Summer 2024
Instructor: Justin D. Garwood, Ph.D.
Final Grade: A
Course Description from Syllabus:
The purpose of this course is to address head-on a crisis facing our 21st century schools: gun violence. Issues to be explored include (but are not limited to) historical perspectives on school safety, theories of sources of violence in schools (social media, film, music, mental illness, access to guns) and their merit, relationship building as an antecedent intervention, the intersection of social justice and the second amendment, and action steps to be taken to help prevent further school tragedies. The course will be delivered in an online format and utilize technology such as Screencast-O-Matic. Active engagement and participation regardless of learning platform is expected.
Course Assignments:
Course Reflection/ Impact:
Growing up, I always had the idea that I wanted to become a teacher, but the reality of violence in schools has always terrified me. I remember being huddled in a corner of my own classroom in middle school when bullet shells were found in our hallways and death threats written on the bathroom mirrors. I remember sitting in my world history class in high school when the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting happened. I also remember sitting in my undergraduate adolescent development class when we got the news about the shooting at Parkland High School. Since then, there have been numerous violent attacks and threats on schools throughout our nation. This issue has always been a very important and close to home issue for me, so when I saw that there was a course offering on how to prevent these horrific events, I figured it would be extremely beneficial to my own practice.
In the beginning of the class, we reviewed statistics and the background of many school shootings. This included watching a documentary called Zero Hour, which is a film that had a break down of the events that happened at Columbine High School. We read an article called Historical Examination of United States Intentional Mass Shootings in the 20th and 21st Centuries: Implications for Students, Schools, and Society by Antonis Katsiyannis, Denise Whiteford and Robin Ennis that gave a good overview of gun violence in the United States and how it has impacted schools. One of the major take aways from the discoveries by the secret service and U.S. Department of education is that targeted acts of violence on schools are not impulsive, other people know about the idea/ plan, people are not threatened prior to the event, there is no universal profile for a person who commits an act of violence on a school, attackers often show concerning behaviors prior to their attack, attackers share that they have often experienced loss or have been bullied or harassed at school, and most school shootings end before law enforcement has to act (Katsiyannis et al., 2018). Through the introductory information we learned in this course, I was already reshaping how I viewed these horrific acts and started to think more about how we can support all students so they feel as though they are cared for and important.
While I continued to think about how to have more meaningful relationships with students, we also read the novel, Somebody Else's Kids by Torey Hayden. This true story invites us into into Hayden's alternative placement classroom where she is instructed to work with students who had severe behavioral needs. There was a kindergarten aged autistic boy who echoed what other said, a young girl who experienced a traumatic brain injury when she was an infant, a young boy who watched his father get killed, and a adolescent teen who got pregnant while attending a Catholic private school. Her goal for her students were make them "humane and strong enough to survive" ( Hayden, 1981). Granted that these events happened over forty years ago, we can learn a lot through Hayden's holistic approach to each child and saw them for who they really are, not just their flaws or imperfections. She strived to make sure each one of her students knew their value and worth, despite the pressure and cruelty that was waiting just beyond her classroom walls. I often think about how Hayden interacted with her students with grace and honesty. I believe that she is a great role model for educators on how to build relationships with our students, especially our most behaviorally challenging ones. Since reading this book, I have recommended it to various teachers to read in order to spread the message about how we should be interacting with students and forming relationships.
At the end of this course, we were able to put our learning together and create informational websites to help educate others on school violence and what we can do to help prevent it from happening in our communities. I created a website that I titled "A Safer Tomorrow". This website includes information such as statistics, safety precautions, the importance of student/ teacher relationships, information on what to do in case of an emergency at your school, and the steps of recovery afterwards. I created this website through using material we viewed in class as well as my own research on the topic. Since creating this website, I have shared ideas with the administration at my school and have expressed interest in being a part of the school safety committee in my building.
After taking this course, I have been really focused on creating healthy relationships with my students, as well as telling other teachers and administration of my learning from this course. I have been working on doing more research about social emotional learning and went to the Conscious Discipline conference in order to learn more about creating relationships with adolescents. I have also been advocating my school get different tools for our classrooms for safety. In the middle school, we are working on getting barracuda door barricades to use in case of a lock down where we were not able to evacuate. It allows the door to be barricaded but removed easily so you can evacuate safely. I am hoping to continue educating myself and others about safety protocols for schools, but also different ways in which I can support my students and build strong relationships.
References:
Katsiyannis, A., Whitford, D. K., & Ennis, R. P. (2018). Historical examination of United States intentional mass school shootings in the 20th and 21st centuries: implications for students, schools, and society. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 27(8), 2562–2573. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-018-1096-2
Hayden, T. L. (1981). Somebody else’s kids.William Morrow Paperbacks.