Why Devaluing Teachers Hurts Everyone

By Peggy Wuenstel – I have been spending many angst filled evenings over the last two years, trying to get a sense of when things went off the rails.

I have been in this business for 30 years. There are some things that I knew back at the beginning that are still true today. Teaching is hard work. Educating children is a team sport. You will never get rich working in public education if your bank account is the measure of your success. The days will be long and the summers will be short. The intangibles will always trump the measurable in making you feel like you earn your paycheck, and even though it’s not all about the kids, it is certainly mostly about the kids.

Some things have changed radically, at least here in Wisconsin.

Showing up every day, doing the best you can, keeping your skills current, and volunteering for extra duties will not make teaching a secure job anymore. The majority of Wisconsin taxpayers don’t view the public money they spend to compensate teachers as the good investment that they have in the past. In a consumer-driven society where we’ll upgrade our phones, order the pricey wine, and stay in the four star hotel, the adage: “You get what you pay for” doesn’t seem to apply to the education of our children.

There is now a marked difference between what we can afford to pay as a society and what we are willing to pay. Where the stereotype of the teacher in the past was (and certainly not universally true) the patient, kindly public servant who never lost their temper or expressed discontent about their working conditions, today’s image is just as likely to be a militant public employee who is overpaid, with an attitude of entitlement. Neither is accurate.

What has also changed is the way we connect the dots between our democratic government and the aggressive capitalism that drives the American economy. I am married to an economics major, and we have had three decades of conversations on where our money comes from and where it goes. I have come to understand that there are two essential components that drive the creation of prosperity and fuel the engine of American success:  Capital and Labor. Both are necessary for the creation of products, the provision of services, and the rise of small businesses, cottage industries, and multi-national corporations.

We have historically believed that Americans value the labor of their fellow citizens. We express our appreciation for the actions of first-responders in a crisis like the Boston marathon bombing. We covet the skill of the engineer, the cabinetmaker, or the cake decorator that create the items that enrich our lives. We are grateful for and dependent upon the services of those who transport our goods cross country, diagnose our illness and treat those maladies, deliver our mail, and cut our hair. We dream about being in the same league as the pro athletes, musicians, or actors that entertain us in our leisure time.

But things have changed in my lifetime.  We seem to value what people HAVE far more than what they DO. Celebrities like Paris Hilton, the Kardashians, and Honey Boo Boo  are not particularly gifted in actions other than commanding our attention and accumulating wealth. We know more about athletes’ contracts and salaries than we do about their statistics on the field. It is now as important to be the highest paid player as it is to have the most passing yards, home runs, shots on goal, or won/loss percentage.  This appears to reflect the value system of our society in general. Those who have the capital command the respect. Capitalists have so devalued the labor of our fellow Americans that their jobs are exported overseas where they can pay even less so that capital grows at a faster rate.

As you can imagine, this puts educators at a great disadvantage in earning and keeping public respect. We have never, as a group, been about having things. The fruit of our labors does not fill warehouses, power automobiles, heat homes, or satisfy that chocolate craving at the end of the day. We fill minds, power aspirations, kindle fires of enthusiasm and ambition, and satisfy the needs of children to feel loved, valued, and capable of meeting the challenges of the future.  We help parents, clergy, community leaders, and others willing to invest in the future, to shape people who aspire to DO things as much as to HAVE things.

If we still value the work that we do for each other, the communities that we build, the wounds that we heal, and the knowledge we accumulate, then teachers are essential to the future of this country. They deserve the return of the respect, in both financial and standing realms, to this honorable profession. Until we do so as a society, we will undervalue many, many people whose contributions are essential to our collective American dream.

Many of my friends and colleagues remain mystified by what has happened. For the most part, we haven’t changed. We still come in early and stay late. We carry piles of papers home and carry our students in our hearts. We haven’t gotten rich, and we’re not sure of the retirement plans we made when started out as novice teachers. We worry about health care, about students who come from unsafe neighborhoods and homes with empty cupboards.  We try to live the Marquette mission every day, to Be the Difference, all in a time the difference between what our fellow mortals feel we are worth and what we know we contribute to the students we love is as large as it has ever been.

