A Saugus High School teacher who opened her classroom to students during the Saugus High School shooting over a year ago discussed her mental health recovery following the deadly event.

Tere La Giusa, a Spanish teacher at Saugus High School who was on campus during the shooting on Nov. 14, 2019, spoke with KHTS about her experiences tackling the mental health impact of the tragedy so soon after her battle with cancer.

“We were healing,” La Guisa said. “We would have good days, we would have bad days.”

Before the shooting, La Guisa’s battle with breast cancer had forced her to take a leave of absence from work.

“October of 2017, I was diagnosed with cancer,” La Guisa said. “So after having surgery and chemotherapy and physical therapy, I was out for the better part of two years.

A few months after returning to work, La Guisa was faced with a new challenge in the form of the Saugus High School shooting in November of 2019.

During the shooting, the mother of two sheltered seven students in her classroom, including Mia Tretta, who had been shot in the abdomen.

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Tretta and fellow survivors Addison Koegle and Andrew Gardetto returned to school with everyone else, picking things up right where they left off.

“They were just the example of, you just pick yourself up and keep going, and if you have hard times you have hard times,” La Guisa said. “Let the people who are important in your life know how you’re feeling. It’s about keeping on.”

La Guisa faced greater difficulty in moving forward.

“I guess that kind of started building up inside me,” La Guisa said. “How could I be of any emotional support to anyone if I’m still fragile inside myself?”

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The teacher chose to take a leave of absence for the rest of the school year to recover from the shooting.

“It was very, very hard to step back and focus on myself,” La Guisa said. “I missed my students incredibly.”

When La Guisa felt ready to return to campus, the pandemic hit. Checking in on students became a priority.

“Sometimes they just need to talk,” said the instructor. “You’d be amazed at how honest people will be when you show an interest in them as a person rather than them as a student.”

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