http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-04-13-columbine-lessons_N.htm
Guards, metal detectors, hand held scanners, bag searches...this isn't the local airport. This is entry way of many local schools. Fifteen years ago, violence in schools consisted of the random fist fight. Then there was Columbine. The horror that occurred that April day is still fresh on everyone's mind and forever changed how we look at school security.
School shootings, while not an everyday occurrence, are a very real threat to the safety of students and staff. This topic is an issue that our high school wrestles with. We have metal detectors at the door, back packs are searched, and students are wanded with hand held scanners. Cameras are found throughout the school halls and recordings are stored should an event in the halls require it.
In addition to the technological aspects of school safety are the requirements of the staff who once upon a time only worried about the education of their students. Lockdowns are practiced. Threats are taken seriously as was evident a few months back when our school system was put under lockdown in response to a threat made by a former employee. Security personnel roam the halls with walkie talkies. There is also security stationed at the main door; all other doors are locked. Gang training has been instituted and a specialist comes in occasionally, walking the halls looking for gang related graffiti, colors, or signs flashed by hand.
Students aren't allowed to wear any items that could be perceived as showing the colors of a gang. Hats and hoods aren't allowed in the building and coats and backpacks are to stay in lockers. Trench coats and any type of coat worn "out of season" are not allowed.
Our school is considered one of the "tougher" schools in the state. Fights do happen, although not as often as one might think. Students have figured out, for the most part, that the school is not the place to settle the dispute about trash-talking on the basketball court the evening before. The steps that have been instituted in order to keep students safe have definitely cut down on what does happen in our school.
However, it isn't perfect. Occasionally the chair where the security person sits in the entry way is empty. Hall security is sometimes short-handed because of family emergency or illness. Because of the atrocious layout of our school, blind spots away from the view of the camera are possible and where ever they are, students have found them. In addition to the educational duties of our school's teachers, they are also acting as security themselves. Our last fight wasn't broken up by security. The first two on the scene to pull the two teenage boys apart were a science teacher and the art teacher. The students fighting were intent on hurting each other.
Because of the holes in our security, would it have been possible for one of these boys to bring a weapon into the school? I fully believe it would have been possible.
What a scary thought.
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We all need to know that we are safe in school. Securities in our schools are not as tight as it is suppose to be. We have many doors that are not manned by any security officer and the main office where you are suppose to see a security officer is at times empty with no one at the door. Any one can open the door for a visitor .Many visitors do not come in through the main entrance door. With so many different entrance doors we have, any one can open the door for an outsider or even a student with weapon, any body can bring in some thing in to the school. Even if we have metal detectors, our schools are not built for that, there are many windows that students or any one can use to bring in weapon. Teacher act as both educators and security officer, but there are little they can do because they are not trained for that. The economy situation of this country is making our system to hire less security officers. During classes some students skip class and go out side the school to do what ever they want to do and still come in through the back door where another student will open the door for them. One incident in my school was when a security offer asked a student to go in to class during class time. The students pushed the officer and started biting her up until other students with the boy rescued the officer. Our students wonder up and down the school during classes with the excuse to go to the rest room. Some thing need to be done about security in our schools so that educators and students will feel safe. You see a lot of fight where there are no one to separate the students. As per bringing gun to school, recently a student was seen with a gun when he was fighting. We are not safe and the system needs to do something about it.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in teacher education in my undergraduate course, I remember a teacher sitting all of us down in a circle and saying “Are you guys scared of school shootings and violence?” Most students quickly replied, “Oh no, it won’t happen. No fears!” But I, with a few others, held the opinion that maybe school violence was like getting a cancer – we didn’t want it to happen, it could happen, but we weren’t going to worry about it and rather prepare for it. I feel that saying it isn’t going to happen is naïve. However, we don’t want to live in fear about it either and rather need to be prepared and ready. Some schools are not there yet.
ReplyDeleteIt is very interesting how your school is handling it. The fears are real and hopefully the school will respond.
There are a couple of things that come to mind on this topic.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I think our schools, over all, are quite safe from things like school shootings. We tend to become frightened or think things are worse than they are because school shootings are a bit like plane crashes. It is a very rare event but when it happens, it is headline news everywhere. Flying in a plane is much safer than getting in your car and driving 10 miles. There are millions of people on tens of thousands of flights everyday and crashes are incredibly rare but when they happen, they are such big news its easy to think planes are flying deathtraps.
There are tens of thousands of schools in this country and the vast majority of the time they go through the year with no violence. The overwhelming majority (and it is not even close) never have a shooting, but let one happen and schools are locking down left and right. I'm not saying they don't happen and I'm not saying they're not terribly serious. I'm simply saying we are very safe because they happen so rarely.
