Groton — Children are going to experience trauma in their lives, and they need a “tribe” of supportive people to help them through, Nelba Márquez-Greene told 200 people gathered Thursday in Groton for Healthy Development: A Summit on Children and Adolescent Mental Health.

Márquez-Greene, a marriage and family therapist who has worked in private practice, community mental health and academic settings, lost her daughter, Ana Grace, 6, in the Sandy Hook shootings in December 2012.

The family had moved to Sandy Hook from Canada four months earlier.

“I knew that six educators died trying to save my daughter and 19 of her friends,” she told the summit. “But I also knew that every teacher who went back to Newtown lived trying to do the same thing for my son. And for all those kids who went back."

“I’ll never forget talking to my son’s teacher at the time, and saying to her, ‘You’re going back to school?’ And she almost got indignant," Márquez-Greene said. "It was two days after the shooting and this teacher almost got indignant with me. She said, ‘Those are my kids.’ That’s how fiercely devoted this teacher felt about her class and about needing to be there for them.”

The summit drew therapists, teachers and representatives of area school districts, police departments and nonprofit community and human service organizations to talk about a plan for addressing mental health.

In addition to Márquez-Greene, speakers included Robert Franks, the president and chief executive officer of Judge Baker Children’s Center in Boston, and Jeffrey Vanderploeg, vice president for mental health initiatives at Child Health and Development Institute of Connecticut.

After listening to the three speakers, participants divided into eight working groups, which will continue meeting in the coming months.

The groups will develop a plan to address the mental health needs of children and youth, then reconvene together in September, said Groton Assistant Superintendent Susan Austin.

“It’s the heart of our work as educators, because you really need to take care of the social and emotional needs of kids in order for them to learn and grow,” she said.

Erin Pezqueda, a teacher in Groton, said she sees the need for more social and emotional help for children every day.

“We need more people in the schools, not less,” she said.

Márquez-Greene said children need support and help before a tragedy.

“You can’t come in and necessarily rescue them after the trauma. But the healthier start they have, the better off they will be,” she said.

Márquez-Greene and her husband, Jimmy, partnered with Klingberg Family Centers to develop “The Ana Grace Project” with the goal of promoting love, community and connection for every child.

One initiative she spoke of started in California but has since been implemented in high schools elsewhere.

The high school gets its staff together during professional development days and writes every child’s name on a piece of paper. Then a staff member posts the pages in a large room or on a gymnasium wall.

Next, teachers, administrators and staff are asked to look at the names, and make a check next to students whose names they know.

“Because then what becomes apparent are those students who don’t have any connections in the school,” Márquez-Greene said.

Then staff make a focused effort to include those students, she said

There’s hope despite trauma, she said. At least half of the population has at least one, two or three adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, that might affect their physical and mental health as they become adults.

The study that coined the ACEs term scores a person’s life experiences on a scale of 1 to 10; the higher the score, the more likely the child is to be affected.

But, Márquez-Greene said, “It’s not over and we’re not helpless. I personally have an ACE score of nine, and I’m pretty healthy and I’m doing pretty well seeing as my daughter was shot in the classroom.”

The ACE study also doesn’t measure the number of relationships and resources students have, she said.

“If you’ve got at least one person who really believes in you, you’re going to do better than if you’re doing it alone,” she said. “And I know it’s like basic common sense, but you’d be surprised how many people don’t know that.”

d.straszheim@theday.com