Things that Schools Like Oxford High School Can Consider Before and After a School Shooting

By Jonathan Doll, PhD

Author of Ending School Shootings: School and District Tools for Prevention and Action; https://www.endindschoolshootings.org/

Now in America, another community has experienced the deep despair and loss of lives from a school shooting. My prayers go out to every family and every student. It's a hard road of recovery, though hope will win.

I want to talk briefly today about the things that could have helped and CAN HELP any school to avoid a shooting when possible.

This is not a pie-in-the-sky offering of ideas but some simple things that in a very busy time in our history and with highly overburdened school staff, we can remember and act on.

1. Mental health needs are bigger than anything at the current time and need supports in the minute

Supports “in the minute” means things can go wrong if support is not given. Warning signs and leakage (see section #2 below) are present all or nearly all (95%) of the time before a school tragedy.

Support means stopping what you are doing and having a caring conversation. It could mean being late for something to have a talk with someone in the hallway. In terms of a system, it could mean organizing and utilizing your MTSS team or your school crisis team. It could also mean calling on others for help or even prayer in the moment. All faith systems are welcome! Lean in!

And support means being authentic. Nothing scares kids more than adults who hide their weaknesses in times of need. Be real with young people. We all have pain, fears, worries, and hope. We even can have a vulnerable side of us like the soft underbelly like a turtle. Being real means SHARING when no one else is or CARING when no one else has done so yet. We all have a role with every student and staff member within our sphere of connections.

Student and staff mental health needs are at a crisis point this year and the media is not helpful because the news has tended to be very harsh and not uplifting. It’s possible that some of even many people in schools are not seeing hope clearly at all.

Make hope the focus on every action even down to discipline. Learning a lesson in a class is a process of seeing hope through understanding. Teach like it is a hope-giving exercise and remember we are all in this fight together.

Seek hope if you need it. Many districts offer free counseling to staff. Take that up. Think of it as a tuneup on your emotions so you can teach or lead better. It always helps!

Mentor students with hope in mind and praise the hope that you see in them. Help students see it. Many mentoring programs exist for schools and also you can make one. Every student needs at least 1 caring adult in their building or more who checks up on and checks in with them. This shows every student that they matter and that hope is visible in relationships too.

We should even seek hope in discipline. Restorative practices teaches the power of having students make amends by being involved in their immediate school community, not being sent away from it. That doesn't mean that suspension cannot occur, but that a child needs to be on a path of restoring hope and regaining confidence. When I was a child I was always in detention because I was looking for better relationships. Finally my high school's assistant principal gave me a rake and had me rake leaves. It was the best punishment I ever received and had a lifetime benefit. In the section #3, I'll talk about escalating discipline issues also.

2. Warning signs and leakage are real and can be intentionally resolved

Leakage means a student sharing about a massacre or violent event beforehand. An example was reported in Oxford that a group of students DID NOT come to school that day because they knew something was going to happen that was bad. At least one of the students was even reported to have told their parents that a group was not coming to school. That is leakage.

Michigan has the OK2Say program, https://www.michigan.gov/ok2say/, which even has an App for phones and certainly in light of this tragedy it will be expanded. It operates 24-7 and provides a safe, fast way for any student and any staff and any community member to always report something suspicious in the area of school safety that immediately goes to law enforcement and immediately is followed up on every hour of every day. In the tragedy in Oxford, that service may not of been used fully or may not have resulted in the help that was needed fast enough. We don’t know at this time the full extent, but OK2Say is an excellent resource needs to be used more deeply. Also, every state needs to have a similar streamlined system to allow anyone to report threats of school violence anytime, even anonymously.

With that said, every school in America and around the world needs to listen and lean in. WHENEVER there is a credible threat of violence on a day, a school MUST and SHOULD CLOSE to students until that threat can be fully understood and fully dealt with. Having students in the school while researching a threat is not safe for students or staff. It is safer to cancel school and have law enforcement intervene until the threat is fully understood and safely responded to.

3. Steps forward and strengths-based leadership

After a tragedy, pain is real and intense and counseling and supports need to be followed up on for as long as is needed.

Every student and every staff member who has not done so should spend some time in their life to reflect and learn their personal strengths. There are many tools out there. Consider Strengths-Explorer.com by Gallup as a great example. https://www.strengths-explorer.com Why?

As a society, strengths are often sidelined and we focus way too much on what we’re not good at. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to know what you need to improve in to work on it, but strengths are an amazing and uplifting way to find help and to know that Hope is inside us each and every day.

Think about a school community where everyone knows their strengths. They can apply their strengths and they can even know each other's strengths and how to build each other up. And staff members can know the strengths of students. And even in areas of discipline, a student's strengths can be relied upon.

Let's think about that more deeply in terms of escalating discipline issues. During all the steps of discipline with students, what if the school focuses on the strengths? This could only happen when they know the strengths about a student because these strengths have been learned through taking a strengths assessment. If none had been taken, a strengths assessment can be a part of step one in discipline : “Learn Your Strengths.”

That will give the student something to focus on other than a problem, a distressing event, or an unmet need - it IS BETTER than just focusing on pain. By applying strengths at every step of the discipline process, hope can be found more readily and more often. This tool can be used to turn kids around.

I wrote about this extensively in my book, Ending School Shootings, in the final 2 chapters and explained that the deepest sense of hope that we can find is by applying our strengths into the school community that is closest to us. I’m happy to send School and District Tools and complimentary copies to anyone in Oxford Community Schools and community and also discounted copies to any school leader anywhere. reach out to me through LinkedIn messenger or [email protected].

May God provide comfort and support to others in Oxford, Michigan.