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High Schools Need Change

A recent article discusses how the image of high schools often differs from their culture and the effectiveness of student learning. This article reminded me of the high school change publication I wrote 20 years ago. Looking back, many of those recommendations are still valuable today. I recall a particular piece where I talked about the need for all high schools to change. High schools have many meaningful traditions and resist changing the status quuo.

Based on my observations of hundreds of different schools, I proposed six different types of high schools. This list is a good reflection tool for high school leaders to look hard at where their school is and what needs to change. You can access a longer paper on how different schools should approach the change process. The following is a list and description of how I would differentiate schools that need to embrace change.

Fresh Start describes high schools that are new comprehensive schools, a new charter high school, or a recent conversion to small learning communities. These schools have a fresh start unbound by traditions.

Movie Set describes high schools that have an excellent image and tradition. They meet all state accountability measures. However, their public image is better than their true performance. They look good superficially, but behind the public façade, these high schools are not serving many students well.

Good to Great are high schools with many good achievements and want to move to the next level. These schools have difficulty getting everyone to commit to change.

Slippery Slope describes high schools with a history of good performance, but their environments and/or communities are changing rapidly. They may be experiencing demographic shifts or changes in funding. Without some turnaround, they are on the downward slide toward poor performance.

Excellent Education Except describes high schools that have “excellent education, except” — except they don’t meet achievement for many one or more subgroups. These schools are good by traditional measures, but the standards and subgroup performance has identified weaknesses.

Not for My Children describes schools for which there is unanimous agreement that they have significant problems, such as student underperformance, high attrition rates, poor attendance,
low graduation rates, and often poor student behavior.

Writing Reflection

My fifty years of education professional work holds many memories. More tangible memories are copies of the many publications I have written. I have kept copies of most of the education professional materials I have written, edited, and served as a co-author or honorary author. This journey has been rewarding, from my graduate school dissertations to the most recent Synergizing Success book for ACTE. I never considered myself a writer, but recognizing taht putting ideas into words is impactful communication, I dove into writing. These old publications are now memories, and most are no longer available. These copies have collected dust on my bookshelf for several years.

It is time to get rid of these paper copies and recycle these pages into new ideas and books. The picture below shows these publications, including Cornell dissertations, student textbooks from the 80s, and International Center for Leadership resource kits/handbooks from early 2000. All of these are no longer for purchase. Skimming through the books brought many memories of the people I worked with. It is a lot of productive work that I could not done without the help of others. Much of this educational content is outdated, but much of it is still valuable. I counted up over 3,000 pages of content on the International Center publications written over a decade.

I have converted most documents to digital form so colleagues and I can continue accessing them. I plan on writing more blogs on pieces from these publications. Here is the link to my education archive page. If you have any questions, please contact me.

Big Picture Thinking in CTE

What makes a great employee? Ask any employer, and the list includes showing up, following directions, and having the technical skills to do a task safely and accurately. These skills will make a worker a good employee, but what makes an employee great? Then, the list grows with behaviors such as taking initiative, identifying work to be done without being told, not wasting materials, and calling attention to minor problems before they become serious problems. These behaviors make great employees and can be labeled Big Picture Thinking. Within CTE instruction, teachers need to develop technical skills, work habits, and elements of Big Picture Thinking.

Big-picture thinking is a thinking strategy that focuses on the entirety of a concept or idea instead of on each individual detail. This thinking helps prepare for the future and envision the opportunities ahead. Big-picture thinking is the ability to envision broader, high-level concepts and patterns to see beyond the immediate and create a broader plan for the long term. Big-picture thinking also allows you to see improvement opportunities and reinforces the real reason for the activities you do daily.

Trade workers need big-picture thinking. They must see the overall project and understand how their work fits the larger picture. They must be able to anticipate potential issues and plan accordingly. Big-picture thinking is essential for trade workers to ensure their work is done correctly and safely and meets the project’s needs.

Here are some real-world examples of trade workers who have demonstrated big-picture thinking in their projects:

A construction worker noticed that the building design did not consider the local climate and suggested changes to improve energy efficiency and reduce costs in the long term.
A plumber identified a potential issue with the water supply system and suggested changes to prevent future problems.
An electrician suggested changes to the electrical system to improve safety and reduce the risk of power outages.
A carpenter suggested changes to the building design to improve accessibility for people with disabilities.
An HVAC technician suggested changes to the heating and cooling system to improve energy efficiency and reduce costs in the long term.