Have a great summer, and I’ll see you on these pages in the fall.

It’s Time to Pay the Students

By Nick McDaniels – As the NCAA Basketball Tournament came to a close, I again heard the arguments for paying players.

This argument comes and goes every year while some talking heads speak nostalgically about amateur status and others talk about the profits that are being made because of the talent of the players. I’ll admit that I used to be someone who fell in favor of the importance of the amateurism of student athletes. However, when you really stop and think about the incredible profits that are made by the TV networks, advertisers, athletic retail companies, sports venues, ticket retailers, etc…, it seems incredibly unreasonable that those person without whom all these profits would not be imaginable are not paid for their services.

Obviously, I’m simplifying the issue quite a bit, and obviously there are great arguments to be made (free education, great life experience, free exposure of talent) that the student athletes are well compensated. I would go into more detail about why I think student athletes should be paid, but that is not the topic of this post.

Apply the same concepts I have just summarized about student athletes to K-12 students. Every year thousands of students sit for standardized tests, spend hours prepping for them, and waste countless hours of real learning time in the pursuit of higher scores. Naturally, I think students should have the option at least to not take the tests. Since this is not an option for most students, it means the tests are compulsory. Pearson and McGraw-Hill (and a few other conglomerates, but those two are convenient and deserving scapegoats) are behind the tests, and the textbooks, and the curriculum, and the policy decisions that make the whole system go. They profit incredibly because of this. However, without the students taking the tests, their profits would be slashed.

Therefore, if these corporate education giants profit hugely from standardized testing, which requires kids to take the tests, and kids are forced to take the tests, doesn’t it stand to reason that the kids should get paid? They provide the labor, without which the raw materials (blank tests and the text books and curriculum that goes with them) never turn into products (completed tests to be scored, returned, and analyzed so that more products from these same companies can be purchased to improve results. Put simply: kids are forced to work for free by the government for the profit of a few corporations.

In 1863 we tried to eliminate this economic relationship from the American economy, only to allow creative corporations and the politicians who “work” for them, to force students into working in factories disguised as schools. What do the students get from all of this testing? Little. What should they get? Wages.

There are a few solutions to ending the servitude of students. 1) Stop testing, or 2) Allow students to opt out of testing, or 3) Force all tests to be made by the state or district, not contracted out to for-profit corporations, or 4) Force the companies profiting off of the public dollar and the labor of students to pay the workers.

Which solution is best? Maybe we’ll send out a survey to students, parents, and teachers. Get your number two pencils ready.

The Other Shoe of High Stakes Evaluations Just Dropped

By Nick McDaniels – The other shoe just dropped for me, but we’ll get there in a minute.

Operating under a pay-for-performance structure is not good for morale or working conditions or students. For a teacher, it means waiting with your finger in the dam, holding back the pressure supporting a family, boosting the test scores, managing a classroom, navigating the common core curriculum, attending meetings, joining committees, and, at some point, actually teaching children. Why do teachers take on all of these jobs, many of which used to be handled by central office personnel or department chairs or team leaders (positions which are going the way of the dodo)? They are afraid for their jobs.

The carrot under pay-for-performance is a bigger raise (and the satisfaction of a student succeeding on a test developed at taxpayer expense by multi-national publishing and consulting corporations). There is supposedly a huge stock pile of carrots to be awarded, all so far out of reach that most are discouraged even at the thought of trying. The teachers who actually get the carrot find the taste to be soured by the hours of test-prep and sacrificed family time it took to get a nibble.

The stick under pay-for-performance is devaluation, whereby teachers are told they are not good enough, they are not doing enough, and either need to work much harder or find something else to do.

Most teachers, because we are a bunch who are industrious and eager to please, do their best to achieve the standards set no matter how unreasonable they may be in hopes that an observer or evaluator will note their hard work and reward them for it. But eventually, we will all be exposed. These systems are not set up to make teachers look good anymore than the testing regimes are set up to help students succeed. Eventually, the way the systems are designed, we will be devalued.

And then what?

3 Things We Must Admit (and Do) If We’re Serious About Improving Teaching Quality

By Claudia Felske

What prompted such self-indulgent reflection?

