The tragic school shooting at Parkland High School in Florida sparked many negative emotions and feelings throughout the country. Here in Wisconsin, South Milwaukee students were inspired to show support.
Chemistry and Forensic Science teacher Kim Froemming talked about school shootings as part of her curriculum. When the news of Parkland reached Froemming she says she knew South Milwaukee had to do more.
"Taking a moment of silence, that's wonderful, but I feel like there's more we can do," said Froemming.
She asked her students what they should do and their response was a Twitter hashtag. Lorna Swiatoski, is a junior at South Milwaukee, and she came up with the idea #SMStandsWithParkland.
"We're South Milwaukee and we're obviously going to try to do something about it and like make a difference... try to make it a little bit easier for them," says Swiatoski, "So I was like OK, we can like stand for them and show them...that they have our support."
Classmate Mariah Manka, a senior at South Milwaukee, and says she liked Lorna's tag and wanted to make sure their's stood out to Parkland, so she added the heart.
"It's not the fact of, are we going to trending? It's not the fact of, oh is everyone going to see us and we're going to become famous off of it? It's more of I just want them to see and to know we care," said Manka.
Froemming was surprised at its popularity.
"A student said, 'Ms. Froemming, This has been tweeted 250 times'... within five minutes it'd been tweeted out 600 times and it just...I was just overcome with emotion," said Froemming.
Beth Kaminski oversees more than 1,000 students as principal of South Milwaukee and she agrees that sometimes cellphones in class can be an issue. But, she says this is something the students are proud of.
"Sometimes social media gets a bad rap, especially when it comes to high school students," said Kaminski, "I think this is a great example of students using them for really positive reason... I think this is just a great way for us to show kindness to another community that we might not know, but that we can feel for."