These examples demonstrate how trade workers can use their expertise and knowledge to think beyond the immediate task and contribute to the project’s success as a whole, and ensure that it meets the needs of the client and the community.

Here are some strategies to encourage big-picture thinking in the CTE program:

Encourage brainstorming sessions where students can share their ideas and perspectives on the project as a whole.
Provide training on the overall project and how each student’s role fits into the larger picture.
Encourage students to ask questions and seek clarification on the project’s goals and objectives.
Foster a culture of collaboration and communication among students to ensure everyone achieves the same goal.
Provide opportunities for students to take on leadership roles and make decisions that impact the project as a whole.
Ask students to think beyond the immediate task at hand and consider how their work will impact the project in the long term. This can be done by asking them to reflect on the purpose of the task and how it fits into the larger picture.
Encourage students to think creatively and outside the box. This can help them develop innovative solutions to problems and think beyond the immediate task.

By implementing these strategies, students can develop their big-picture thinking skills and contribute to the project’s success as a whole. It is important to remember that big-picture thinking is a skill that can be honed and developed over time. Everyone can benefit from thinking beyond the immediate and considering the long-term impact of their work

I have drafted a few sample Big Picture Rubrics to use with students.

The Trouble with Lazy Criticism in Education

In today’s polarized political climate, it’s all too easy to dismiss those we disagree with by slapping on a convenient label like “extremist” or “radical” rather than thoughtfully considering their positions. This lazy criticism circumvents meaningful debate and divides us further. This lazy criticism shuts down meaningful discourse and divides us further. Lazy criticism is a problem in education as well.

We fail to understand nuances when we dismiss an education idea as simply “extreme” without examining it deeply. We don’t ask questions, review evidence, or reflect on our biases. No progress is made towards compromises that serve students best.

For instance, expressing an opinion on issues such as gender affirmation charter schools. or excessive suspension as “extreme” stops thoughtful analysis of potential benefits and drawbacks. Instead, sincere dialogue is needed to understand the reasoning and facts behind such ideas.

True discourse requires empathy, critical thinking, and open exchange of views. If we instantly reject education proposals as extreme, we lose opportunities to find common ground.

Next time you feel tempted to dismiss an education opinion as extreme, pause. Make an effort to grasp the rationale and evidence behind it. Ask sincere questions, avoid condescension, and be open to changing your mind. More complexity may emerge than expected.

With open and respectful discussion of education issues, we can gain perspective, find solutions, and reconnect across divides. But it begins by dropping lazy criticism and engaging in substantive arguments based on facts rather than labels. The future of our students depends on thoughtful, civil discourse.

Not A Crazy Idea

Elon Musk recently mentioned that voting rights should be reserved for parents when he claimed the “childless have little stake in the future.” That seems a crazy idea and is quickly dismissed by most people. However, many of the political squabbles we face today are exactly a lack of focus on the future. We have in this country a pervasive short-term vision.

Seniors growl at any changes in Social Security that may affect current payments when the whole system is unsustainable in the long run. Most seniors admit that they realize there will not be the same benefits for their grandchildren from the current system, but still, the majority want no changes. Opposition to dealing with climate issues is fear of changing the status quo. What happened to the notion of planning trees today for future generations, which was the motto at the beginning of Earth Day? Some environmental zealots push the idea of population control to deal with pollution and limited resources. That is the wrong-headed solution. As a species, you either grow in numbers or decline. Many current critics of our nation don’t focus on the future; they also want to erase our past by removing statues and rewriting history. Too many financial decisions, whether Wall St., Congress, or family finances, are short-term. Congress can’t even agree to a yearly budget, an alarming action for any organization.

Turning to something I know better as an educator, too many decisions are made for the current benefit of adults rather than children. The shutdown of schools during the pandemic is a great example. I have been in nearly 2000 schools in my career, both great and not-so-great. Those most successful schools had made the needs of students the priority. The controversial efforts by the Biden administration to forgive student college loans reveal that one of the worst economic decisions in this country was to saddle young families with significant debt. It is a long-term economic obstacle. The easy offers of loans to college students parallel the no down payment real estate loans that led to a housing bust and recession. The current forgiveness efforts are controversial, but making loans so easily available is another poor short-term economic blunder.