What led me to actually create a pie chart about myself!?

The other day, I read a tweet asking for input on accreditation of Teacher Education programs. In it’s “commitment to transparency and public accountability,” the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) is “seeking public comment” on their standards for teacher education programs.

“Okay,” I thought, “I have a few things to say about this.”

I took the bait, clicked on their link, and after spending 30 minutes on a labyrinth of online questioning, I had the desire to chuck the shackles of the survey and go rogue, putting in my own words my own thoughts on this topic, an open letter to the CAEP, so here it is:

3 Things We Must Admit (and Do) if we’re Serious about Improving Teacher Quality:

1. We have to admit the Intangibles: Measuring the quality of new teachers based on their Teacher Ed program is fraudulent. (See my self-indulgent pie chart above.) Basing this conclusion on no one else but me (in my defense, I’m the most honest case study available to me), I attempted to quantify  the factors that constitute who I am as an educator.

In good conscience, I can only track about 5% of my expertise to my Teacher Preparation classes. Another 20% to my formal education in general k-12, B.A. M.A.+.  Most of who I am as an educator comes from intangibles: 50% goes to my upbringing, Mom and Dad. It was being raised with high expectations, curiosity, desire to succeed, and an intolerance for mediocrity. I’ll attribute the last 25% to my passion for my subject area (language arts) and my desire to see students succeed. What I realize is that my highly-unscientific self examination undermines the premise of the CAEP Teacher Education Evaluation process. Judging teacher quality based on teacher preparation classes measures 5% of the educator and ignores the other 95%, the all-important intangibles.

2.  We have to attract the Intangibles: If you accept my premise that the most important teacher qualities are the intangibles, then our priority becomes clear: to somehow attract those intangibles into the field of education. To get excellent educators, start with the best ingredients.

We need to attract those with a crush on excellence, an unflappable determination to make a difference, a curiosity bent on incessant improvement. In other words, seek and retain top-notch candidates – the ones that are also highly sought by industry and business. And to compete, we need to pay them an attractive salary (college debt forgiveness makes great sense here too). We need to respect educators, giving them the dignity that befits those who are nurturing the next generation. We need to treat teaching as an art that requires years of practice to achieve an ever-changing “mastery.” A high art, a higher calling, a life well spent.

3. We need to nurture the Intangibles. Once we attract the best and brightest, we need to help them evolve into master educators with an authentic apprenticeship program. We need to identify master teachers currently in the field (National Board Certified teachers, for starters), and then leverage their expertise in an intensive mentor role, allowing new teachers to incrementally evolve into their practice over the course of 2-3 sustained years of intense training under the tutelage of a master teacher.

If we were serious about creating a critical mass of master teachers and making serious improvements in teaching and learning, we’d invest in and insist on such a structure.

• Admit the intangibles.
• Attract the intangibles.
• Nurture the intangibles.

These are not easy concepts to quantify, these are not easy steps to take, but the conclusion of this self-indulgent, case-study-of-one teacher/researcher is that acknowledging and nurturing “the intangibles” would be a far more authentic and productive path to sustained teacher improvement than what’s currently being discussed.

And until such steps are taken, aren’t we all kind of fibbing here? Pretending that we can fatten the pig by weighing it?

The Myth of Being Prepared

By Peggy Wuenstel – It is an interesting paradox of the human mind; we seek both novelty and consistency.

We need to know what is going to happen and we desperately hope to be surprised. This happens every day in America’s classrooms. We write lesson plans, we prepare folders for substitute teachers, and we try to anticipate all the ways that things can go awry.

I have a post-it note above my desk which feeds my love of alliteration. It reads, Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance.  And then something like Sandy Hook happens and the myth of being prepared crumbles into dust around my feet.

I watched and listened with horror and pain at the accounts of what happened in that elementary school. What I could not do was envision what I would have done if I had been there that morning. We have drilled for these kinds of stranger invasions in my building. The police and administrators have rattled my doorknob to simulate what could occur if it happened here.

