Bomb Threats By the Numbers

It might seem like there have been a lot of bomb threats in schools lately – that’s because there has…

Let’s look at the stats for JUST TODAY – October 20, 2015 – as of 10:30 p.m. EST….

• 20 different schools in 9 different states were threatened with a bomb today

• 14 of these were elementary schools (70%), 1 middle school and 5 high schools

• 9 of the 19 threats – 45% - were in Ohio.

October 19 was a slow day by comparison – only 8 bomb threats, of which 25% were in Ohio.

There certainly are a number of questions we could raise about this alarming trend, but let’s just ask one directly to our educators – when was the last time you had any training in preventing or responding to bomb threat incidents? The silence is deafening….

School safety grants!!! Yay?

Indiana Governor Mike Pence announced on Wednesday that he will not cut the state’s school safety grant program, but instead will add an additional $3.5 million to it. Sounds great right? Finally we’re  allocating money to keep schools safe right? Let’s take a closer look….

The Indiana Secured School Safety Grant Program takes applications from school entities and awards grant funds of up to $50,000 per year, but the funds must be used for security assessments, purchasing security equipment, or employing school resource officers. Not one word – or one dime – for training the people who will be actually responding to crisis events – the educators. 

Am I glad to see money allocated toward school safety? Yes. Do I think that School Resource Officers are a valuable tool in keeping schools safe? Yes, sort of… But how about let’s spend it where we can do the most good, by training every educator and student, not just employing a single officer.

For $50,000 most, if not all, school districts could train literally every staff member, student, and parent in  comprehensive, all hazards crisis response and develop capacities and skills that they will carry with them for the foreseeable future – or you could hire a resource officer for maybe a school year. Oh, and what about those schools who aren’t fortunate enough to get a piece of the Indiana safety grant pie? I guess they are on their own…

http://www.securitysales.com/article/indiana_governor_reverses_cut_on_school_safety_spending_awards_additional_3/news

Did you ever notice...

Did you ever notice that when an education problem needs to be solved, non-educators are hard at work deciding what is “best for us”?

Except in this case, they are probably right. In the waning flurry of stories on the school shooting in Oregon, we are finally getting around to some discussion of what FEMA and the Department of Education call “the most useful tool a school can develop” – threat assessment management – which is rarely ever done in schools. A recent article in Mother Jones gives us an inadvertent glimpse into one of the reasons why.

The article examines the process and advantages of threat assessment, but what is conspicuous by its absence is the lack of any involvement, interviews, or discussion of educators in this article that deals with school shooters and other mass murderers. Threat assessment is discussed as a means by which “law enforcement and mental health professionals” can prevent violence. Really? Don’t you need me as an educator to notice and report behaviors of concern or are law enforcement and mental health professionals going to observe every kid in every class in every school?

This omission is endemic of a mentality, unintentional or otherwise, that preventing and responding to school violence is something that the “grown ups” will discuss while patting educators on the head and sending us off to the kids' table while they decide what to do. Let me be clear, this isn’t a knock on law enforcement or mental health professionals alone, we as educators have abdicated our authority and been ok with being denied a seat at the school safety table. Yet it is educators and our students who are being damaged, injured, killed, and criticized when violence occurs.

As educators we need to advocate – and yes demand – an educational perspective on school violence and school safety.

Media coverage, political discussion, policy making, crisis planning and response decisions should all prominently feature educators’ voices.

After all, we are the ones who are living, and dying, with school violence.

Dodging a bullet...

Last Friday we had a “non-traditional” but equally dangerous school shooting incident. In this case an outside individual came into a California school and shot and killed her mother (a staff member) before killing herself. In a press conference Monday night, school and law enforcement officials defended the decision to allow the intruder into the school, despite a protection order that prohibited her from coming within 500 yards of the school. “She was known to staff as the victim’s daughter, there was no reason not to allow her…” said an Upland police lieutenant. No reason except the protection order maybe?

The lesson here is that not all threats to a school come from the inside. There have been numerous incidents in schools where violence has come from community or personal issues that spilled over into the unsuspecting school environment. While we need to be exponentially more attentive to potential threats from within the school, this tragic event illustrates the need to diligently screen visitors and be aware of potential threats associated with our students and staff.

