Sandy Hook Elementary Teacher Writes Book with Rutgers Professor

New Brunswick, NJ - You know this already: Three years ago, Sandy Hook schoolteacher Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis saved the lives of 15 first-graders when she herded them into a bathroom. Outside that bathroom door, 26 people – 20 of them children – were murdered in the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.

But what you probably don’t know is that in the years after, Roig-DeBellis struggled, wondering how and why she had survived when so many others did not. She spent the next year in therapy, and ultimately decided to write a book.

Choosing Hope: Moving Forward from Life’s Darkest Hours, was co-authored by Rutgers University professor Robin Gaby Fisher, director of the Journalism and Media Studies Program at Rutgers University–Newark. Learn more about their collaboration here.

Fisher previously wrote After the Fire, which she co-wrote with two survivors of the Seton Hall dormitory fire, among other works.

The book, Choosing Hope: Moving Forward from Life’s Darkest Hours, is out in stores now.

Photo credit: Rutgers Today