Dear COE community,
This message should have gone out last week, when I heard the news of another tragic and unnecessary loss of life in the most recent school shooting. But honestly, I was struggling. How do I write “another” message on such a horrendous topic?
The latest school shooting corresponded to my children’s first day of school (and likely your kids’ or students’ first day in the classroom). This event shook me to my core. I clung to my 5th and 7th grade children last Wednesday night and wouldn’t let them go. And now…one week later, and on this 23rd anniversary of 9/11, I find myself struggling. I have a visceral response when I think about sending out yet another email about another tragedy. It’s just so much. Too much.
But this message is different.
Our return to the Fall quarter and to the school year is colored by the grief of another school shooting, uncertainties surrounding the national presidential election, and so much more. I’ve struggled with how to channel my grief, my anger, and my fear. Our college feels this pain in a unique way. Not only do we experience these tragedies alongside a traumatized nation, but we also experience these tragedies from a unique professional perspective.
As I step into the grief as both parent and dean and use its momentum to lean further into the solutions and levers at our disposal, I wanted to share some of the specific values that took shape for me in light of this most recent event.
Ownership and solution-focused: I choose to enter this year embracing the solutions-side of this issue. As we watch national leaders volley to point fingers and distance themselves from ownership around the big issues that plague our nation, I would like to be among those who courageously raise their hands to acknowledge our place in this fight.
As colleges of education, we do not have the luxury of distancing ourselves from this terrible phenomenon. As preparers of the educators each of whom must take some action either in response to these in-school events or to prevent them (the educators who populate school buildings, district buildings, think tanks, non-profits, departments of education, and who occupy the highest political offices as candidates and spouses), we can no longer afford to count ourselves among the bystanders in this issue.
This is our fight.
Colleges of education like ours, in partnership with those we have trained previously, and those we are currently training, have a role in generating solutions for this issue. While legislative solutions are necessary, and we are each obligated as citizens and as institutions to push for legislative solutions that serve to remove the threats of gun violence from our schools (without adding new dangers that we are ill-prepared to face), we must also accept that accurate and hard-hitting legislation on this issue has been slow-moving, that the solutions to date have been insufficient, and that at the end of the day, any solutions that are proposed, will require competent implementers to put it into action to achieve success.
This is us.
Action focused: I also enter this year with my focus on action rather than on unifying us around a single approach. As a community of educators, I am confident that we are unified in our shared desire for safe schools for our families, friends, students, and colleagues. But I am no longer convinced that we must wait until we are united around a single lever to take action. Instead, I see value in not letting this topic lie fallow while we rally around a single solution between events, and sadly, we are between events. Each of us as educators, as faculty, and as future educators, can incorporate this reality into our practices courageously.
I’m hoping we can courageously examine the levers at our disposal and begin to push on them based on our expertise, our experience, our research, and our passions towards that shared goal of school safety. Whether these levers influence: Youth mental health in schools, social emotional learning, parenting / parental supervision, social media, loneliness, video-games, legislation, metal detectors, phones in schools, diversity, inclusion, or something else, there is information already available that we as scholars have access to for implementation, that we as researchers can use to advance prior knowledge into action, and that we as instructors can use to prepare future educators. There is no need to wait.
Action generates action.
I offer these reactions out of my own grief, in my own frustration, and from my multiple perspectives as leader, parent, educator, and concerned citizen. I support you in your own unique reactions and encourage you and all of us to heal in grace so that we have the professional strength, tools, and approaches that will get us through the year ahead and allow us to feel efficacious in addressing this issue in our schools. I’ve added some resources below and encourage you to share others with your colleagues and friends.
Please take care of yourselves and check-in on each other regularly. I stand with you in this fight. I am ready to move with you in action.
Resources:
- Counseling Resources: For support in processing, please reach out. We know that in order to join the fight, take action, and move our levers, we also need a strength that steels and readies us while we take back our schools.
- Curricular Resources: As we prepare our educators to step into classrooms in 2024 and beyond, please share any curricular content you have with your colleagues and your students to identify strategies that our future educators should be familiar with. While K12 schools prepare and develop strategies, we recognize that many will be looking to us to share the resources that support solutions.
- Us: I will be raising this issue with my fellow deans of colleges of education around the nation.
It is with both sadness and empowerment that I hit send.
Laura Lee