But I knew, and my students knew, that the worst thing that we could imagine was not really happening. The pictures that I painted in my mind of fallen teachers and terrified students keep resurfacing as the gun safety conversation continues. Interestingly, the media has paid little attention to their names and faces. We have not come to know them as people. Perhaps we are not prepared for that type of personal connection.

I am similarly shocked by the proposals that have come forward that seem to believe that putting guns into our schools will prepare us for intruders. Having a gun does not mean being prepared to use it and I would never be willing to have one in my school space. I am not prepared to believe that a teacher willing to carry a gun makes our children safer. I am even less willing to believe that volunteer armed guards create the kind of climate that allows learning to grow. I was never prepared for the idea that my job as a teacher would be dangerous, controversial, or maligned. All three have happened.  That is the view from the large lens.

In the small lens, the same lack of certainty occurs. We know what we would like to happen. We study what has happened in the past. We check the weather forecast. We stack the deck and collect the supplies. We write the plans and set the table. Sometimes, for good or ill, things don’t turn out like we plan. Writing it down doesn’t mean that we are more prepared, just better documented. When we supervise student teachers or clinical interns, we ask them to write down far more than we do for ourselves because we need to evaluate the thought process that goes into designing and delivering lessons. It’s a road map, but one that allows for, and in some ways expects, detours.

It is another interesting application of the multiple meaning words that fill our English language. We prepare a meal and something is there on the table. We prepare our students for a high-stakes test, for a challenge, for life. But do we really? If they don’t do the work we lay before them, are they equipped to take their places in the world?  Sometimes it seems that the more we give, the less they seek. The more we spoon feed, the fewer bites our students take of the apple of knowledge. Does a test score, a report card, a portfolio of work have any predictive value for the preparedness of our students? How can we model, guide and foster without leaving them unprepared when our support is gradually withdrawn?

One of the candidates for the Kohl Fellowship for this coming year raised an important issue in his application. When we use student test scores to evaluate teacher performance we pretend that we are preparing a product for the marketplace. In reality, we are providing the services that help students prepare themselves for the lives they would like to lead in the future. The myth surfaces again. Tying shoes, checking homework, managing time and meeting deadlines are all things that we would like our kids, in school or at home, to do for themselves. The way we prepare them to meet these responsibilities says as much about us as teachers and parents as it does about our students.

There is that day every winter in the Kindergarten hallway when those patient, nurturing teachers decide that those cherubs are now responsible for negotiating the sequence of getting dressed for a cold-weather recess. Most of the tykes are prepared for the process and those that aren’t soon catch on because the consequences are real and the rewards are tangible and immediate, the marks of a great learning experience.

Our desire to make sure that our students are properly attired for their educational journey doesn’t end with snowpants and mittens. It extends to mortarboard sand graduation robes, to business suits and surgical scrubs, combat fatigues and mechanic’s coveralls. What they pack into their suitcase for their journey through life is ultimately their personal responsibility, but we are able to provide some guidance and support in wardrobe selection.

We can’t prepare them for everything, and we probably shouldn’t want to do so. Opening a suitcase, a closet, a mind, or a world will reveal many familiar things that we were prepared to see, but hopefully a few pleasant surprises as well.  A loving family, a good education,  and a supportive school should also provide the foundation to handle those things for which no one should ever have to be prepared.

Good Dog, Bad Dog: Merit Pay for Teachers

Dog biscuits are not the answer.

By Claudia Felske – So there I was listening to my superintendent explain district initiatives and priorities: we need individualized student learning; we need meaningful technology integration; we need continual improvement for staff and students.

I get it.
I agree.
He’s singing to the choir.

Until I hear that ominous word: “bonus”

Now I’m sweating.
My pulse is quickening.
My toes are tapping.

But, why?  This is not a new topic in education. It’s happening in other districts; it’s all over education journals. I’ve read about it; I’ve talked about it, and I’ve never had particularly strong feelings about it until this meeting, until it entered into my realm of “the possible.”

Until now, I figured merit pay would be a tricky business, but probably worth exploring at this increasingly complex time in education. It makes sense. Pay teachers according to how well they do. It’s what the business world does, right? Besides, maybe I’d actually be paid for all the extra hours I put in. I should be ecstatic. I should be lobbying the state capital for merit pay.

