After she lost her youngest son, Dylan, at the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting, Nicole Hockley received a teddy bear as a gift. On its belly in blue were embroidered the words: “Heaven’s Angel. Dylan Hockley. In Loving Memory.”

“The embroidered teddy bear was one of the gifts sent after the shooting that I held on to,” Hockley tells TODAY.com. “We had over 60,000 teddy bears sent to Newtown, which is part of the outpouring of grief and support and show of love.”

Hockley turned her grief into action by co-founding Sandy Hook Promise, a national nonprofit organization that aims to prevent violence in schools. The group releases a public service announcement every year to remind the public that school shootings are preventable.

The goal is to elicit “an emotional response from the viewers that then inspires them to action,” says Hockley.

This year’s PSA speaks volumes without many words.

In the 90-second video, a young girl spots a sweet-looking teddy bear at a store and brings him home. They color, they play pretend, they ride bikes. The little girl even stops her school bus to give the bear one last hug. Fittingly, Pearl Bailey’s “Best of Friends” song from Disney’s “Fox and the Hound” plays over the sweet scenes.

But a flashback to the beginning of the PSA shows viewers that those moments of companionship were nothing but a teddy bear’s dream. The little girl was really purchasing the bear for another purpose entirely.

The music shifts to a somber, instrumental tune as the girl carries the stuffed animal through the rain at night and places him against a fence, along with a sea of flowers, posters and cards.

It is a memorial for children who were k!lled in a school shooting.

Across the screen is a chilling thought: “This isn’t the childhood we imagine. But too often it’s the reality.”

To prove this point, we see real-life images of similar memorials:

Robb Elementary School at Uvalde, Texas
Oxford High School in Oxford, Michigan
Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida
The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee
Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas
Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut

Following the montage of images is this simple sentence: “School shootings are preventable.”

Know the signs

“This is something people are so afraid of, but it is not a hopeless cause. These are preventable acts,” explains Hockley

Sandy Hook Promise has a “Know the Signs” program to teach youth and adults how to prevent school violence, shootings and other harmful acts. It has been implemented in 34,000 schools across the country.

Some of the most critical signs include withdrawal from friends and family, bullying, chronic loneliness, social isolation and extreme change in behavior.

“We know that our programs work,” Hockley says. “We’ve prevented over 700 suicides and now 18 credible planned school shooting plots as a direct result of our training and our program.”

She adds, “Everyone can learn the warning signs, and everyone needs to know that gun violence is preventable when you know the signs.”

What parents can do to help

Though the topic of school violence can feel overwhelming, there are small steps parents can take at home to help keep kids safe at school.

In addition to learning the warning signs themselves, parents can teach their children to look for these warning signs.

“And then be that trusted adult for your child, have the conversation: ‘What are you seeing? What are you hearing? Is there anyone you’re concerned about that could need help, that could be being bullied or isolated? Let’s talk about it and help that person,’” Hockley says. “I think it’s about having conversations and leaning in, rather than just being a bystander and letting things happen.”

In addition to role modeling behavior for kids, parents can “also be much more in tuned with their kids’ life, about what they’re seeing and hearing at school or on social media.” By simply having thoughtful conversations with your children, you may play a part in helping prevent violence.

“Teddy bears are a symbol of the innocence and the childhood that’s lost,” Hockley says. “We want to let kids be kids. We want teddy bears to go back to being teddy bears and childhood companions rather than being part of a memorial to school shootings.”