Perhaps the larger lesson is that despite literally dodging a bullet, it doesn’t appear that the school is making any immediate improvements that will help – like perhaps providing adequate training for the staff and students. Instead they are working on lighting, security cameras, and “other minor safety improvements”. Once again investing in “stuff”, not “staff”.

While in this case no students or other staff were caught in the deadly drama that unfolded in the cafeteria kitchen, the scenario could have ended very differently. Let’s not leave the safety of our school up to luck – let’s use the tools of vigilance, awareness, and training.

http://www.dailybulletin.com/general-news/20151012/pepper-tree-parents-raise-safety-questions-amid-shooting

Another school shooting- Are we learning anything?

It is with a tragic sense of déjà vu that we write yet another blog post after a horrific shooting in an American school, this time at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. Just as tragic is the fact that despite incredible media coverage, political maneuverings, Department of Justice grants, and the deaths of literally hundreds of students, not a whole lot has changed in regards to school crisis response in the last 5 years.

Most schools are still following outdated procedures:

In June of 2013, FEMA and the Department of Education came out with very specific active shooter recommendations for schools – “Run, Hide, Fight”. These recommendations clearly state “The first course of action that should be taken is to run out of the building…” to a safe location. Yet multiple student witnesses to today’s event recount that instructors told them to lock the doors and stay in the classrooms. One student told CNN "We locked the doors, turned off the lights, and we were all pretty much in panic mode. We called 911 and called our parents, our loved ones ... “ Even after hearing gunshots, a student told Fox News, “One of the students in my class, she went out and checked it. She got shot twice, one in the arm, and in the stomach. And she came back and told us to lock the door, shut the lights off. And we sat there for 20 minutes waiting for police to show up."

How well have these recommendations been disseminated to schools? How much training has occurred? Do students or teachers really know what to do to save their own lives?

We still believe that there’s nothing we can do:

In a joint statement, the American Association of Community Colleges and the Association of Community College Trustees called the shootings a "tragedy" saying "while campus safety is of the utmost priority, due to their open nature, college and university campuses are susceptible to these types of events...". That may indeed be true, but there are a myriad of things we can do to minimize, mitigate, and even prevent these events from taking place. Threat assessment management is a proven best-practice and according to FEMA and the Department of Education “One of the most useful tools a school can develop…” yet multi-disciplinary threat assessment teams are present in only a small percentage of schools nationwide. Instead organizations are spending money on security measures such as buzzers, metal detectors, and duress alarms rather than on training staff to identify, assess, and manage individuals who may pose a risk of violence.

We still think this is a law enforcement problem:

In today’s event police response time, while rapid, still has upwards of 7 minutes by some reports. Past incidents have shown us that despite rapid law enforcement intervention, most shootings were stopped by some other means. 57% of the time the event is over before police even arrived. Yet as educators we have abdicated the problem of school violence to law enforcement – even though it's educators who are in reality the ones dealing with, responding to, and dying in the event. Even what little training educators do receive in crisis response comes from an entirely law enforcement perspective. Media coverage of these events always features “experts” who are security, military, or law enforcement - not educators who must deal with violence on a daily basis.

We still want to make it all about guns…

Within hours of this most recent tragedy, President Obama was responding to the event by criticizing the lack of tougher gun laws.  At the same time, gun rights activists were asserting that a concealed carry permit holder could have prevented the shooting.The default position of the media, politicians, and advocates is to immediately cling to one side or the other in the gun debate. Gun rights and gun control be damned – this conversation should be about keeping students safe.

Making our schools safer is possible – but it’s hard work. It’s work that incorporates non-partisan, collaborative, common sense, objective discussions about mental health services, increasing student disclosures, providing training to staff, students, and parents, appropriately increasing security measures, making facility changes, revising policies and procedures, implementing threat assessment management, and yes eventually – about guns. It’s too bad that the opposing sides of the gun argument couldn’t take a minute away from advocacy and look at the common ground on which we all stand – no one wants to see kids dying at school.

North Carolina Teens charged with sex crimes for possesing explicit images of their own bodies

Yes, you read that correctly. Two teens in North Carolina were prosecuted for having nude pictures of themselves, on their own phones.

