around my desk and got down on my knees beside him. I remember putting my left hand on his shoulder and interlacing the fingers of my right hand with his right hand. He had the gun in his left hand, pointed at the floor. And I remember...

[04:27]

us just talking a lot. He had been going through a lot of things in his life that I feel like had kind of swirled themselves into a perfect storm that morning. And we had talked about many options for what he could do. Again, I feel like the research and the years of training that I had unknowingly been preparing for were very helpful to me in the questions that I asked, in the demeanor that I presented. and the calmness that I tried to keep steady. But ultimately he asked me if I believed in God.

[05:01]

And I thought about a student at Columbine high school who was shot when she was asked that same question. And I remember thinking that I, regardless of the response, I still had to tell the truth. And I told him that I did, but I wasn't, I felt like maybe he didn't, you know, was there a reason that he didn't? And he told me that he, I had prayed many times for help, and he felt like God would never send him any. And so I remember saying, well, you know, what do you think this is? And then all of a sudden, an idea presented itself that, again, I had not considered really here in my job previously.

[05:38]

But I thought, well, he talked about God. He had asked a lot of questions about that. And so I said, would you be offended if I prayed with you? Maybe we should say a prayer about it. And I prayed probably the most heartfelt prayer of my life. I cried the whole time.

[05:55]

He did too. And it was shortly after that that I asked him if I could have the gun. And I had asked for it multiple times during the course of the 90 minutes he was with me. But that time he said, I think that I want to give it to you. So I said, why don't you let me lean over and take it and you won't have to give it to me. And so when I leaned over to take it, it was so heavy.

[06:17]

I knew then that it had to be fully loaded. but he hugged me, and I hugged him back. I remember telling him, I'm so proud of you. You did the right thing, and the right thing is never easy, but it's still the right thing, and we were able to contact our student resource officer in the building who came and was wonderful at talking with him and getting the story from him, and so we had an amazing experience here. We had, you know, I've learned that you have a less than 1% chance of having your school involved in a shooting and that you have an even smaller chance of having something like this happen, where you have a child go to someone before they commit a crime and say, I think I need help. And he did that.

[07:02]

He said to me when he came in, you know, Ms. Hudgens, I came to you because I think you're the only person that can talk me out of this. And I remember saying, well, let's talk about it. So it was probably...

[07:15]

the most terrifying yet most amazing day of my life. And I'm just grateful that I was able to be here for him when he needed me.

[07:24] SPEAKER_01:

So it occurs to me that the story doesn't really just begin with the student walking into your office with a loaded gun, and it doesn't just begin with the research that you had done up to this point. There was also a reason that he chose to come to you first, right? What do you think that was? Why did he know that he could come to you and talk to you about this?

[07:47] SPEAKER_00:

That's a great question. There are two reasons. The first reason is that a friend of his had come to me the week prior. And I do classroom guidance lessons with our students here at Sycamore every month. And I had told them previously, if you are ever struggling with something and you don't know what to do, I want you to come and ask me. And I had said to them, you may notice someone around you who is struggling and they may not feel confident enough or brave enough to ask for help.

[08:13]

And we are obligated as humans to stand in the gap for each other. And so I had told them, if you ever are worried about your friend, I want you to come and talk to me about it and we'll figure out what to do. So he had had a friend who came to me the Friday before this incident. This incident happened the following Wednesday. And he said, Ms. Hudgens, I just got this friend I think I'm kind of worried about.

[08:34]

I think you need to talk to him. And I remember him saying, he's going to be really mad at me that I talked to you. And I said, I don't think he's going to be mad. Most of the time people aren't. So I brought that child in, the same boy who was involved in this incident. that Friday, the same day I talked to his friend.

[08:50]

And I brought him in under the pretense that we were going to look at his grades, which we did that. We talked about his grades. But it also gave him a chance to kind of open up some. And he talked for almost 45 minutes uninterrupted. He poured out a lot of things that were going on with him. So we had a chance the week before to really form a strong rapport.

