After losing his older sister and his two best friends during the Columbine High School shootings and barely escaping the tragedy himself, Craig Scott learned how to forgive the killers and move on with his life.

He shared his story with 1,800 Central Albertan teachers as the opening keynote speaker at the Central Alberta Teachers’ Convention on Thursday at Westerner Park.

When Scott first heard popping noises outside the school, he thought high school seniors were setting off firecrackers as a prank. A teacher yelled for those in the library to get under the tables as she called police, then a student stumbled into the library, shot and bleeding.

Scott was under the table with his two best friends when the Columbine High School gunmen burst into the school library on April 20, 1999, shooting students all around Scott.

He was so scared it felt like his heart was about to stop and all he could do was pray. He watched as the shooters killed his two friends beside him, making fun of his friend Isaiah for being black before shooting him in the head. The last thing Isaiah said was, “I want to see my mom.”

“That was the worst moment of my life,” Scott said.

When the killers left for a moment, Scott got up and encouraged other students to flee, carrying an injured girl to safety. Moments later, the two gunmen returned.

Scott’s older sister Rachel was the first person the shooters killed, while she was sitting on the grass eating her lunch with a friend. In all, 13 died and 27 people were injured.

Scott’s family found a way to continue on with the help of his sister Rachel’s writings and journals, one of which still has a nick out of it from a bullet that hit her backpack the day she died.

His sister’s views on the world were the exact opposite of the two killers. They wanted to start a chain reaction of hate and violence, while she believed in starting a chain reaction of kindness and compassion. A month before Scott’s sister Rachel was murdered, she wrote an essay My Ethics, My Codes of Life, where she spoke about the importance of compassion.

“I have this theory that if one person can go out of their way to show compassion, then it will start a chain reaction of the same. People will never know how far a little kindness can go,” Rachel wrote.

After her death, Scott’s family started an organization, known as Rachel’s Challenge, to share her views with young people, challenging them to: choose positive influences in life, dare to dream, know that kind words and acts of kindness make a big difference, eliminate prejudice and be a forgiving person.

He said at first he was angry and wanted revenge. “I had a right to be angry and I had a right to hate (the shooters), but by holding onto that it made me like them. I chose to forgive those two shooters. What they did was wrong, but I chose to let go of the anger and hatred,” he said.

Now at 26 and a filmmaker, Scott said only by forgiving the shooters could he reach other students and share his sister’s message. He has had students hand him hit lists they didn’t go through with after hearing him speak and received emails from 156 students who said they chose not to take their lives because of his sister’s words.

Eric Armitage, president of the Central Alberta Teachers’ Convention Association, said the theme of the convention this year, Teaching by Heart, suggests keeping students’ emotions in mind and having a caring environment. “We are bound by certain standards where we have to talk about assessment, we have to talk about results, but really at the end of day, at the end of the year we’re hoping to watch the children leave being better people. That has got to be the goal. That has to be our measure of success over anything else.”

sobrien@reddeeradvocate.com