There are dozens of examples of short-term thinking; it is time for a highly visible long-term vision for this country. Families with children and grandchildren are the best people to share their thoughts on that vision. Heads of families, more than any other demographic, care more about their offspring’s future and the country’s future. Changing who can vote to only parents may be too drastic a solution. However, a potentially powerful variation of this idea is to support a large-scale poll of heads of families on a future direction they would like to see for the children and grandchildren. It is 2023, and an election is coming up in 2024. The next Congress could adopt this notion of creating a long-term collective vision authored by heads of families. A national vote could be scheduled for 2025 and restricted only to adults with children or grandchildren under 25. The vision would be to set a goal 25 years into the future for the year 2050. All of these children will be adults in 2050. What do heads of families what for their offspring in 2050? Congress should appoint a commission to develop the voting questions and hold the poll in 2025. The goal is to set a long-term vision for our nation and guide intermediate decision-making and the self-interest of political leaders’ actions to benefit the next election cycle. Hopefully, this would redirect our political and economic thinking away from pervasive disastrous short-term thinking.

What is Rigorous CTE and Why Is It Important?

Rigorous describes something rigid and difficult, and imposes hardship, such as taking a rigorous hike. Some might avoid rigorous tasks such as weeding a garden to avoid hardship. Others might embrace a rigorous physical workout because the goal of athletic performance drives them. Tasks can be categorized by degrees of rigor, and each person chooses whether to embrace or avoid rigorous tasks based on their goals.

When rigorous is applied in education, the term means something slightly different from difficult, arduous tasks. Rigorous education is not more physically difficult or necessarily a more extended test or exotic and difficult questions. Rigorous education differs from other learning in requiring more thinking before finding a solution or completing a task.

Rigorous CTE, just as in other subjects in schools, is defined on a continuum of learning from low levels of thinking to high levels of thinking. The notion of moving from low to high is not measured in the quantity of how many facts someone knows. High levels of academics are measured in the complexity of thinking, not the rapid recall of facts, such as a Jeopardy Game Show winner.

The most common frameworks for defining levels of cognitive learning are the six-level Bloom’s Taxonomy and 4-level Webb’s Depth of Knowledge. Common to both of these frameworks is low-level thinking of acquiring and recall in bits of knowledge. The Rigor/Relevance Framework is another Teaching/Learning framework that defines both rigor and more relevance. CTE teachers can see in this framework where their teaching of technical skills is commonly at the high relevance level but also can set student aspirations on both.

All these frameworks define the higher halves of the scales of more rigorous learning using terms such as analytical thinking, creativity, reflection, and extended thinking. So Rigorous CTE is when instruction helps to develop higher-level thinking, typically seen in higher-level academic courses. Rigorous CTE does not mean making CTE courses more difficult or raising cut scores on a Technical Assessment. It means planning instruction which increases the complexity of student thinking. This is where there needs to be greater collaboration between Academic Teachers and CTE Teachers.

Why is Rigorous CTE important? Workplace standards and not educator-developed standards drive CTE curricula. Practicing craftsmen and employers describing the required abilities to be taught. In those conversations, employers often identify specific technical skills but also expect human or professional skills such as communication, problem-solving, analytical thinking, and critical thinking.

The best path to Rigorous CTE and teaching the thinking skills employers seek are collaborating on lessons with experienced academic teachers. (FYI, the best path for Academic teachers to develop Relevance that engages students is collaborating with CTE Teachers). Academic teachers in secondary school design learning activities in the disciplines of Mathematics, Science, Language Arts, and Social Studies. When CTE teachers only expect students to learn fundamental technical skills, the content is exclusively within the CTE subject area. However, when attempting the stretch the student’s technical skills to problem-solving and analytical thinking, the content broadens to include content from these academic subjects. CTE teachers may have the academic depth to teach these skills in some situations. But for many, the collaboration of academic teachers can provide ideas to make the lessons and assessments more effective.

Students may perceive rigorous lessons as obstacles, but they are essential challenges leading to future success. Academic challenges wrapped in real-world CTE projects are perceived differently from most students’ prior academics. Consider Rigorous CTE and Integration as one in the same strategy. Rigorous CTE, striving to meet employers’ expectations, requires collaboration and blurring the lines of delineated subjects. Teachers working together can better prepare students for the ever-changing workplace.

