Jamie Sumner: Please Pay Attention (Cerebral Palsy, Trauma)
- A Novel Mind
- Apr 15
- 3 min read
I have never considered myself an activist, but events in the last few years have made me one. I believe we use the gifts we are given to fight with those who should not have to fight alone. I fight with storytelling. So here is my story of how Please Pay Attention came to be.
I first came to know Katherine Koonce when I worked alongside her. She was an administrator and I was a high school English teacher. We would meet for lunch in her tiny office under the guise of discussing new lesson plan guidelines, but more often than not we discussed “life things”—marriage, packable lunch recipes, whatever book we were reading.
When I gave birth three months early to my son Charlie, Katherine was the first person to visit me in the hospital. She had a background in special education and so when Charlie was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, she offered to be his “buddy” at church—caring for him so I could sit with a calm-ish heart, knowing he was well-cared for. That’s what Katherine did best—she saw a need and met it.
When she became the head of Covenant School, she invited me to speak as an author. It was a wonder to see the magic she created there. Without her, this book would not have been possible. She showed me how to think bigger than myself.
While Please Pay Attention is fiction, it is loosely based on events in my community. The shooting at Covenant School in the spring of 2023 took the life of Katherine Koonce.
It devastated the city of Nashville. We were and are grieving the loss, and are angry at the lack of significant change to gun laws that could save countless lives. This book is a response to the goings on in my own heart, but I hope it is also a call to action.
School should be a space safe from the dangers of the outside world where children can learn and open their minds to ideas that will turn them into the future leaders of this society. They should not have to be vigilant for the best place to shelter from an active shooter.
To all the schools across the country who have lost lives to gun violence, my heart is with you. You are not forgotten. We will continue to fight.
Jamie Sumner is the author of Roll with It, Time to Roll, Rolling On, Tune It Out, One Kid’s Trash, The Summer of June, Maid for It, Deep Water, Please Pay Attention, and Schooled. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other publications. She loves stories that celebrate the grit and beauty in all kids. She is also the mother of a son with cerebral palsy and has written extensively about parenting a child with special needs. She and her family live in Nashville, Tennessee. Visit her at Jamie-Sumner.com.
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