THS Students Link Themselves to Newtown

Trumbull High School students are turning their grief over the Sandy Hook school shootings toward welcoming the remaining students to their new school.

Newtown students are slated to start school after the New Year in Chalk Hill School in Monroe.

"English teacher and coach Jim McCaffrey, feeling the need to do something and provide students with an outlet for emotion and their feeling the need to do SOMETHING, brought in strips of green and white paper and invited his students to write a message on one," said THS teacher Jessica Spillane.

"As students wrote their messages, they made the strips into a chain of links.  As more teachers and students heard about it, they came by his classroom all day to write messages and be with one another.

"The 'Links of Love' were hung up in the hallway, growing longer and longer.  By midday on Tuesday, the chain reached all the way down the hallway and back again, with over 2100 messages written by faculty, staff and students," she added.

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The hallway "became a memorial of sorts, with students and teachers walking through during free periods and lunch just to read the messages and have a moment of peace."

"In a busy, busy high school, this particular hallway took on the characteristics of a memorial and provided just the right amount of support for our community to start talking and begin healing," Spillane said.