The CareerEd Lounge community group on the Integration of Academics and CTE will continue to share ideas and practices on this topic. All educators are welcome

Less Coddling Means More Learning

The Coddling of the American Mind is a book that has helped me analyze and understand student behaviors I have seen and heard over the last few years. Things have changed and some would argue that “not for the better.” I remain an optimist and believe that the “worst” of behaviors are overblown in conversation and media.

In The Coddling of the American Mind, authors Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff argue that well-intentioned parents and educators are unwittingly harming young people by teaching them in ways that implicitly convey three untruths:
Fragility: Avoid challenges for they make you weaker.
Emotional Reasoning: Make decisions and take action based on your feelings.
Us vs. Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people.

The authors suggest to succeed in pursuing your own goals, you do three things:

Seek out challenges “rather than eliminating or avoiding everything that ‘feels unsafe.’”
Free yourself from cognitive distortions “rather than always trusting your initial feelings.”
Take a generous view of other people, and look for nuance “rather than assuming the worst about people within a simplistic us-versus-them morality.”

Read the book and make your judgment; I am reminded of three positive teaching practices which overcome the coddling untruths. These are, Appropriately Challenge Students, Nurture Critical Thinking, and Avoid Judging People by Actions or Beliefs

Following are examples to remind you of how to apply each of these.

Appropriately Challenge Students

Create a supportive learning environment: It is important to create an environment where students feel safe to take risks and make mistakes without fear of judgment or ridicule. This can be achieved by providing positive feedback, encouraging teamwork, and building a sense of community within the classroom.
Set clear expectations: Clearly communicate to students what is expected of them and the learning goals. Students are more likely to take on challenges when they know what is expected of them.
Use real-world examples: Use real-world examples to illustrate the importance of taking on challenges and the rewards that come with overcoming them.
Model taking on challenges: As an educator, model taking on challenges and show students that it is okay to make mistakes and learn from them.
Provide opportunities for self-reflection: Allow students to reflect on their learning and their challenges. This can help them to identify their strengths and weaknesses and develop strategies for future challenges.
Use positive language: Use positive language to encourage students to take on challenges. For example, instead of saying “this is difficult”, say “this is challenging, but I know you can do it”.

Nurture Critical Thinking

Provide examples: Provide examples of situations where emotions may lead to poor decision-making and contrast them with examples of situations where rational thinking is the better approach.
Practice mindfulness: Encourage students to practice mindfulness techniques, such as deep breathing and meditation, to help regulate their emotions and stay focused on rational thinking.
Provide opportunities for debate: Provide opportunities for students to engage in debates or discussions that require them to present evidence and use logical reasoning to support their arguments.
Highlight the consequences: Highlight the potential consequences of emotional decision-making and help students understand how their decisions can impact themselves and others.
Incorporate metacognition: Incorporate metacognitive strategies, such as think-alouds or self-reflection prompts, to help students become more aware of their own thinking processes and to monitor their own decision-making.
Celebrate successes: Celebrate instances when students demonstrate rational thinking and decision-making, and provide positive feedback to reinforce these behaviors.

Avoid Judging People by Actions or Beliefs

Model open-mindedness: As a teacher, model open-mindedness and demonstrate that you value diversity of beliefs and opinions. This can create a positive learning environment where students feel comfortable sharing their own beliefs without fear of judgment.
Encourage empathy: Encourage students to develop empathy for others and consider the perspectives and experiences of those with different beliefs.
Emphasize the importance of respect: Emphasize the importance of treating others with respect, even if we disagree with their beliefs or opinions.
Incorporate diverse perspectives: Incorporate diverse perspectives into the curriculum, including texts, activities, and guest speakers who represent a variety of beliefs and viewpoints.
Challenge stereotypes: Challenge stereotypes and biases that students may hold about people with different beliefs. This can help students to recognize their assumptions and to approach others with an open mind.

Write, Reflect, and Improve

“Tell me about your writing experience?” That was the question that was asked of me during a job interview early in my education career. I had been a successful teacher and was considering a job in the private sector. I was confident describing my teaching but stumbled when asked about my writing experiences. As a college graduate, I had completed all of the required essays and papers, and there were some writing expectations as a teacher. However, once confronted by this question during the interview, I recognized that my writing skills were woefully weak. Teachers do a lot of talking but little writing. Later when I entered my graduate program, I made a point of minoring in communications and taking several writing courses. Over the years, I think I have gradually improved my writing skills. The fact that I have published 14 books indicates that I can fashion a few complete sentences and some logical paragraphs.