[09:11]

I don't normally get to spend 45 minutes talking to just one child. School counseling really focuses more on brief counseling. But in that particular day, it worked itself out that I had the time and we were able to talk. And so the next week on Tuesday, the day prior to this, I did a classroom guidance lesson with his class. And the lesson talked about if it was the last day of your life, what would you do? And I talked to him about how one life can make a difference.

[09:39]

And we watched a video about Wells Crowther who was a trader who was killed in the World Trade Center helping to evacuate people. And so I told him that day again, you know, you never know when you may do something that could save somebody's life, when there may be someone who's in danger or who is struggling and they could be in danger even from themselves. And you might be the person who has to reach out for them. But at the end, I told him there may be a day that nobody's there and you're the person who is struggling and you may have to stand in the gap for yourself. And so the very next morning at 8.07, that's exactly what he did.

[10:19]

So I think it's because I had those two prior interactions that he felt comfortable talking to me. He knew that I wouldn't judge him for what he said. I certainly had never had a child present with a weapon or a plan to harm anyone before. But I tried, even in the midst of this, when he was talking to me, to not act as if that was an unusual thing. I wanted him to be calm and to be able to speak. But I also realized too, that morning in our conversation, because of the things that he shared and because of his demeanor and what was going on, that this was a child in crisis.

[10:59]

This was not a child who was bent on any type of revenge as we sometimes stereotypically think of when it comes to mass shootings. This was a situation of a child that I knew there was some type of brain health issue. I obviously am not the person that would diagnose that, but I recognize it is after, you know, after working with kids for close to, I guess it was 18 years at that point, this was not a common conversation, obviously, or a common situation. So I was grateful that I had spent those years researching because it gave me some insight into what was possibly going on. But I knew that the goal needed to be for him to relinquish the weapon with no shots fired. I did not want, obviously, to be harmed myself or for him to harm himself, but my ultimate thought was of our students and our staff, and I did not want anybody here to be injured.

[11:54]

I knew from what I had read what communities experience when they have something like this happen, and I remember thinking, not my school. This will not happen here, And I had been training for a marathon at the time. I was in probably the best physical shape of my life. And I positioned myself close to him during this conversation with the thought that there may be the possibility that I might have to attempt to take the weapon. I didn't want to do that. And God worked it out.

[12:23]

He gave me the best case scenario where I had a time to talk to him uninterrupted. Again, the counseling department is only second to the front office in terms of traffic. But that morning, everybody who normally would come to my room to get coffee or to just pop in and visit, they respected the fact that the door was closed and they passed by. So everything worked out exactly as it should have. And I think that the community that we had in our school, all the way down to the teacher who just understood that morning that something was not right and that he did need to talk to me, allowed him to leave class and come here to do that. It takes a special environment and it takes time to create that.

[13:02]

And so... It wasn't just me. It was a community of people that allowed that to be possible. But I think it was those two interactions specifically that set us up for the best case scenario.

[13:15] SPEAKER_01:

We've heard in so many cases where there's a different outcome, that there were warning signs or that there was perhaps a cry for help in some form or another that went unheeded. And what I hear you saying is that systems were in place, relationships were in place to hear those cries for help and to... be a listening ear and to be able to provide some of that support so that the student didn't feel totally alone. I mean, is that the feeling like of aloneness or what is, what is going through a young person's head when they are considering this?

[13:52]

Are they, are they just distraught? Are they, you know, I think we, as you said, we have kind of this image of, you know, of a premeditated and kind of, you know, hell bent kind of perspective, but what's your take on, on kind of what, the right way to think of what's going through a young person's head.

[14:22] SPEAKER_00:

Well, I can't say this for certain about my situation here, but you have to remember that in almost every mass shooting, whether it's on a school campus or in a public place, the person is first, in the first case, they are suicidal a lot of times. And so you're looking at someone who already is struggling with their own issues. Sometimes that can be everything from severe lack of self-worth combined with depression. There are a lot of factors. And of course, every person is different. There's no perfect formula.