THAT would be my rational reaction.

But my visceral response at that meeting—my pulse, my sweat glands, my moral compass—told me that the notion of teacher bonuses is at odds with my core values, with who I am as a professional, an educator, a human being.

Why?   

1. It’s insulting. When the word was uttered, I felt violated. After a bit of reflection I figured out why. Embedded within the idea of bonuses is the presumption that I don’t do my best, and that I’d do better for $50 or $200 or $1000. This couldn’t be further from my M.O.      I work for purpose, not dollars. I work for students, not checklists.

2. It’s hypocritical. We want students to be life-long learners. We want to foster intrinsically-motivated individuals who want to learn in order to satisfy their natural curiosity, to live richer and more connected lives. We cringe when students ask “Will this be on the test?” before determining if it’s worth their time and effort.

In this vein, many of us (most clearly articulated by Alfie Kohn) feel that our current system is flawed: it conditions students to vie for points instead of learning widely and deeply. We see two extremes in our classrooms: the point-mongers and the disconnected. We yearn to reform this system.

Enter teacher bonuses and merit pay, placing teachers into the same two roles: the point-mongers who grasp at the “to do” list to earn bonuses and the disengaged, (formerly known as highly-effective teachers) demotivated by a system that reduces the art of teaching to a checklist and dollar signs.

3. It won’t work.  Oldest advice in the book: know your audience. The master minds behind merit pay do not know teachers. I don’t know of a single person who went into education for the money. This is self-evident. Contributing. Inspiring. Learning. Making a difference. That’s why people become teachers. Not to make an extra $150 for completing a task or raising a test score.

Students on a conveyor belt. (Pink Floyd’s The Wall, 1982)

4. We are not producing widgets. Whenever the business model is applied to education (which is often the case) we must remind ourselves that we are not producing widgets. We are nurturing human beings in all of their complexity and diversity. When we think back to the most valuable moments in our own education, few of us turn to a fact we memorized, an equation we solved, an essay we wrote. It was a personal conversation we had with a teacher, a mishap turned into a lesson, an inspirational “aha” moment orchestrated by a creative educator.

These moments do not show up on checklists and will not increase by offering bonuses. Their likelihood will decrease as we turn students into data points, as we align widgets on the assembly line, as we strive to meet the criteria on the “bonus’ rubric rather than use our wisdom, experience, and creativity to connect with kids and inspire them to grow, question, and learn. 

Maybe we can take a lesson from King Midas: If we wish for a world where everything we touch turns to gold, if we look at teaching as a means to a bonus, if we see our students as dollar signs, we will destroy their humanity and ours.

If You Can’t Beat ‘em, Boycott ‘em.

By Nick McDaniels – Most days I am proud to be a teacher.

I am proud to not give up on kids when so many people have. I am proud to make a living by the success of students rather than by their failure as so many do in this country. I am proud to be a teacher-activist who fights for the rights of teachers and students.

Recently though, and not through any action of my own, not through any action of anyone I know, not through any action of anyone in my time-zone, I became even more proud to be a teacher.

Teachers stood up on behalf of students and boycotted the single most classist act ever perpetrated upon the American people through public schools: standardized testing. Teachers at Seattle’s Garfield High School, alma mater of Jimi Hendrix, Quincy Jones, to name a few, stood together in solidarity to say that they refused to subject students to a corrupt and unfair testing regime perpetrated most impactfully on poor and minority students by the State of Washington serving as the strong arm for the federal government.

You would be hard pressed to find an inner city teacher that would not agree with their rationale and find themselves facing the same unreasonable conditions regarding testing. The tests don’t test what is in the curriculum. There is some huge company taking tax dollars to bring these tests to classrooms. The tests don’t address the state standards in a reasonable way or at all. And, very basically, testing doesn’t help children learn.

Recently I read a passage on a standardized midterm test that my students were to take. Of course, this passage, and the questions related to it, had little at all to do with anything that was in the curriculum I have been teaching all year, thus setting the students up for failure. But, more importantly, the passage, about the beauty of poetry, went on to talk about how poetry is closely linked to thought and passion, and leads us to break down barriers between cultures and languages, and is undervalued because it is boiled down to something that can be put into neat little boxes, easily defined, quizzed upon.