Writing is a powerful and essential communication skill that is becoming even more challenging when we look at the multiple forms of writing that use technology, including text messaging, emails, tweets, and blogs. Effective educators today must not only have good pedagogical skills but examine their skills in the area of writing. As someone who has engaged in writing for some 50 years, I now recognize that writing is more than just a process of putting words on paper or a computer screen.

Writing, including the process of preparing and revising text, is a powerful thinking process. Writing plays an important role in continually improving individuals in the profession and education as a whole. All educators should be encouraged to write, not simply to have good communication skills and share their ideas, but as a reflective improvement process critical to professional learning. Noted, 20th-century educator John Dewey made a comment, “We do not learn from experience; we learn from reflecting on experience.” As teachers and administrators engage in experiences in their profession, those can become powerful learning experiences by reflecting on those experiences. What better way to reflect on those experiences than through writing? Even if you never published that great novel or completed a dissertation adding writing to your daily responsibilities will help you improve within the profession.

Technology today offers many tools to check spelling and grammar and even artificial intelligence to compose text around your ideas. These tools will help you write well and give instant feedback to learn and improve. Technology also enables us to have multiple forms of writing in simpler ways to publish our work and thereby share the results of our writing. A personal journal is a good form of reflection but doesn’t hold the same accountability because it’s not published. A personal journal reflects on experiences by putting thoughts into words. But writing that involves publishing and sharing those thoughts with others creates greater accountability, heightening the level of reflection.

Educators should consider writing blogs, Twitter, journal articles, book chapters, grant applications, and even graduate degree writing to improve in the profession.

Blogs

Blogs are an incredibly easy way to publish thoughts and share experiences. Blogs are less than 500 words, and there are many opportunities to publish as personal, professional organizations, or school communities with short thoughts and ideas. Try establishing a routine of touching on important topics in a blog format to continually focus on the best practices and reflect on how those might be improved. Podcasts are becoming a more popular narrative form of communicating ideas. The best podcasts have writing behind them with a detailed outline or even a complete written script.

Twitter

Twitter is a short form of blogging. It is an incredibly easy and quick way to publish your thoughts in a tweet. It is considered microblogging because you are limited to 280 characters. This is a real challenge in writing to take and summarize an idea in a short form. You begin to question if this idea is worth sharing and how to. adequately describe it in just a few characters. Maintaining a regular Twitter feed constantly has you thinking about those items of new information that will be valuable to your work and interesting to your followers. Twitter has recently gotten a bad rap in the political realm, where pundits post insults and personal attacks, yet there is much valuable information sharing within Twitter.

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

A well-known expectation of higher education professors is that they must publish their work. These same expectations do not fall upon K-12 educators however, taking advantage of the opportunity to publish an effective practice in one of the many journals as an article is a great experience to reflect on the essence of what makes a practice effective. Thinking through that experience and describing it enables you to reflect on that practice and begin to replicate how those good educational practices might be replicated in other experiences. Look for opportunities to write articles and tackle a book for a chapter in a book. When I started teaching, I had no idea I would ever write a book, but looking back, it was some of my most rewarding educational experiences.

Grant Applications

There are many government and not-for-profits that fund education initiatives. This is a special form of writing targeting the priorities of the funding source. But meeting the challenge of describing your program’s success and focused goals is a powerful reflective experience, even if you don’t receive the funding.

Graduate Degree Writing

Many educators complete graduate degrees for added prestige, opportunities to pursue new positions, or increased salaries. Dissertations often required in these programs require research and scholarly writing. I have enjoyed working with many educators over the last several years in my adjunct teaching at Lynn University. The structure of completing a dissertation is a rich learning opportunity to probe deeply into an issue your feel passionate about. It also provides feedback from other scholars in improving your logical thinking and writing.

In summary, do not consider writing as just a communication process. It is also a process that drives thinking and reflection, which leads to improvement. Taking advantage of opportunities to write helps move you further on a journey of continuing to learn and grow in the profession.

Failure to Communicate: Overloaded Education Bandwagons

The discussion on Critical Race Theory (CRT) in education reminds me of the famous old movie line in Cool Hand Luke, “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate!” CTE is the latest controversial phrase among the education community and parents. Vocal advocates support and oppose CRT, while many schools jump on board this newest bandwagon. Will CRT reduce racism or isolate feuding races? Will the CRT ideas finally close learning gaps? Does CRT focus erode instruction and decrease learning results? Some experts attempt to answer these questions. However, no one knows fully what is included under the CRT umbrella or the potential impacts.