[14:55]

But I think that a lot of times with adolescents, because there are so many hormonal and chemical changes that are going on with them, their behaviors can sometimes present themselves as unusual to adults. And of course, having worked in a middle school now for 22 years, you learn more as to what is normal for middle school, because even in their changing thought patterns and sometimes unusual actions, there still are things that are outside of that realm of normal, even for us. So I think that if you are, I always tell our teachers, if there is a student that you go home at night and there is something that still bothers you, either something they said, something they drew, something they wrote, a comment they made, then you need to share that with someone else on your staff. You need to talk with your, and in our school, that comes to the counseling department and every school has a different procedure for how those communications take place.

[15:54]

But for us, that is here so that we can then have the opportunity to discuss together what they're seeing and to meet with the child and try to determine if there are other things going on. Sometimes we involve parents if that is the specific situation. Obviously, if we think there's any intention for self-harm, we're going to involve the families. But sometimes what kids really need is somebody to just stop what they're doing and listen to them. And in our society where everything is so fast-paced and We do live in kind of a fast food sort of world. We expect things to happen quickly and our pace is always moving so fast that we sometimes, not that we intentionally do it, but we may pass over a child or even an adult who is going through a hard time.

[16:42]

And even though they're right there in front of us, we still may not see the things that are unusual. So when I look at a student, if we have a child who has drastic changes in behavior, maybe their grades decline or their moods appear to be very different or their behaviors are strange, if their friends reach out to us. And again, I really count on the kids to talk to me, to tell me if something's going on. And we have a system in place where they have access to me 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I've talked to kids on Christmas day and that's okay. For me, I'm willing to sacrifice that and the kids don't abuse it.

[17:22]

So I think that's why that works for us. They understand that it's for emergencies and they use it as such. So in your own school, I think you have to really evaluate what your situation is for identifying students. At our school, our counselors, we aren't involved in testing or scheduling. We simply are here to meet with the students. And we're involved in meetings and we have other tasks, of course, that are assigned to us.

[17:48]

But our main focus is to meet with kids. And for me, that worked off in a big way, you know, that year, especially because if I had been in the middle of a test or I had a specific morning duty that I could not leave, I wouldn't have been available. So it's really important in your school setting that you look for the best process for someone to be available to kids all the time that will just listen.

[18:12] SPEAKER_01:

I think that availability of time and having built a relationship and been there in the class and been available for previous conversations is so key here. What do you think is a reasonable ratio of counselors to students at the secondary level? Because I hear numbers like one counselor for 500 students, and often that even is not met. There are certainly lots of other duties and lots of other directions that counselors can get pulled in. But as you've illustrated so clearly here, there is a need to just be available. So how can we make sure that we have enough availability for our students?

[18:56] SPEAKER_00:

Well, you're exactly right with what you said. Right now in our state, we still have one counselor for every about 500 students. My school is smaller. We have about 700, between 700 and 750, but we do have two counselors. And one of the things that we do, even though I would like to see us have a better ratio, like I think it would be great if we had three or even four, we have four grade levels here. So I think it would be wonderful if we were able to have one for every school.

[19:25]

But since that financially is not possible for us, then What we try to do is make sure there's always one of us available. So if I am teaching classroom guidance, our other counselor is here in the counseling department. So he's always present. So I think sometimes schools have to look for creative ways to free up time for their counselors or their mental health experts who are on campus. You know, there are a lot of outside resources and working closely with families if we think that students need more than we can give them in a school setting is really important as well. So I would like to see the ratio be higher.

[20:01]

And that's one of the things I had the opportunity to speak at the state of Tennessee on the floor of the House of Representatives and on the Senate as well. And one of the things that I said is when you're looking at how to invest your money, I think that the wisest choices are not to invest in things or even in technology, but it's to invest in people. If we have people in place, the kids are always going to respond to them better than they will any other type of intervention. And so I encourage them to always to consider the importance. And in our state, school counselors are required in every school. So we're blessed for that.

[20:35]

I hope that's a national situation, but it may not be. But I would like to continue to see there be more mental health counselors available. And one thing that we've learned from the pandemic is that there is a great need for that. Kids do well when they're here on campus. They get to interact with adults and with people and some of them being at home, even though they may have loved their families and enjoyed some of the vacation time, I think they did miss some social interaction and some opportunities to learn that they might not have had if they'd been present. So we have a lot of new issues facing us in the mental health field as we move forward into the future.

[21:14]

And one thing, if there's anything to be grateful about the pandemic is I think it has brought more awareness to the fact that we do need to focus on the social emotional realm and how we can institute more of those people into our schools as we can find that financially possible.

[21:32] SPEAKER_01:

Let's talk a little bit more about the role of peers. And we've heard for many years in terms of things like bullying that bystanders play a very important role in preventing and responding to bullying. And when it comes to even higher level issues like the situation you described, you mentioned that the friends play a role, the classmates of a student who's struggling play a big role. What role do they play and how do you educate them about playing that role effectively?

[22:04] SPEAKER_00:

I think they play a huge role. I'm not sure, Justin, how well you remember middle school, but middle school and high school, a lot of times kids will share things with their friends and talk to their friends about things that they might not necessarily the adults in their lives. And so it's important that we train the students to understand. I've said to my kids before, if you ever have a friend who makes comments like, I think the world would be better off without me, or I don't think I want to live anymore. Or even they blatantly make comments like, if I'm not at school tomorrow, it's because I killed myself. We train them that if they hear things like that, they have to report it to someone.

[22:41]

And we have set up wonderful ways for them to do that, even anonymously, if they're afraid to do that. Sometimes kids are just afraid to actually come to the counseling department. So our seventh and eighth graders all have one-to-one laptops and they email me during the day. So there's lots of times that we're made aware of things through communication that way. So first of all, we have to empower them that they are stakeholders in their school and they are stakeholders in their friendships. And that it's important that if they see a friend who's struggling, that they not put off those concerns.

[23:13]

I think sometimes they do worry, is my friend going to be angry with me? And I always say, we can fix angry, but we can't fix dead. If we lose them, we have no more options. And I always remind them that anybody who's ever shared with me that they had a friend who was thinking about self-harm or even suicide, that after we've been able to work with that child, they've never stayed angry at their friend. So sometimes they just need to be reminded of the importance of the roles they play. And then they need to be given adequate opportunities to communicate with adults and to feel as if they can do that and be heard.

[23:50]

Sometimes I think, when kids report those things to adults, they may not always, the adults may not always receive that information in such a way that the child feels as if they've been heard. So I try to always make sure that when we meet with students about those things, that they understand that we're listening, we ask questions back to make sure we've clarified things. And a lot of times I even try to touch base with the child later and say, hey, I just want you, I can't tell you what we talked about, but I want you to know I met with your friend because they need to know that we take what they have to say seriously. And in middle and high school, as they're moving more toward adulthood, it's so important that we teach them how to have those conversations, how to converse with older people and how to share their concerns when they have them.

[24:32] SPEAKER_01:

So one area, Molly, that I know has become increasingly difficult for school leaders, for counselors, for educators of any type to kind of keep an eye on, an area where we're heavily reliant on peers to say something is when a threat is made or a concerning statement is made on social media, especially when So a lot of that media is either disappearing like Snapchat or it's private or it's not something that's public. What are some ways that schools can encourage that peer effect to work when it comes to things like social media where students are doing a lot of their interaction?

[25:13] SPEAKER_00:

Right. Well, you're exactly right. We have a lot more issues with social media than we do with physical bullying. That really doesn't seem to be on the spectrum as much as it used to be. So one of the things that I talk to the kids about is they have to remember that with social media, it doesn't matter if something is considered private, it's never really private. Someone has access to it.