They were charged with separate crimes for:

• taking sexually explicit photos of a minor 
• possessing sexually explicit photos of a minor 

In addition, the boy faced a separate charge for possessing a naked photo his girlfriend, had sent to him.

Part of the reason this unconscionable situation occurred is because in North Carolina, a child over the age of 16 may be prosecuted as an adult for certain crimes, yet the child is still under 18, and therefore the images of their own bodies on their own phones were still explicit images of minors under the letter of the law.

We need to do a better job of talking to teens and youth about the potential consequences of sending sexually explicit images of their own bodies, but this draconian measure isn't the way to accomplish that.

The 'teachable moment' of Ahmed's clock: what we need to do about bomb threat protocol in schools

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A lot has been written last week about Ahmed and his clock “bomb”. While relevant points and needed discussion has been engendered about racial and ethnic bias, zero tolerance, over-reacting schools etc., perhaps a critical point has been lost in the shuffle – the deplorable state of most schools’ bomb threat policies and procedures.

We talked last week about how schools need to be equipped with training and tools in order to determine what student behaviors actually pose a “real” threat, but put that issue aside for a moment.

Here, it didn’t matter whether Ahmed’s clock posed a “real threat” -by involving law enforcement, it was treated as one by the school. Yet despite this fact that, and that teachers were purportedly “concerned” about the clock (i.e. telling him not to show anyone else, confiscating it, etc.) and its potential to be a “bomb”, it does not appear that any formalized protocol was used.

• Who exactly in that school was trained to determine if the item was a bomb? (No one- and the bomb squad was never involved)

• Did evacuation of the area near the supposed “bomb” take place? (No)

• Was law enforcement involved in determining the validity of the supposed “bomb threat” or were they just around to charge Ahmed later at the schools request? (Law enforcement never involved the bomb squad or enacted bomb threat protocols)

In all the second guessing and critiques of the school’s potentially biased response, is anyone concerned about whether or not this organization (and schools just like it across the country) has the capability to respond appropriately to a legitimate bomb threat – or to an actual explosive device?

Most if not all bomb threat protocols in use in schools (if they even have one) are predicated on how to respond to a “threat”, not how to respond if an actual bomb is in play. It’s very similar to how our fire evacuation protocols are really just procedures for leaving the building during a drill instead of considering how we would exit in a real fire, with smoke everywhere, blocked exits etc.

A close look at Columbine, a pivotal school violence event, shows us that if the perpetrators had been better bomb makers, it would have been a catastrophic bomb event, not a school shooting. Since then, we have spent a lot of time and effort discussing and practicing for a school shooter, while completely ignoring the greater peril – a mass casualty incident resulting from an explosive device that can be built using items from the local hardware store with directions from the internet.

Many safety experts believe, and rightly so, that the next “Sandy Hook” event will be a bombing event – and schools are not even remotely prepared. Let’s use the spotlight of the mishandling of Ahmed’s case as a catalyst to a greater good – evaluating, updating, or in some cases, implementing effective bomb threat response protocols. 

#IStandWithAhmed and what we can do about it.

It's great that "#IStandWithAhmed" is going viral , but there is a reason schools keep making poor decisions about student “threats” that end up on the news, in court, or going viral (see also: kid with ‘magic’ ring, kid with pop-tart ‘gun’, kid with finger ‘guns’ etc etc).

Few if any K-12 schools have been trained in the effective and evidence-based method of identifying, assessing, and managing student threats. When schools utilize threat assessment management teams, they are able to quickly gather facts and indicators to determine: “Is there real danger here?” “Do we need to involve law enforcement?” “What do we need to do to keep kids safe?”.

In Ahmed's case, that should have been a "no", "no", and "nothing".

Schools today face a difficult barrage of angsty Facbook posts (is that a threat?) off-hand comments (is that a threat?) Snapchat "jokes" about planning school shootings (is that a threat?) and just kids being kids. Somewhere in the dizzying array are the very rare, yet very real, instances of actual school shooters.

