Florida students exchange letters with Sandy Hook teacher

IMMOKALEE, Fla. – A Florida teacher is marking the fifth year of a pen-pal exchange she began with a teacher who survived the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The Naples Daily News reports the teachers’ students began exchanging friendship letters shortly after the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 children and six adults on Dec. 14, 2012.

Five years later, Immokalee Community School teacher Ann Marie Morgiewicz still runs it. Her fourth-grade students write to pupils in former Sandy Hook teacher Abbey Clements’ class. Clements now teaches fourth grade at a different school in Newtown.

Morgiewicz says the exchange “takes you away from the sadness of the world, and puts the kindness back in.”

Clements says she finds comfort knowing another teacher is using the Connecticut shootings to teach students about gun violence.

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Information from: Naples (Fla.) Daily News, http://www.naplesnews.com