October 14, 2015
Page 7
O PINION
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How To Prevent A School Shooter:
Start with building a caring community
d avid s oleil
Imagine you are
an 8-year old student
in elementary school.
Your teacher tells you,
“Today, we are having
a lockdown drill.” She
talks in cryptic lan-
guage explaining that if
something bad happens at school,
she wants everyone to be safe.
You practice hiding in the closet
with all of the other students and
you sit “criss-cross applesauce”
while the teacher bars the door. Or
maybe you have a special cabinet
to hide in. One of my friends told
me how proud her daughter was
about her hiding space in a cabinet
for lockdown. This scenario plays
out every day in our schools.
But what are we really teaching
our community? We are teaching
parents, teachers, and students to
live in constant fear for their lives
because “the shooter” is coming.
Not since the Cold War have we
surrounded our children in such
an environment of reactive fear
where they literally hide in the
closet. “Duck and cover” used to
be the rallying cry from Bert the
Turtle for students to dive under
by
their desks because Rus-
sia could drop an atomic
bomb on the United States
any minute.
School shootings are
serious and complex is-
sues. There is no single
key that can unlock a
solution for our communi-
ties. (Can we collectively be done
with “silver bullets” please?) As a
founder of a K-12 school myself,
and a consultant in Nonviolence
Leadership, I have some per-
spectives that could be helpful as
schools and communities wrestle
with how to address the potential
threat of violence.
Let’s back up, long before a
shooter shows up anywhere, and
ask, how is our community caring
for each other? How are we taking
time to validate the inherent worth
and dignity of every person in our
learning community? So often, we
get caught up in our day-to-day
jobs as teachers, parents and ad-
ministrators that we forget about
how important relationships are to
our community.
Strong communities are built
upon trust, caring and love. These
interpersonal relationships are
your community safety net when
issues come up and they take
significant time and attention.
It’s much like fundraising in the
nonprofit world. The wisdom of
fundraising says, “If you are go-
ing to ask for money one month
each year, you must spend the
other 11 months building relation-
ships.” The same thing is true for
community building. Invest time
every day in building strong, car-
ing relationships that will support
the community in times of crisis.
This strategy is not about “shooter
management.” It is about “shooter
prevention” long before anyone
picks up a gun.
Martin Luther King Jr. said that
“A riot is the language of the un-
heard.” I would say the same thing
in this context, that school shoot-
ings are the language of the un-
heard. Many times, school shoot-
ers are also students. So let us be
intentional that our schools can be
“communities that hear.” Consid-
er how your school community
can open lines of communication.
Let’s allow students to talk and al-
low them to feel. Let’s allow stu-
dents to discuss what’s going on in
our world without having to have
a test, a homework assignment, a
grade or a learning outcome.
You can’t measure caring with
a rubric and you won’t test your
way to a safer school. We spend
weeks preparing every student to
take standardized tests. Can we
give some attention to validating
the humanity and feelings of each
student? Even better, can we fo-
cus our time on building a loving
community instead of so much
testing? How many shootings
could we prevent if students in de-
spair felt their school was a place
of caring rather than cold indiffer-
ence? If we do not make time for
this important work, we will con-
tinue to hear the tragic “language
of the unheard.”
Two years ago, Antoinette Tuff
stopped a school shooter who car-
ried an AK-47 and 500 rounds of
ammunition in my hometown of
Decatur, Ga. She didn’t use a gun.
She used much more powerful
weapons: listening, empathy and
love. No one was hurt. No one
was killed, not even the perpetra-
tor. She is a living example of the
power of love, empathy and non-
violence.
What if we trained every teach-
er in empathic communication
or Nonviolent Communication?
What if instead of lockdown
drills, we had empathy drills? In-
stead of teaching students to hide
in a closet, what if we taught our
students and teachers to reach out
to each other, every day, and help
each other when people are sad or
hurting? What if instead of living
in reactive fear of death that we
engaged in the pro-active, life-af-
firming love of building a caring
community?
The issues of school shootings
are as complex as the solutions.
Building a loving, caring commu-
nity is an important solution that
can catch students in despair and
bring them back into the commu-
nity long before they decide to
pick up a gun.
Antoinette Tuff was a single
unarmed person who stopped
a tragedy with love. Imagine a
whole school of people like An-
toinette. We would never hide in
the closet again.
David Soleil is a school founder
in Atlanta, a teacher, and a train-
er in nonviolence. Distributed by
PeaceVoice.
Expanding Healthcare Coverage for Everyone
Every state can
make progress
m arian W right e delman
Recently released data
from the U.S. Census Bu-
reau shows the Affordable
Care Act is working and
helping get people health
coverage. This is a welcome
stark contrast to census data
showing children remain our
poorest age group and the younger
they are the poorer they are.
Clearly the ACA has had pos-
itive effects on the uninsured.
There were 8.8 million more peo-
ple insured in 2014 than in 2013
and the percentage of people with-
out health insurance coverage de-
creased from 13.3 percent to 10.4
percent. Nearly 1 million more
children gained health coverage,
but the overall rate of coverage for
children was at a lower rate than
seniors.
Adult gains in coverage mean
extra gains for children because
when parents are covered children
are more likely to be covered and
by
receive needed preventive care
too. The high rate of coverage
for children is also evidence that
Medicaid and CHIP are working
for children and should be pre-
served as we work to
expand
protections
for children in private
coverage.
Although progress
was made for large
numbers of children,
some lag behind. His-
panic children were more likely
to be uninsured than children of
other races and ethnicities and
the uninsured rate for noncitizen
children in 2014 was 20.8 per-
cent—about 3.5 times greater than
the uninsured rate for native-born
citizen children. Assuring univer-
sal coverage for children, requires
providing coverage to undocu-
mented children and to citizen
children of undocumented parents
who fear deportation if they seek
health coverage for their children.
This summer, California took
an historic leap towards providing
health coverage to every child –
the culmination of more than a de-
cade of relentless advocacy by the
Children’s Defense Fund’s Cali-
fornia office and other child health
and immigrant advocates.
Starting May 1, more than
170,000 undocumented children
will gain access to health cov-
erage they need to survive and
thrive and grow up ready to con-
tribute fully to California’s work-
force and economy. The progress
in California reflects a bipartisan
recognition that the state is stron-
ger when everyone has access to
health care including immigrant
children and families.
California child advocates
know the fight is not over and are
continuing the “Health for All” ef-
fort to ensure all Californians —
adults and children — get health
coverage. With its recent advances
California joins Illinois, Massa-
chusetts, New York, Washington
State, and Washington, D.C. in
covering undocumented children.
Every state should do so.
States that have taken the Af-
fordable Care Act’s option to ex-
pand Medicaid to more low- and
middle-income adults also saw
important strides in 2014. Al-
though all 50 states and Washing-
ton, D.C. had a decreasing number
of uninsured people between 2013
and 2014, the greatest gains were
in the states that took the ACA’s
option to expand Medicaid.
We can increase this good news
for all who need health coverage.
We need to push hard for Med-
icaid expansion in all 50 states
and push all states to follow Cal-
ifornia, Illinois, Massachusetts,
New York, Washington State, and
Washington, D.C. in covering un-
documented children.
The progress made on reducing
the number of uninsured people
should inspire us to keep going
until every child and adult has
needed health coverage.
Marian Wright Edelman is
President of the Children’s De-
fense Fund.
The Law Offices of
Patrick John Sweeney, P.C.
Patrick John Sweeney
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