When schools have a formalized, efficient means to analyze, assess, (and if necessary manage with appropriate supports and interventions) students who might be at risk for violence against themselves or others, they can more readily determine that students like Ahmed, or the student wielding the “one ring to rule them all”, don’t actually pose a danger. Educators can quickly pull together the knowledge that is out there to determine if a student is really, truly a threat.

To be clear, Threat Assessment Management isn’t a magical cure-all to prevent violence in our schools. The shooter at Arapahoe High School seemingly was “screened” by a rudimentary process resembling threat assessment, and the educators there made the difficult, and ultimately incorrect judgement call that he was not a danger to others.

However, a 15 minute meeting of a Threat Assessment Management team in Ahmed’s case should have quickly resulted in an internal investigation and the finding of facts clearly showing that the “threat” posed by Ahmed and his clock was no threat at all.

Conversely, had a Threat Assessment team convened to discuss the shooter at Sandy Hook’s 5th grade writing, “The Big Book of Granny” (about a grandma who shoots kids using her gun-cane and taxidermies them) they would have looked at ALL the facts and circumstances in his life, and noted that he was already engaging in behaviors that caused concern. (We know from the Safe School Initiative Study  that 87% of school shooters engaged in behaviors, prior to the event that caused concern.)

According to the U.S. Department of Education, Threat Assessment Management is “one of the most useful tools” schools can use to keep ALL kids safe at school. Does your school or district have a trained Threat Assessment team? Probably not. If you #StandWithAhmed , click the button below for more information about how YOUR school can implement Threat Assessment Management.

The Educator’s School Safety Network is a national, 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides school safety training, resources, and technical assistance to schools and universities throughout the US and Canada.

A $15,000 sensor might tell schools where the shooter is, but does nothing to prevent or respond

A California High School is spending $15,000 on sensor that will detect when shots have been fired in the school. For half that expenditure we could train every staff member, student, and parent in a variety of crisis response techniques that will prevent violence, help them to survive a violent event, and prepare them for much more likely crisis events. 
If a school has that kind of money they should spend it on empowering their people, not purchasing a sensor that tells you the *&&^ is hitting the fan!

Read more
 

The $101,000 Safety Question

While the Chester County Sheriff, a private security firm, and the administration of Chester County Schools are arguing over whether to spend more than $101,000 annually  on sheriff’s deputies or private security guards to protect the children of Chester County, no one seems to be considering the most efficient and effective expenditure of all – putting training in the hands of those who will need it – the teachers and staff.  The district has spent almost $1 million on security measures such as door locking mechanisms and surveillance cameras.

The real million dollar question is whether even a dime has been spent on training school stakeholders on how to effectively use the hardware. For just a fraction of the cost of either of these reactive measures, every staff member, student, and parent could be trained in proactive prevention and response measures such as threat assessment management, lockdown enhancements, visitor engagement, and strategic supervision.  

Research as well as past violent events indicates that teachers and students will be the ones who will need to know how to respond to crisis incidents.  While having a law enforcement or security presence in schools is a great supplemental measure, adequate resources of time and money should be allocated first and foremost for the training and empowerment of school stakeholders. The central argument   between the sheriff, the security firm, and the school is what approach will keep students safest. The answer – none of the above- train and empower teachers, students, and parents first.

http://www.heraldonline.com/news/local/education/article19398492.html

Ohio Board of Building Appeals Rules Against Door Locking Devices

Ohio Board of Building Appeals denied a variance request by Southwest Licking School District for a security device that blocks classroom doors during a lockdown event, saying that the device violated state fire codes.

There are numerous door blocking devices on the market, many of which raise questions about whether a district might be trading one problem (preventing an intruder) for another (limiting the capabilities of occupants to evacuate a classroom).  Another equally pressing question also needs to be raised – could the money being spent on buying “stuff” be better spent training staff and students in (no-additional-cost) effective strategies to save their lives in a variety of potential crisis events.

Door blocking devices range from $50 to $500 per door (multiply that number for each classroom door). They are designed for one purpose and one specific event – an active shooter. For a fraction of that price, all school stakeholders could be trained in a variety of FEMA and Department of Education recommended strategies for responding to threats ranging from an active shooter, to a severe weather event, to a medical emergency.