When we worry about shootings we distract ourselves from the real problem - student related violence against other students, teachers, and property. This type of violence happens every day in many schools and it is a real threat to overall safety in many schools. Students live in a culture of permissiveness and graphically violent images. I was shocked when the majority of my 4th grade students told me they had seen the Saw movies, often with their parents. In case you don't know, the premise of the Saw movies is people are captured my a maniac and he places them in situations where they have to choose between a horrible way to save themselves or death (the name Saw comes from one situation where a person has to choose between dying and escaping by sawing their hand off). None of the kids seemed to think their was anything wrong with seeing this because they see it all of the time. How can that not eventually numb them to violence toward real people? We also have a culture where these kids are never wrong, they are never punished or held to standards of proper behavior, they know nothing about common courtesy or respect for others, and the law appears to be an annoying inconveniance to many of them. Shame is unknown. Lying is automatic. If we were purposely training these kids to be psychopaths - i.e. - people with no sense of right or wrong or empathy for others - we couldn't do a better job that what is being done right now. Our halls are half filled with kids who see nothing wrong with violence and have few qualms against committing it against other kids.
Sound a little overboard? Based on what I have seen from some of these kids I'd submit I'm more right than wrong. I am far more scared of a kid randomly attacking another kid that someone walking in with a gun.
First and foremost, wow! I know that schools do use metal detectors, guards, hand held scanners, and bag checkers but I myself can say luckily I have never seen this first hand. We do have cameras installed at my schools to attempt to get any type of bad activity caught on tape but like you said, there are many blind spots that the cameras cannot reach. I don’t think a student could bring a weapon to school without it being spotted in the main entrance with all of the cameras. Perhaps someone could come to another outside door and pass a weapon to a student especially if the door is located behind a staircase. The doors are locked from the outside but I am assuming they would not be locked from the inside in case of a fire or other emergency. This could a potential way a student could get a weapon in to a school however, I know at my school all doors have a camera near them. Also, all classrooms are to be locked when teachers are not in them. This is also to prevent any type of crime. For the most part I do think schools are secure, but it only takes one mastermind to change that.
ReplyDeleteThe level of security for this school is unbelievable. I know the reputation that the school has, but Holy Cats!, does any real learning go on here. When students and staff are so focused on security how can they be concentrating on the lesson they should be working on? Do you think some students don't come to school because they are afraid? If so, then these particular students aren't learning anything. What can we (educators) do to change this?
ReplyDeleteHi Beth!
ReplyDeleteConsidering the events that have happened in the past at this school, security is a necessity. However, there are holes in that security when there should not be because of very real possibilities. I don't think we have an issue with students not coming to school because of fear, but we do need to do a better job of making sure they don't have anything to fear.
Jim-
I agree, other violence is much more of an issue than that of shootings. Our security is in place to ensure that all types of violence do not occur. The school just needs to work on patching the holes to ensure that a shooting doesn't occur.
This is a topic that is very hard to discuss. Every school should have a security plan in place for a range of things that could happen however it seems like when we are in a time crunch and the school year is starting and everyone wants to be in their classroom with their children practicing these routines is the first thing that goes out the window. I teach in an elementary school and when I read this article the first thing I thought was, “Wow, I am lucky I don’t have to deal with that everyday. Now that I think about it am I really lucky? Any day a parent could come in looking for their child that they only have half custody with and make a threat with a weapon. There is also the fact that you want to create a warm, friendly environment for a child to learn in. How does it make the child feel when they have to be wanded everyday or step through a scanner? I am curious how many elementary schools use those tools. Some of those preventative practices I feel are more of a nuisance than a help. If a student wants to get something in a building they are going to find a way to get it in. This goes hand in hand with what you said about students finding the “blind spots” for the cameras. It is a hard battle, but one that you can not sit around and hope does not happen to your school.
ReplyDeleteThe school I teach in hasn't had a fight in the four years I've worked here so I consider myself lucky. School violence is a scary thing and I feel we need to be aware of our surroundings and situations all the time. We have a support team that meets every week to discuss kids in our building and teachers become "silent mentors" to kids we see are struggling. We are lucky enough to have a psychiatrist and a psychologist on staff and if we see changes in student behavior they are referred to these people and met with right away. Unfortunately, that is not the norm. My sister worked as a resource officer at a large high school and her second day on the job they had to chase down an intruder in the building that was opening classroom doors and peering in then leaving. After he was apprehended, they realized he was carrying a gun and was also a trained marksmen in the military. He could have inflicted all kinds of damage in this school had he chosen too. In her two years she broke up numerous fights that were between different race groups, many of them female fights. This school is in ND a place I don't think we'd point to first if asked about school violence.
ReplyDelete