On Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, Gregory Bush entered a Kroger—a chain supermarket—in Jefferson City, Kentucky, and shot two African Americans named Maurice Stallard and Vickie Lee Jones. Afterward, Bush exchanged gunfire with an armed citizen. When the police arrived, he tried to flee but was captured by police. Gregory Bush killed two people that day, but this shooting was seemingly overlooked by American media in the face of other issues such as the Pittsburg shooting, the massive wildfires in California and the midterm elections.

Many Urban students and teachers had to process all of these events as they were studying and preparing for finals. Amy Argenal, Urban Director of Service Learning, said, “My worry as a school is that we are not processing some of these things and how it’s going to hit us later on.”

Instead of focusing on each individual event, Urban instead tries “to address the underlying knowledge that students need to have around a lot of these issues,” said Charlotte Worsley, Urban’s Assistant Head for Student Life. Rather than fixating on specific issues, Urban prepares students for when they leave school and have to deal with these events by themselves. “What we’re always working to do is anticipate issues and anticipate student needs, both [around] emotions and knowledge and to integrate as much as we can into our school program,” Worsley said.

“I think that there is never enough time in a school day to do all the things we know are right to do,” Argenal said.

“What we feel as a school is that we really can’t respond to every single incident because it’s not healthy psychologically,” Worsley said. Worsley expressed that preparation is the only way to deal with events such as the Kroger shooting. Essentially, Urban students need to be able to process these issues on their own.

Urban events, such as all school meetings and class trips, are helpful for developing the community and building resilience for when tragic events occur. “What we think a lot of is continuing to improve the way we educate so that students are prepared when they read something in the paper to know what’s going on and to make their own assessments,” Worsley said. With all the pressure from school, Urban students have to be able to respond to events like the Kroger shooting by themselves. Events like this have tested the Urban community’s ability to respond and stay strong in the face of situations like it.