There are legitimate concerns in many schools about the capabilities of classroom doors to be locked from the inside, rather than requiring an occupants to go out into the hallway to key-lock the door. Again, there are low to no-cost strategies to mitigate this problem – and these procedures require training. One of these is a $5  magnet-type mechanism that keeps the door latch from engaging but can be quickly removed when the room needs to be secured.

Perhaps most alarming is the prevailing notion that it will take a piece of hardware to make people feel safe.  One student told newsnet5.com the aftermarket lcoking devices in her classrooms “are like an added peace of mind. It’s like a comfort seeing them because now that they're in place I would hope they would always work the way they needed to.”

Students and staff would have greater peace of mind if they had been empowered, trained, and practiced in evacuation, barricade, and a host of other response procedures that will assist them in saving their own lives, rather than relying on a piece of hardware sitting in a classroom. Let’s spend money on people, not stuff.

http://www.newsnet5.com/news/local-news/oh-lake/school-shooting-defense-device-called-into-question-by-state-building-department

You are not welcome here…

A group of 31 parents at a Montana high school used litigation to block a troubled student from enrolling in their local school. The teen, Spencer Ore, was expelled from another Montana high school in January of 2013 after he brought two pistols to the school. Ore first told officials that he needed the guns because he was going to run away after to school to live off the land in the Rocky Mountains. He also told them he wanted to prove that automatic weapons were not required to carry out a school shooting.

After the incident with the weapons, Ore spent a year in juvenile detention and therapy programs. He returned home in January of 2014, but was sent back to treatment after posting threatening messages on Facebook about blowing up the school.

Ore improved after returning to therapy, and was deemed well enough to return to public school. This week’s litigation has blocked that possibility.

Spencer Ore’s situation illustrates a fundamental dilemma facing school administrators: how do you balance an individual’s right to a public education with the rights of the rest of the students to be safe?  In the past, Ore has explicitly made threats of harm. More importantly Ore has, at least in the past, engaged in behaviors of concern so as to pose a threat.

Ore’s parents have done what was required of them – they supported their son in serving his time in juvenile detention, and more importantly, ensured that he received appropriate mental health supports and interventions, up to and including medication, therapy, and monitoring. At what point does a student like Spencer Ore stop paying for the consequences of his actions and receive an opportunity for a fresh start? If he never can escape the mistakes and missteps of his past, will his future be a self-fulfilling prophecy? The troubled youth becomes a more troubled young adult.

Yet it is difficult to find fault with the desire of Twin Bridges’ parents to protect that which they hold most dear – their children.

This dilemma, and the sentiments of those on both sides of the issue, once again illustrates the critical nature of threat assessment management in schools.

When a school has a threat assessment team, trained professionals are able to critically analyze the behaviors exhibited by individuals of concern to assess the level of potential threat. Perhaps even more importantly in this case, that same team can monitor and support the individual within the school setting to provide appropriate interventions that ensure the safety of all parties. 

http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/montana-community-turns-away-teen-with-troubled-past/article_9aaec455-1c72-5a01-85d3-d0d19a7b8288.html

Newest School Safety Threat: 4th grader will make their classmates disappear with the One Ring To Rule Them All

While there are almost always two sides to every story, it's difficult to understand the rationale behind the recent decision to suspend a fourth grade student for "threatening" to make a fellow student disappear with a fanciful ring of power referenced in a literary classic. 

Are we back to the "zero tolerance" days of suspending kids for plastic knives in their lunchboxes? When we will come to a common sense approach to identifying, assessing, and managing kids who exhibit behaviors of concern? This question is easily answered: when we provide adequate threat assessment management training to ALL teachers and administrators.

There is an effective, low-cost best practice to determine whether a student poses a substantive threat to himself or others - threat assessment - but few districts have implemented it.

As long as untrained administrators react without expertise, support, or apparently common sense, as a nation we will snicker at the antics of school principals and cute little kids, and completely ignore the next school shooter who is begging us to stop him.

In the vast majority of cases, students who truly pose a substantive threat to themselves or others exhibited multiple behaviors of concern. According to The Safe School Initiative Report, 93% of school shooters had three or more people who were concerned about their potential for violence. 

As of this posting, in 0% of American schools is there a danger posed to students by magical rings forged in the fires of Mt Doom.
 

http://gawker.com/student-suspended-for-alleged-possession-of-one-ring-to-1683089560

The “Kleenex” problem in school safety

This week there has been a lot of discussion and debate about school safety issues – specifically about responding to an active shooter event.

Everyone from Rush Limbaugh to scholarly experts in the field have weighed in on the problems associated with a “confront” or “counter” orientation and the fallacy of this approach as a “best practice”.

Well, here comes the position of the Educator’s School Safety Network.
While our stand, as a non-profit organization dedicated to education-based training, has always been that countering or “fighting” is not developmentally appropriate, effective, or even safe, we are an organization that advocates for the options of evacuating and barricading.

Herein lies the problem. In our common vernacular, a Kleenex is ubiquitous for a tissue, a Q-tip is a cotton swap, and “Googling” is using a search engine. In this school safety discussion, the term ALICE, a for-profit, active shooter response training company is often used interchangeably (and incorrectly) to mean any sort of training program that advocates giving people options to respond to a crisis event.

Our organization is not an ALICE organization, nor do we teach countering, yet our training is based on the fundamental premise of providing educators and students with appropriate options, such as evacuating or barricading, that will help them to save their lives, rather than just employing the traditional lockdown approach of hiding in the corner and waiting to law enforcement to save the day.

It is encouraging to see a critical examination of approaches such as ALICE and others, but we must not lose sight of the incredible value and effectiveness of appropriately training and providing school stakeholders with options, rather than focusing on a singular response – be it fighting or sitting in a corner hoping for the best.
So when you hear of options-based training or lockdown enhancements, don’t automatically think ALICE, instead critically examine what options are taught, how the training is conducted, who conducts the training, and perhaps most importantly, whether it is by educators, for educators.

http://safehavensinternational.org/alice-training-gets-canned/

http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/13/living/feat-students-canned-goods-stop-school-shooters/

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015/01/14/quick_hits_page

More Sandy Hook updates

"The Sandy Hook Advisory Commission was scheduled to meet Friday to review some outstanding issues regarding school design, mental health care and emergency response. "

It is not coincidental that the basis of the lawsuit filed this week against the Newtown board of education is also predicated on allegations of negligence and/or deficits in the way the entry of the school was designed and the lack of appropriate procedures and training for responding to a crisis event. 

Which begs the question - where does your school stand? Have YOU been adequately trained to respond to a crisis event and to save your life and the lives of the children in your care? If not, why not?

http://www.dailyjournal.net/view/story/aaf9fd7328da44cc9e30972ab0aab9db/CT--Newtown-School-Shooting/

Families of Sandy Hook school shooting victims sue Newtown, school board

Two of the families of 6 year old Sandy Hook victims are suing the Newtown school board for wrongful death, alleging that security measure at the school weren’t adequate. Tragically the main allegations of the suit are most likely true for many American schools. They include:

• That teachers were unable to follow the security policies and procedures in place because classroom doors could only be locked from the outside using keys.
• That the entry of the school did not have security glass to protect against gunshots
• That a substitute in one of the classrooms where students were killed didn’t have a key and had not been training on what to do in a crisis event.

The larger question is – what are we currently doing to ensure that ALL teachers have been trained in, and have the means to follow crisis response protocols? How vulnerable are all school districts to the threat of a violent intruder, and the potential liability that follows if we are unwilling to allocate the time and financial resources to train our teachers?

I challenge you to critically examine how your school would fare on the three major points of the lawsuit. I’m sure at some point in the past,  the Newtown School Board thought that a school shooting could never happen there. Don’t make the same mistake in your district.

http://www.middletownpress.com/general-news/20150112/families-of-sandy-hook-school-shooting-victims-sue-newtown-school-board

“If a city provides a school resource officer for a school, who bears responsibility when that officer is absent and something goes wrong?”

 In a recent blog posting, Education Week reports on litigation currently occurring in a school in California. After a school shooting occurred, leaving a student critically injured, the parents of the injured student sued the district for negligence. The district, in turn, sued the city as the school resource office provided to the school by the city was not present when the shooting occurred.

This circle of litigation raises some interesting legal, and security questions: Did the city have a responsibility to provide a different SRO if the assigned officer was unable to be at the school? Would the presence of the SRO really have prevented the student from being shot? What sort of agreements or Memorandums of Understanding should be in place when school leaders and city officials share and/or designate responsibilities for school policing?

More importantly – what sort of agreements, understandings, and procedures are in place in your school or district in regards to the role of school-based police officers? A conversation between school leaders and law enforcement officials before an event might have allowed for cooperation, rather than litigation, between the district and the city.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/District_Dossier/2015/01/calif_district_sues_the_city_i.html

Viral video of cafeteria fight involving teacher-a teachable moment for educators

If you haven’t already seen it, you will most likely soon encounter the viral video of a teacher attempting to break up a fight in a high school cafeteria, and finding himself embroiled in the crisis. This 27 seconds of drama doesn’t tell the entire story of the situation, but it does concisely illustrate the many dilemmas facing educators today in regards to responding to incidents such as these.

Let’s break it down into a couple separate but equally important ideas. But first, let’s be clear, none of us know exactly what occurred before and after the video clip, and 27 seconds doesn’t tell the whole story. It’s tempting after the fact to assign blame or criticism, but that isn’t the point of this discussion. Rather it is to reflect on how these situations should be dealt with in all of our schools, because face it – this video could easily have happened in your school.

1.       This video illustrates the need for adequate, continual, and engaged supervision.  With strategic supervision, rather than the typical, passive “leaning against the wall” supervision, personnel are actively engaging in interactions with students and watching for escalating situations before they erupt in violence. While this isn’t always possible – perhaps as shown in the video – it is possible to put people in strategic locations and expect them to have a high level of situational awareness.  We could also reflect on the other side of this coin – what would this fight have looked like if there hadn’t been another adult close at hand to assist with one of the two physically aggressive girls.
2.      A major dilemma is clearly illustrated here as well – how do we balance our duty as educators to protect student from violence with our duty to protect ourselves from violence? Moreover, how can we protect students without putting ourselves in a position to perpetrate additional violence and/or open ourselves to legal liability? The video clearly illustrates this, as the teacher is subjected to at least 4 or 5 blows from the fighting girls. The fight itself is resolved when the teacher becomes more aggressive himself in taking the girl to the ground. This results in the potential for more violence as the students watching the event insert themselves into the situation.
3.       The viewer/documentor’s shift from audience to participant is shown only briefly at the end of the video, but it is an important consideration. Students who were amused, interested observers at the beginning of the event changed rapidly to hands on participants as the teacher subdues the fighting girl. Now the staff member is faced not with just one aggressive student, but the potential for many more who are reacting to the resolution of the original fight.
4.      There also needs to be some discussion of the culpability of the girls who initiated the event. Clearly both girls were intent on fighting someone and were acting in a physically aggressive fashion to both their peers and the adults in authority. Was the source of the fight something that could have been resolved or addressed in some other fashion before it turned to violence, or were these individuals intent on perpetrating some sort of violence regardless of who it involved or what form it took?

So what is the lesson learned here? There will always be the potential for violence when students find themselves in volatile situations. Fortunately low cost, effective strategies such as strategic supervision, conflict resolution, crisis de-escalation, a positive school climate, and a relationship-based culture can go a long way to reducing or eliminating these types of events. But these approaches are not quick, easy fixes- they require a sustained commitment on the part of administrators and staff members. Resources must be allocated for the training and professional development of all stakeholders in these critical areas.

Our response to aggressive and violent events can be more effective ONLY when we provide adequate training to staff AND students on how to actively supervise large groups of student, how to deescalate aggressive situations and how to safely and appropriate put hands on a student when required. 

This needs to be more than another “holy cow” video that is watched and forgotten like a cat playing the piano – it needs to be a wakeup call about the vital important of violence prevention initiatives in all schools.

You can watch the original video by clicking here 

That life or death moment – a teacher’s perspective

In recent weeks we have seen a great deal of media attention and discussion about the now famous actions of Antionette Tuff of Atlanta and John Masterson of New Mexico in talking school shooters out of perpetuating further violence.  Tragically we have also seen how this same approach does not always work in the case of Nevada teacher and former Marine Michael Landsberry, who was shot and killed while trying to convince an 85 pound middle school student to put down his weapon after shooting two classmates.

In recent years, there have been numerous incidents where teachers have demonstrated an equal amount of courage in acting to stop these attacks. Let’s take a look at what these individuals were able to do without any formal training, relying only on instinct:

• David Benke, a seventh-grade math teacher, tackled a gunman outside of Littleton, Colorado's Deer Creek Middle School. "He had a bolt-action rifle and I knew he couldn't get another round off when I got to him," Benke said.
• When two pipe bombs exploded at Hillsdale High School in California, English teacher Kennet Santana encountered a young man in a military-style tactical vest, armed with other bombs, a sword and a chainsaw. "He was trying to go towards the kids...I decided to close distance and bear hugged him and restrained his arms. We were face-to-face, chest-to-chest."
• Katie Fuchs, a social studies teacher, approached a student at Stemmers Run Middle School in Maryland who was ignoring his assignment and ended up with a .25 caliber semiautomatic pointed at her. When the student pointed the gun at his own head, Fuchs knocked the weapon out of his hand and to the floor, where the magazine fell into several pieces.
• Health teacher Derrick Schonauer had taught at Normal Community High School in Illinois for just 12 days when a 14-year-old student pulled a gun, firing two shots into the ceiling. Schonauer tackled the shooter, who allegedly was also armed with two more handguns, a hatchet, two knives, flammable liquid and matches.

The juxtaposition of these incidents should give educators pause – is a school shooting an educational event or a criminal event? The NYPD active shooter study tells us that 40% of school shootings end by applied force, and only 14% of these events end with the perpetrator surrendering. Is talking to the shooter (an educational response) really our best approach if it only works 14% of the time? While it is tempting to second guess these events after the fact, the truth remains that educators need more tools in the toolbox when confronted by a gunman.

Given the success of these confrontational approaches in preventing further violence, imagine the lives that could potentially be saved if educators were given adequate training in both de-escalation and use of force. The first and most important tool needed is not armed teachers, metal detectors, or school-based police, it is appropriate, consistent, on-going training in crisis response that is delivered from an educational perspective. How many more lives will be lost before we finally give teachers the tools they need to survive?

5 things you need to know about Neknomination

 I don’t want to add to the frenzy of “OMG youths are doing this thing…let’s panic” but I think a quick discussion of the current social media fad ‘Neknomination’ is worth 5 minutes of your time.

#1 Neknomination or “neck and nominate” comes from the English slang word “neck” as in to chug alcohol. In a Neknomination video, a person chugs their drink, performs a crazy stunt, and then nominates two friends to go next. (It’s not unlike the concept of paying it forward, but with potentially-dangerous binge drinking instead of acts of kindness)

#2 Neknomination has allegedly already been linked to 2 deaths. Neknomination is believed to have originated in Australia, and is seemingly most popular in South Africa, the UK (including Ireland) and Australia. Jonny Byrne, 19,  and Ross Cummins, 22, (both from Ireland) both died after apparently taking part in neknomination. Outraged parents have asked Facebook to shut the Neknomination sites down, but Facebook has declined to do so, saying “"We do not tolerate content which is directly harmful, for example bullying, but controversial or offensive behaviour is not necessarily against our rules.”

#3 Neknomination moves fast. Although there are instances of Neknomination dating back to 2008, the trend has only really picked up sped-the most ‘liked’ facebook pages were just created in mid-January 2014.

#4 Neknomination has three aspects that guarantee its social media success – it involves alcohol, videos of crazy drunken stunts, AND other people must be challenged to step up and participate.

#5 Your kids probably have already heard of it (but probably aren’t doing it…yet). It’s most likely only a matter of time before a bored kid stumbles upon it and decides to try.

And for a bonus:

#6 Please don’t panic and try to ban Facebook at your school.

So what should you do? There’s not much you CAN do, other than be aware that there is yet another peer-pressured excuse for doing something that can be both illegal and harmful. But often times, awareness is half the battle – at least you know is it out there on your students’ radar. Like vodka eyeballing, butt-chugging, etc, etc this too will pass.