In my 50 years in education, I have heard this refrain before, not about race but multiple other topics. Each of these started as sound ideas to improve student learning. However, once it became a popular notion in education, everyone with their agenda jumped aboard under this common banner. Historically educators can describe the verbal wars over initiatives such as “open schools,” “new math,” or “Common Core.” Each of these initiatives has elements of good pedagogical practice. Still, once they had a label and became pervasive in schools, the good ideas became bloated, and resistors of change could find aspects to criticize and oppose the whole initiative.

As an example open schools tried to break the rigid mold of 25 students in a classroom by creating flexible school rooms which could be adapted to different student work. But, when schools were built with no walls as the popular design, teachers became frustrated with noisy classrooms. Open classrooms became an anathema. In terms of Common Core, having standards for learning is beneficial, but when the list of standards became ridiculously long and tied to recall tests, the initiative died of its own weight, and the phrase is now close to a swear word. Labels lead to misunderstanding, I remember an insightful education colleague starting, “Be innovative in schools to serve students better, but don’t give it a name.”

My advice to parents, educators, and government leaders is to abandon a broad name and be specific about the practices you advocate or criticize. There are elements in CRT that are beneficial and other extremes that are not. CRT, as a whole, should not be a battleground. The label CRT has become too difficult to define at this point. Discuss the specific knowledge we want students to acquire and the specific behaviors we want them to demonstrate. There is common ground to focus on the needs of children and let talented educators determine how to develop that knowedge and bahavior in the school..

Another School Shooting: Reactions Are Natural – Actions Must Be Thoughtful

Another senseless shooting by a 6-year-old first-grader at an elementary school in Newport News, VA, triggers strong emotions and sympathy from each of us. How could this happen? Is this the beginning of a world gone mad where a 1st-grade classroom is a site of anger and violence? First, we all wish the victim recovers and the child and his family get the support and professional help they need.

It will take time for all the children, education professionals, and families in Richneck Elementary School to heal from the emotional trauma. What actions do we take for the rest of us, parents, teachers, and leaders? Within the thoughts expressed by the many public upon hearing of this tragedy, there are calls for “hardening elementary schools” with metal detectors, random bag checks, and transparent backpacks. Social media provides a vehicle to post words while our reactions are strong and emotions are raw. Putting emotions into words may help us to relieve the stress and frustration from trauma. However, it is never healthy to plan actions based on emotions.

In short-term actions, we need to take care to hug our friends and family as a reminder of the fragility of life and harmony. As parents and educators, we must listen to and support our children to be sure they get the mental health support and love they need. We also need to continue to adopt safety and security procedures. It is with long-term action that we need to be thoughtful rather than emotion-driven.

Schools are remarkable learning spaces, sometimes chaotic, always challenging, and often inspirational. I learned this not from reading but from experience as an educator listening and observing students and teachers in hundreds of schools (both great and not-so-great). Schools are not impersonal dispensers of wisdom or supervised daycare for children, although schools do those things. Education professionals stimulate student learning by first developing trusting relationships with students and facilitating social interaction where students learn as a group. Students on their own can acquire information from a book or a digital source. But transformational learning comes from people you respect, trust and admire, all done with social interaction. Think about the difference between learning by reading a book on your own versus a book club. Deep learning is social.

Some of my most powerful perceptions of effective schools have come from students’ honest words about how the school has impacted them. I recall one female student in a large urban high school and her response regarding school security. I often ask the question of students, “How would you change this school?” This young student lamented the requirement for student IDs and entry procedures from security staff. She was a Senior and arrived at school one morning and had forgotten her student ID. The security guard at the entrance, whom she had seen every morning for more than three years and whom she knew by name, asked for her ID. Since she did not have it, he asked her to leave and retrieve it before she should enter the school, even though he knew she was a student at the school. The security guard was doing his job and could have been reprimanded for letting the student in without the proper ID. The student added to me, “This school was becoming more like a prison than a school.” I have never forgotten this comment.

If we deal with weapons and violence in a manner that appears to the students as something other than a welcoming refuge that respects and trusts them, we will have lost the purpose of schools. Our actions to protect students should be thoughtful in a way that benefits students accepting there will be infrequent tragic violence that will tug at our emotions. Our children deserve schools that are friendly, remarkable learning spaces.