[25:37]

I talk to them about how what they say can affect other people. We have a tip line in place. So if kids have something that happens at night that is connected to school or to another student at school or a peer, they can send that information to the tip line and someone's available to respond to that 24 hours a day. We also do guidance lessons where we talk about the dangers of social media. And we talk about some of the cases of kids who have taken their lives after being bullied or after having things said about them online. But we also talk to them about practical things like blocking people who send you inappropriate messages.

[26:14]

We bring in our SRO who talks to them about sexual harassment and about what laws pertain to things that are posted or presented in the media. And we try to help them understand that the best place for you not to be when you're angry is behind a keyboard or behind your thumbs on your phone. I try to teach them the 24-hour rule. If they're angry about something, they need to wait 24 hours before they react to it so that they have time to think about what the consequences of their actions or their words will be. So some of it is not so much directed necessarily to the specific social media. It's thinking about choices and how we always are going to have a consequence for those.

[26:56]

We get to decide if they're positive or negative based on what we say or what we do. So it's really trying to teach them more about long-term effects on people and long-term effects on themselves if they choose to do that. We talk about employers, how when employers are interviewing people and looking at resumes, they always go to social media and they look at what a person is posting or saying there. And because they are archived and they're there for many years, they can scroll back as many years as they want to see what that person was involved in or saying online. So I think it's really more about teaching them to stop and think before they post. And that is definitely something that is a work in progress.

[27:38]

But I think it's a work in progress for adults as well. So just something that we're going to try to continue to educate them on and hopefully make progress as the year goes on. I always try to use this opportunity to talk about the importance of a school community. And in my situation with our students, this young man has had the opportunity to have a second chance. And that is because our eighth graders, one of them came to me the day after this happened. And he said, Ms. Hudgens, are you going to talk to us about what happened?

[28:10]

Or are you just going to sweep it under the rug and act like nothing happened? And I said, we're going to talk about it. And I met with there about 200 of them that year. They are seniors in high school this year. And we met in the commons area, which is our cafeteria at our school. And I let them ask me any question they wanted to for almost an hour.

[28:27]

I wanted them to have the facts as I knew them with as much as I could share. Obviously, a lot of it I could not. But I said to them that day, guys, I want you to remember that he did exactly what I asked you all to do. I told you if you were ever struggling, that you needed to come to me for help and that's what he did. So I told them that we were going to close ranks and we were going to keep this within ourselves and our families and that we were not going to make this story fodder for gossip online. I refused every interview for well over a year in relation to this, although we had them from every national news syndicate as well as many international agencies.

[29:11]

And we did that. We were able to keep his name from ever being published in the media. And I'm so, and it makes me emotional every time I talk about it, I'm so, so proud of those kids for doing that because they really got the message. You know, he had a choice and he was standing on the edge of a precipice about to do something terrible that would affect not only his own life, but the lives of many people for many, many years to come. And even in the middle of that that place that he was in, he made the decision to reach out for help. And so I'm so proud of him.

[29:46]

And I'm so proud of them for rallying around him. They were so supportive. Many of them wanted to reach out to him. And of course, we didn't really have that option. But I'm just grateful that he will truly and has truly been given the opportunity to have a second chance. So this story, it's called Saving Sycamore.

[30:06]

And it's not because I saved Sycamore. I think God saved Sycamore and he just allowed me to be an instrument of intervention that is still obviously very, very special to me. So this story was a way for me to thank everyone. And since I did not do media interviews, it was a chance for me to tell the story as accurately and truthfully as I knew how. I wanted the focus to go away from our school community when this first happened. I wanted to make sure that he had time to heal.

[30:37]

And that our community did as well, because even though there wasn't a shooting, there was still a great emotional impact on people here. And so the timing was right to tell this story in a way that I could honor all of the people who had done so many things I felt like to make our situation have a positive outcome.