In other words, Americans don’t like poetry because it is taught in such a way that can be tested, and this type of philosophy, when applied to anything, will strip anything of its purest meaning and value. So what are my students to do with this amazing knowledge, this profound theory about pedagogy and literature? Answer multiple choice questions. Why not? Why not subject a bunch of students who are subjected to some of the cruelest living conditions America can offer to such a cruel irony? After reading the passage, I apologized to my students for even being a part of subjecting them to such a test. Perhaps had I seen the test more than a few days before I was supposed to give it, then I could have boycotted too.

On that day I was ashamed to be a teacher.

However, I am proud to know that there are those among us who are willing to put their jobs and livelihoods on the line to stop this unreasonable assault on often the most helpless of our American brothers and sisters. Thanks, teachers at Garfield, and all that have jumped on board since. I am with you. You make me proud to come to work.

Great School, Right? Not So Fast

By Bill Henk – Apart from truly grateful parents and students, very few people would appreciate a great school  more than me.  It’s been my dream for every child to profit from one of these treasures since I became an educator almost four decades ago.

As a teacher I wanted to work at a great K-12 school.  As a graduate student in literacy, I researched what made schools great in reading and writing,  and as a faculty member and academic administrator, I’ve tried to contribute to the creation of great schools in whatever way that I could.

In my current role as the dean of an education college at a major university, I’m often asked — or told — about great schools in our region and beyond.  The “local” questions or advice come as no surprise to me, because Milwaukee stands out as an educational landscape for K-12 schooling unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.  It’s as mysterious and complicated as they come.  In our city,  most people struggle to determine which schools are great ones, although there are some who claim to know those answers, rightly or wrongly.

As for me, I won’t pretend to know with absolute certainty.  Oh, I definitely have my ideas, but I respect the fact that schools rank as extremely complex organizations.  Judging their relative greatness amounts to risky business in my book.

Still, as a blogger, I’ve written more than once about the factors that I think contribute to great schools.  The single most important factor in determining a great school is its culture, a multifaceted construct that includes elements like exceptional leadership and teaching, collaboration, parental involvement, professional development, governance, extended school days and years, and student voice and responsibility among others.

Most of the well-intended (but perhaps mistaken) individuals who try to alert me to great schools start with standardized tests scores as their litmus test.  I’ll spare readers my typical diatribe on why standardized test scores alone represent a very narrow view of exceptional schooling.  But for the sake of argument today, I’m actually going to use them to make my point.

School Crises: A Resource Guide for Teachers, School Leaders, and Parents

Several individuals have caringly reached out to the College of Education since the Sandy Hook Elementary School Tragedy — expressing their concern, asking questions, and wondering how they can help.

Many more have offered up helpful resources for principals, teachers and parents to assist them in working with their communities and schools to address what happened, the implications, and next steps to deal with the aftermath of the tragedy.

Since this information is useful for anyone working in or with schools, we thought it would be appropriate and hopefully valuable to post a resource guide here on the Marquette Educator blog.

Feel free to share this resource with others who might find it beneficial.  And be sure to stop back and let us know if you found any article or resource particularly salient.  By sharing your experiences with the content we provide, you help us to do what an education blog ought to be about:  learning.

Specific to Sandy Hook

• Blog by Angela Maiers: “There is No Lesson Plan for Tragedy – Teachers, YOU Know What To Do”
• Brief article ending with a number of ways to hope children understand tragedies: “30 Resources to Help Our Children Cope With Tragedies”
• Brief article reflecting on how children cope: Talking with your kids about a school shooting
• The U.S. Department of Education today compiled a collection of resources to help school communities across the nation respond to the crisis and to help school children cope with the trauma.  We provide the links to those documents here.

