Five months after shooting, Annunciation highlights heroes in fundraiser to support staff

Two by two, the dancers swirled out into the auditorium of Annunciation Catholic School in south Minneapolis, with 300 students seated on the floor and at lunch tables.

It was just a dress rehearsal for this weekend’s annual Dancing with the Annunciation Stars fundraiser, but students were fired up. Six adult competitors whirled and dipped, each paired with a professional in their final tuneup before the Saturday night, Feb. 7, event.

Teachers wept when Sophia Forchas — the seventh-grader who spent nearly two months in the hospital after being shot in the Aug. 27 mass shooting — took a pass on the dance floor with her father, Tom, one of the competitors.

Students saved their biggest applause for Minneapolis police Lt. Ryan Kelly, the initial first responder to arrive at the shooting scene. (Students also voted Kelly the winner of the rehearsal.)

Annunciation Catholic School’s largest annual fundraiser was always going to feel different this year, five months after 8-year-old Fletcher Merkel and 10-year-old Harper Moyski were killed and dozens more were injured.

Each year, the “Dancing with the Stars”-type competition has directed money to school initiatives such as building renovations or an art teacher’s salary.

But this year, organizers decided to support the school’s unsung heroes from that day and the aftermath: teachers and staff who lived through the trauma of the shooting. Even as they continue to process their grief, the teachers show up at school every day to guide the traumatized kindergarteners through eighth-graders.

“I teach my first-graders that two things can be true at the same time: that we can have grief, and we can have joy,” said Beth Sable, who has taught at Annunciation for more than two decades. “We don’t lose sight of Harper and Fletcher. We can still grieve their loss and wish that they were here with us. And we can have some fun and some joy because that’s what they’d want us to do.”

In the weeks after the shooting, Annunciation leaders surveyed parents on when and how to return to school. One theme was most pronounced in survey results: Parents wanted to ensure staff were supported and felt ready to return.

Since students returned to school nearly three weeks after the shooting, parents and staff have learned that recovery from grief and trauma are not linear. Some days are good, and others are not. Students and teachers can seem fine, only for a seemingly innocuous moment — an unexpected loud noise, the lights turning off — to set them on a different path.

Counselors from the Washburn Center for Children have been a constant presence at the school, as have stuffed animals that students of all ages tote. One first-grade teacher got a therapy rabbit for her classroom; students named it Lucy George Rabbit.

Teachers like Sable have adapted. She used to make sure school felt like school, not a play date. Now she knows that students may need 25 minutes of play after lunch instead of just 10 minutes. Teaching phonics may be important, but some days you just have to scrap a lesson plan and do an art project.

Along with the Minneapolis police officer and Tom Forchas, other competitors at the fundraiser include Jen Gruenzner, a mother and therapist; Kate Uding, a mother and attorney; Devin O’Brien, a father who ran toward the gunfire to protect children; and Kate Winter, a mother who stepped away from her health insurance job to support the Annunciation principal in the weeks after the shooting.

After the rehearsal, Winter was exhilarated.