But she also understood something the children could not fully comprehend.
She might not be able to keep that promise.
She did not know whether they would survive.
She did not know whether she would survive.
And so she said something else.
She told them that she loved them.
“I Love You All Very Much”
One of the most enduring details from Roig-DeBellis's account is the reason she gave for telling the children she loved them.
She believed those could be the final words they ever heard.
Rather than allowing their last memory to be the sound of gunfire, she wanted them to hear something reassuring.
In a CNN transcript from the day of the shooting, Roig-DeBellis explained that she wanted the children to know that someone loved them and that those words might be among the last they ever heard.
It is difficult to imagine the emotional calculation behind that decision.
She was simultaneously trying to protect the children physically and emotionally.
The children were frightened.
Some wanted to go home.
Some wanted their parents.
They were young enough that Christmas was likely more familiar to them than concepts such as an active shooter or a mass casualty event.
Roig-DeBellis had to translate an unimaginable situation into language that six- and seven-year-olds could understand.
Stay quiet.
Wait.
The good guys are coming.
I love you.
Forty-Five Minutes in the Dark
The children and their teacher remained in the bathroom for approximately 45 minutes.
To an outside observer, 45 minutes may sound brief.
For someone hiding from an armed attacker in a tiny room with 15 children, it was an eternity.
Roig-DeBellis later described the experience as one in which she believed they might all die.
She had no reliable information about what was happening elsewhere in the building.
She did not know where the attacker was.
She did not know whether anyone knew where her students were hiding.
She could only listen.
The children could only wait.
ABC's Australian service, reporting on Roig-DeBellis's later reflections, described the period as approximately 45 minutes before police eventually reached the classroom.
Those minutes became the defining period of her life.
The Knock on the Door
Eventually, the gunfire stopped.
The school became quieter.
Then came a knock.
Roig-DeBellis did not immediately open the door.
That decision was critical.
She had no way of knowing with absolute certainty who was outside.
The Washington Post's account of the police files says officers eventually slid their badges under the bathroom door. Roig still refused to simply open it and instead told them that if they were really police officers, they should be able to obtain the key to the door.
Her reasoning was straightforward.
A genuine police officer should have access to the school's keys.
The officers obtained them.
The lock was opened.
And the teacher finally knew that the people outside were the “good guys” she had been promising the children would come.
Walking Out
When the door opened, Roig-DeBellis and her students emerged.
The 15 children from her class were alive.
They had survived.
The scale of what had happened elsewhere in the school was only beginning to become clear.
The Sandy Hook shooting killed 20 children and six educators.
Roig-DeBellis's classroom was spared.
The survival of her entire class became one of the most striking elements of the tragedy.
But surviving did not mean that she or the children simply returned to normal.
The physical danger had ended.
The psychological consequences had not.
Survival Was Only the Beginning
In the weeks and months after Sandy Hook, Roig-DeBellis struggled with the aftermath.
She had survived.
Her students had survived.
But she had also witnessed and heard things that no teacher should ever have to experience.
UConn's account of her memoir describes how she understood the event as a defining trauma and how she later used her experience to discuss courage, hope and recovery.
Roig-DeBellis sought therapy before returning to school.
She wanted to prepare herself for the questions her students would inevitably ask.
She also wanted to find a way to help them feel safe again.
The classroom was no longer simply a classroom.
Every doorway could become a reminder.
Every unexpected sound could carry new meaning.
The idea of safety itself had changed.
The Question of “Why?”
After a tragedy like Sandy Hook, survivors often face questions that have no satisfying answers.
Why did this happen?
Why this school?