General Disaster Help

• Coping with Violence and National Tragedy, a resource guide.
• Crisis Preparedness, Response, and Recovery Resource Center
• Disaster Distress Helpline
• Five Questions on the Tucson, Ariz., Shootings for Psychologist Joel Dvoskin, PhD 
  • Helping Children Deal with Tragic Events in the News. Fred Rogers’ advice from Family Communications:
  • Helping Your Children Manage Distress in the Aftermath of a Shooting. Aimed at parents and teachers working with young children.  (American Psychological Association)
  • Little Listeners in an Uncertain World: Coping Strategies for You and Your Young Child after Tragic Events.
  • Managing your distress in the aftermath of a shooting
  • Restoring a Sense of Safety in the Aftermath of a Mass Shooting: Tips for Parents and Professionals, from the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress.
  • Talking to Children about the Shooting. National Child Traumatic Stress Network two page handout:
  • Tips for Talking to Children and Youth after Traumatic Events. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services resource sheet:
  • When the World Is a Dangerous Place: Helping Children Deal with Violence, how to help children and adults work through difficult times.

Helpful Hints for School Emergency Management:

• After a Loved One Dies – how children grieve and how parents and other adults can support them
• Listen, Protect, Connect – Model and Teach; Psychological First Aid for Teacher and Students
• Psychological First Aid (PFA) for Students and Teachers: Listen, Protect, Connect – Model & Teach
• School Crisis Guide: Help and Healing in a Time of Crisis

—————————

This timely resource guide was kindly assembled by Lori Fredrich, ourAssistant Director of External Relations, Communications, and Recruitment.  Lori rarely takes any credit for the enormous amount of skillful work she does to distinguish our Marquette Educator blog, our College of Education website, our Mission Matters magazine, and all of our academic unit’s print and electronic publications.  So, I’m seizing this opportunity to credit her more properly here.  For future reference, when you see content that is not attributed, it almost always represents Lori’s handiwork.  We owe her a tremendous debt for keeping our public relations so relevant and energized.

BH

Let’s Actually Make School Safety a Priority

By Nick McDaniels – Political and educational leaders all over the country have been making speeches over the last few weeks appropriately addressing the issue of school safety.

While these speeches sadly but importantly remind us of the horrific and senseless tragedy in Connecticut and pay tribute to those innocent children and adults who are no longer with us, we must wonder if these speeches will have any bearing on policy that will make schools safer. While at the same time politicians and education leaders are talking about making school safe from dangerous intruders, concerned parents and students, those who lovingly embraced one another last Friday in shocking remembrance of the fragility of life, need to know that these politicians and education leaders are taking steps to make schools more internally dangerous.

Many states and districts nationally have enacted sweeping policies to reduce suspensions of students. This, in theory, is a good thing. Suspension rarely helps the student who is suspended. However, these once suspendable students who are no longer getting suspended also need other services to help them deal with anger, behavioral issues, and violence. They do not get the services because they are not funded. Now staff members and students are often forced to endure threats of physical violence, and sometimes actual violence, with limited consequences for the student.

If asked, most any parent would tell you that they are not comfortable at all with anyone being threatened or assaulted in school without serious repercussions (expulsion is usually suggested). In fact, often times when the parents of the student who commits the infraction are informed of the consequences or lack there of, they are appalled at the lack of action. As a result, students and staff members, innocent ones, who may soon be protected from dangerous intruders through new policies created in the wake of the Connecticut tragedy, will be subjected to recurring danger and abuse from other students, those not receiving the services they desperately need.

Let us take this moment now to force our educational leaders to defend all students from all dangers and not to pay timely lip service to something that deserves so much more. We must defend our dear children and teachers from dangerous intruders. We must defend our dear children and teachers from violence and abuse that fills our schools and even defend those students who are committing such acts from harming themselves and harming others. We can afford to give them the services they need and we must not let anyone tell us otherwise. We can no longer allow leaders to cut corners when in comes to safety in our schools and now, more than ever, as we are thinking about school safety, we must be sure that school safety is a priority with no exceptions.

As our thoughts are with the community who has lost so much, we must be sure to defend everyone in our schools from the pain of everyday school violence and the senseless tragedies that have affected our schools and communities across this county far too frequently over the past many years. In the memory of those lost, let us all be prepared to stand up and defend the innocence of education from those who try to take it away all at once or little bits at a time.