In the wake of the mass shooting at an elementary school in Texas, teachers and parents are once again wondering how to talk about the horrific events to their children without stoking fear.

Nearly 300,000 students in the United States have been on a school campus during a shooting since 1999. In the past decade, there have been almost 1,000 school shootings in America, according to Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit group founded by families who lost loved ones in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

Child clinical psychologist Jennifer Greif Green, associate professor of special education at Boston University’s Wheelock College of Education & Human Development, is an expert on student mental health and helping schools navigate moments of anguish and suffering.

She has studied post-traumatic stress disorder in children following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, the impact of school violence on adolescent well-being, and children’s stress and behavior after a community trauma.

In her latest project, she’s helped develop free trainings for schools and districts navigating the aftermath of a harrowing event.

Here, Green talks about what supports will be needed to help teachers and children return to their classrooms in Uvalde and how her research can guide the rest of us as we deal with this tragic event: