Even though experts agree there is no certain way to prevent another school shooting many schools are taking steps to prevent rampages. Jeff Daniels, a counseling psychologist at West Virginia University studies schools that have dealt with school shootings and observed what types of programs they now have in place to make sure it does not happen again. Some of the things you will see now is a lot of respect for students and for teachers. Before school it is not uncommon to see teachers and students visiting in the cafeteria. School officials have effectively communicated to students the difference between snitching and getting help in a crisis situation. Along with taking rumors seriously, anti-bulling programs, and staff training, these schools feel they are making their schools safer. Colorado has developed a Safe2Tell tip line that covers threats to safety. Some LA schools have developed Safe School Ambassadors programs to help student empower themselves to keep communication open with each other and watch for signs of threatening situations. Even though many educators are feeling they are making the step in the right direction some teachers say that it still only takes one kid. My comment to that is how many of those one kids did these actions stop? School shootings do not have to be something that we have to except and deal with. We need to do everything we can to make our schools safer and why anyone would not want to do that is beyond me. Not only are we teaching our children skills that they can use when they are in the school but also when they are older in the real world. These are life skills. In our school district we stress life skills in elementary school of flexibility, cooperation, and trustworthiness. These skills don’t have to stop when you get to junior high. They just change and become more of things that kids should be educated about. It is better to talk about things upfront then be caught in a situation.
Why do HS students drop out?
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The Baltimore Sun reported that hundreds of educators in Maryland met in
late June to focus on three questions - what drives students out of school
- what ...
14 years ago
I'm all for prevention programs etc. I feel like in small town ND we are still thinking "this couldn't happen to us." Our action plan is, in my opinion, not effective at all. The few steps my school has taken to be more secure, such as adopting a policy to lock all but the main doors during the school day was met by comments like, "well that's stupid, what good does locking some of the doors do? A shooter can still get in." My response is this: "You're right. We cannot control everything. But we can control some things and we need to take the steps that we can take to make our school safer."
ReplyDeleteThe legal world also learned from it and have been very effective in other situations since. Part of the problem with columbine was police procedure dictated that the police stay out, control the scene, get swat there, and only enter as a last resort. the thinking was to go in blazing put more people at risk. I know this because I have several people in my family in law enforcement. The problem with that at columbine is it did nothing except give the two shooters time to methodically kill more people. Now in situations like this, police are training to go to the shooting as fas as possible. They are not to stop for the wounded and they are not to slink in slowly. The point is to either put themselves between the shooter and possible victims as soon as possible or to take out the shooter as fast as possible. It is an incredibly dangerous thing for police to do - my hat is really off to them on this - and it sounds a bit crude but it has already saved lives.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing every single one of our school should have is a lock down plan. Everyone should know what to do. We can't assume it will never happen here.
This winter we had the uncle of Rachel Scott come to our school with the presentation called "Rachel's Challenge". It was very good. After the presentation kids could sign a banner for Rachel's Challenge that they would promote the ideals and values, acceptance and diversity, etc. that Rachel promoted. I could definitely tell a difference the rest of the school year. It was also interesting for parents to see the banner hanging in the main hallway and see that their child had signed it as a pledge to do what they could to stop Columbine from ever happening again.
ReplyDeleteIt’s great to see schools taking this initiative to make students safer in school as well as the teachers. It only takes one student and one time for a lot of devastation to take place. I like how there is tip line in effect that way the student does not feel like they are being a tattletale or a snitch. It’s also good to see that schools are teaching the difference between what a threatening situation is and what is not. Educating students about this will hopefully result in less school shootings.
ReplyDeleteI think that many schools have made moves in the direction of prevention and safety from school shootings, but overall are still missing the point about stopping the human behaviors that lead up to the shooting. Schools can't fix everything but with all of the information we have about the "shooters" and the overwhelming commonalities amongst them--why are we not doing more to focus on eliminating or at least offering more support to students who might fall into that group?
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