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Sandy Hook Promise program reaches Federal Way students

Published 2:13 pm Friday, February 20, 2026

By Keelin Everly-Lang

Photos by Keelin Everly-Lang / the Mirror Nicole Hockley of Sandy Hook Promise shares the message to students that they can be part of building belonging by making sure no one eats alone.
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Photos by Keelin Everly-Lang / the Mirror

Nicole Hockley of Sandy Hook Promise shares the message to students that they can be part of building belonging by making sure no one eats alone.

Photos by Keelin Everly-Lang / the Mirror Nicole Hockley of Sandy Hook Promise shares the message to students that they can be part of building belonging by making sure no one eats alone.
NFL Hall of Famer and Seahawks legend Walter Jones visited Illahee Middle School in Federal Way to share positive messages about teamwork and coming together as a community.
Students at Illahee Middle School complete an activity called Connect the Dots to explore what they might be surprised to find they have in common.
Students play clapping games and participate in other activities to build a sense of belonging at No One Eats Alone Day.
8th grade students are part of a program called Where Everyone Belongs (WEB) and act as mentors to 6th grade students to make sure they feel welcome at Illahee Middle School. Photo by Keelin Everly-Lang / the Mirror
Students complete bingo sheets to learn more about each other at the No One Eats Alone lunchtime activity at Illahee Middle School. Photo by Keelin Everly-Lang / the Mirror

On Feb. 12, about 650 6th-grade students at Illahee Middle School in Federal Way participated in the National No One Eats Alone Day.

The event featured Seattle Seahawks legend Walter Jones, who joined Sandy Hook Promise co-founder Nicole Hockley and Beth Johnson, CEO of Coordinated Care, in speaking to students about their power to create a sense of belonging for each other in school.

After hearing from the speakers, students participated in activities designed to help them see how much they have in common. Together they completed an activity called Connect the Dots, which was a visual representation of how a multiplicity of identities converge on shared experience.

8th-grade students who are part of the the school’s Where Everyone Belongs (WEB) leadership cohort helped facilitate group activities alongside the Connect the Dots exercise, including classics like Duck-Duck-Goose and hand clapping games like Quack-Dilly-Oso, a nonsense clapping game played with a group in a circle with a variety of regional variation.

At lunch, the 6th-graders were given bingo sheets and invited to find out more about each other by asking each other to sign on a square that applied to them. While many participated, they were also focused on getting their chance to get an autograph from Walter Jones — even when that required waiting in a long line.

While the day was filled with fun, the ultimate focus was on preventing unthinkable violence.

Hockley’s youngest son, Dylan, was murdered in his first-grade classroom during the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting in 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut.

She went on to be the co-founder and CEO of Sandy Hook Promise, the nonprofit that developed No One Eats Alone and many other activities that educate and empower students, educators, parents and caregivers to play an active role in ending school shootings and other forms of violence.

Jones told the Mirror that he wants to especially encourage kids that are naturally extroverted to look out for those that may be more nervous to interact. Growing up, he said he was usually more on the quiet side, and even when playing for the Seahawks and doing interviews on TV, public speaking didn’t come especially easily.

“I was in those same seats,” he said, adding that his advice is to “be confident” no matter what.

In his speech to the students, he shared the importance of having a team mindset and that everyone has different strengths, whether in a lunchroom or on the field.

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