Oxford - Now One Word
Yesterday, I was consulting with a school principal who works not far from Oxford, Michigan, one of the latest cities rocked by an unnecessary school shooting. Four dead at the high school, 17 injured at my last count.
She was looking to ways to best counsel her students and faculty; to empower her small school community of parents to make them confident their children will be safe in school. We spoke about what they might be missing in their physical security. I offered ideas on how to work through this longer term with the students. One conversation isn’t enough.
Kudos to her. Every school administrator should be asking these questions, not just the ones who were rocked as she was by the nearby death of innocent children in their charge. The answers to the questions and the tools to improve safety and find a shooter before they attack are available. If you don’t know where to find them, ask your law enforcement partner, look at ready.gov, ask me.
Do whatever it takes to not feel like you have not done enough. I say this because I have been at these shootings and know that those left behind play the “what if” game. If only they see the student under duress and been able to reach him. If they had locked that door. If they had not sent their kids to school that day. If we had a better evacuation plan. If we had practiced it for real. If they had…. If they had….
Social and emotional recovery is often accelerated when the most impacted find a way to do something afterwards. It gives those suffering a way to control something, strengthening their bond with the community as well as faith that solutions can be found.
Believing solutions exist is key because safety is an ongoing process. That’s why the podcast Sarah Ferris and I do, Stop The Killing, is so popular. People want to learn one bite at a time. It gives them time to hear a compelling story in an entertaining way, but so learn what went wrong so we can do better next time. That’s why I chose Sandy Hook for the first podcast. It is still our most listened to, even though we are working on season two.
Shootings change people forever.
Nine years ago this week, my life changed course after the shooting in Connecticut. I was suddenly in charge of developing the FBI’s active shooter program, a full time job even in retirement.
I was just one person impacted by the shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary school in Connecticut. So many, many more people can say this. Extrapolate how many others fit into same category when we count the other active shooter incidents, then the mass killing incidents, then the gun incidents. It seems nearly everyone has been touched by these types of violence.
Now Oxford and the entire Detroit community have joined the ranks of meaning found in a single word: Newtown, Aurora, Las Vegas, and all the others. Searching for answers, we cover these and more on the podcast.
The entire Detroit community – in fact every community - should emulate that forward leaning principal I spoke to yesterday and assess what they are doing and how they can do it better.
Stay safe.