Forward: A Decision Making Guide For Critical Leaders

Today’s word is forward and in this video I share a very old but very proven guide that critical leaders can utilize to help them make better decisions.

I hope you enjoy it and thanks for watching!

Lockdown: Why It Works!

Lots of folks who don’t work inside our schools are saying that we need to change our procedures, that our lockdown is not good enough. While I understand their perspective, it’s just not true and too many school attacks have proven that a lockdown works to save lives.

In truth, our lockdown is a great procedure…we don’t need to replace it, but we can always enhance it by doing one thing…speed it up!

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Everybody Fights in a School Attack:

I’m afraid that we’re inadvertently hurting our efforts when we tell our school community that only physically fighting the attacker is the only form of fighting. Certainly, it’s one way but not the only way. When a teacher goes into a lockdown, hides, barricades, or runs from the attacker—isn’t he or she also fighting for their life and the lives of their students?

Absolutely!

Help us spread the word that everybody fights in a crisis. Please watch and then share this video. Let’s get the word out there—the truth—that in every school attack…everybody fights!

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Sensitive Topic: Is crisis drills and lockdowns really a sensitive topic or is it something else?

Too many teachers are not receiving the information they need to prevent and survive a crisis because it’s a ‘sensitive topic’.

I hear this a lot and I totally get it.

The thing is though, saving lives is not a sensitive topic. We have to be careful and always clarify that it’s not the topic that is sensitive, just how we present it and we could always do a better job.   

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Categories: How To Know When a Student is a Threat

We live in a world of full of categories. Your country, state, faith, profession…these and many others may be a category for you. Categories are not a bad thing since they can help us to better understand a person and maybe even to predict their future behaviors.

When it comes to preventing violence, every student falls into one of two categories. Those who will not use violence to get what they want and those who will use violence to get what they want.

In conducting a student threat assessment, you must first determine what category the student falls into–will they use violence or will they not use violence? After that, it’s all about trying to lower the risk level.

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Success: 2 Elements Students Must Have to be Truly Successful

50% success is good, but isn’t 100% better?

I think we fail our students (and make our schools less safe) when we don’t address both elements that are necessary for real student success. Without a doubt, academic success is critical but so is ethical success!

Starting today, never discuss academic success again without also reminding (encouraging, requiring, demanding!) your students that their goal is to achieve both academic and ethical success.

It’s the only way they can really enjoy 100% success!

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Nature: A Tale of a Fox, a Scorpion, and School Attackers

In his fable The Fox and the Scorpion, Aesop attempts to illustrate how people do what they do because of their nature. While there is certainly some merit to this assertion, we can’t fully accept this way of thinking when intervening with a student who is a potential threat.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of just giving up and saying, “That’s just who they are.” We have to do the difficult and try to change a person’s nature.

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Townville School Attack: Points to Consider

Why would the school attacker yell, “I hate my life” and then began to shoot at students and teachers?

In this video, I go over some of the actions and behaviors of last week’s school attacker in South Carolina as well as discuss one more alarming commonality that is prevalent among school attackers. Namely, first murdering their parents and/or love ones.

 

 

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Onboard: Equip Your Students to Play Their Part in Making Our Schools Safer

Most students want to help make their school safer, we just haven’t taken the time to give them a mechanism to do that. Here’s a quick, simple, and effective way to equip your students to play their part.

To help make it easier for you, I’ve included a script to use with your students and a note to send to their parents.

It will take less than ten minutes and I guarantee you will immediately make your school safer!
 

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Perspective: Lt. Bobo and His Dogtag

“It could be worse” or “It’s not that bad” may be good things to stay to students. However, these are not easy to hear and accept when you’re facing a tough time or a difficult challenge. Instead, consider telling the student about another person who has experienced something even worse then what they’re going through. By giving the student a model, the student is much more likely to maintain the proper perspective.

In this video, I tell the story of Lt. Bobo and how this same technique helped me to maintain the right perspective in difficult times.

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