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Arianna Gibson’s preschool teacher lost it at the funeral when she saw the little girl’s unbearably small casket. The principal at Arianna’s school, Libby Elementary, couldn’t stand to see her buried. “Who puts babies in the ground?” Kurt Jones asks.

Jones and his school team struggled to cope with the death of the 6-year-old, who was killed when someone began shooting into the living room at her grandmother’s Englewood home in August 2011. But as much as the Libby staff struggled, they were adults with support systems and stability in their lives. They immediately began to worry...

After recovering from a devastating illness, Veronica Coney hoped to make a fresh start with her four children in a home she rented in Chicago Lawn.

Then she and her children overheard a murder in the alley. A few weeks later, her children saw a dead body on the street as they were driving to school.  In another incident, one child saw someone holding a gun outside school. The family often heard the sound of gunfire in the neighborhood.

Their hopes for a new beginning were dashed. “I was kind of wigging out,” Coney says. “I didn’t feel safe at all.”
The children didn’t...

The phones ring at a steady pace.

“Crisis,” Catherine Malatt answers, pulling out a pad of paper. It is a Thursday morning in early May. A principal is calling, with an out-of-control child in his office. Malatt takes notes, asking the principal what he is doing and what his next steps are. Satisfied that he knows what to do, she tells the principal to call back later and tell her how it went.

Close by and within ear-shot, psychologist Daniel Zoller follows up on an incident report about a fight, helping the school’s disciplinarian figure out a response.

After her call...