[30:58] SPEAKER_01:

I'm reminded of some of my graduate classes. I remember hearing about the power of studying near misses and how that's such a missed opportunity in so many fields, especially educationally. We look at the disasters, the oil spills, the plane crashes, and the things that went wrong, and we analyze them with a fine-tooth comb. But we don't look nearly enough at the situations that actually turned out okay, despite being right on the edge there. Yeah.

[31:25] SPEAKER_00:

Well, and I say in the introduction, at the end of the introduction, I talk about how that we are Sycamore and we're the Knights. That's our mascot. And on one unprecedented day in the history of school violence, we got it right. And I think fortunately for me, when I went in, when this situation moved to a court setting, All of the judges that were ever involved with his child and all of the juvenile probation officers and every police officer that had contact with him had all been through my Recognizing Red Flags training. So they all knew me personally. So we were able to make some, I think, really great decisions because I remember telling the judge, I want us to set a precedent.

[32:13]

I want people to know that even when you are about to make a huge mistake, you can still stop. You can still get help and people will still help you. And fortunately for us, we fought hard. He did not go to jail. And I'm very proud of that. So I'm glad you mentioned it because you're right.

[32:31]

We do need to study averted school shootings more. We need to figure out who stopped them. How were they stopped? What factors were involved to make the outcome successful? And My situation is just very unique. I know that.

[32:48]

And I have not yet found anyone else who's had an exact similar experience. There have been others who've done very heroic things. And part of the Citizen's Honor, which is what I'm a recipient of, is the Congressional Medal of Honor's Citizen's Honor. The Medal of Honor is only awarded to military men and women for acts of valor in combats. But the civilian honor is awarded, obviously, to people who are civilians who have done something heroic in their communities that are not, obviously, in a field of battle or at times of war. And so there are only 11 female citizen honor recipients, but seven of them are posthumous recipients because they lost their lives protecting students in their schools.

[33:38]

So I have a bracelet I wear every day with the names of all of our posthumous recipients on them. We have the six teachers from Sandy Hook Elementary School, along with Michael Lansbury, who was a math teacher in Reno, Nevada, who lost his life trying to stop a school shooting. And then one of the coaches, Aaron Feist from Parkland, and a student there, Peter Wang, are also recipients. So I had a bracelet made much like men and women in military service do to honor their fallen brothers. And I remind myself that every time that I travel or go anywhere to speak, those people were not given the opportunity to have a 90 minute intervention like I did. Their situation meant that they had to act or react immediately to something that was happening and they sacrificed their lives.

[34:25]

It's not lost on me that I don't necessarily feel like I fit in a category with those men and women, but I do want every chance I have the opportunity to thank them and to mention them because I do think that we have to remember they are people. They are not just numbers. And I'm grateful that that's not our situation here. September 28th of 2016, for all intents and purposes, should have been the last day of my life. And here I am some 1,400 and something days later and I'm still here and I'm still at Sycamore and I'm still in my same office doing my same job and I still love it.

[35:03] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I'm so glad you shared this story with the world. So the book is Saving Sycamore, The School Shooting That Never Happened. And Molly Hudgens, if people want to get in touch with you or learn more about your work, where's the best place for them to connect with you online?

[35:17] SPEAKER_00:

Well, I'm on social media, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook. We have a website, mollyhudgens.com. Our publisher, Dave Burgess Consulting. We also have work through Safe and Sound Schools. So we have an agent through Kirkland Productions, Brian Regan, that can be contacted.

[35:37]

And our book can be found online at Barnes & Noble and Amazon. It's also online at Books A Million and Walmart for e-books. It's in a couple of physical locations, but most of them are here in Tennessee. So on a national level, they would probably have to purchase online. But they can certainly contact, hey, they can even email me at school. They can find me at Sycamore.

[36:02]

And I try to respond to everyone as soon as I can.

[36:05] SPEAKER_01:

Well, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to speak with you and to hear your story. And I just want to thank you.

[36:10] SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for giving me the time to share it, Justin. I really appreciate that so much.

[36:14] Announcer:

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