Why the "Don't Mess with My Rights" Mentality Will Be Our Demise, and How This Relates to School Safety

On Friday, February 23, 2018 I received a cell call at 6:59 AM.  The caller ID read "Jeffco Security."  That is never a good sign and not a great way to start a Friday morning.  

"Mrs. Hankins, this Jeffco Security.  I am calling to let you know that there is an active shooter near your school.  The Jeffco Sheriff's department is placing your school on lock-out.  Families will receive a "school message" from the district to not bring their children to school until further notice.  Teachers will also receive a message that if they are not already at school to go home and not come in until further notice.  If you have children or teachers at school already, they are to stay inside with all exterior doors locked.  If children are walking to school without an adult, they are to be let in as soon as they arrive.  If any students are on a bus, they will be taken to Bear Creek High School (about 8 miles away) for reunification with their families."

You can imagine the myriad of thoughts going through my head at the time as I made my way to my school.

Me:    "Where exactly is this shooter?"

Security:   "Approximately 2 miles from Mortensen - Police are on the scene, but the person has not been apprehended."

That was basically all the information that I had as I walked in the door of the school.  Approximately 1/3 of the staff were there.  Around 40 children were in the building at "before school care" or in a couple of small group tutoring sessions.  The phones were ringing off the hook.  Children who were walking to school were arriving at the walkways on the grounds.  Some parents who had not gotten the message were arriving in cars in the arrival driveway.  A Jefferson County Sheriff's Deputy was stationed at the front walk telling parents about the situation and asking them to take their children straight back home.  Some parents were very agitated because they had to get to work and had no where to take their children except back home to be alone.  When I found this out, I told the deputy that the children would be safer in the school than at home alone, so he started letting a few in if parents told him that they could not make other arrangements.

Here is the news release put out by the sheriff's department:

Posted on: February 23, 2018   JeffCo Sheriff’s Office Responds to Reports of Shots Fired

At 6:30 this morning, February 23, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office received multiple reports of shots fired near a shopping center in the area of Ken Caryl and Shaffer Drive. Arriving deputies immediately established a perimeter and began a search of the area, but were initially unable to confirm shots had been fired or to locate a suspect.

To ensure the public’s safety, Ken Caryl was closed between C-470 and Alkire, and Shaffer Drive was closed at Ken Caryl. A CodeRed notification was sent to residences and businesses within a one-quarter mile radius of the area, instructing citizens to remain indoors while the incident was being investigated.

As deputies conducted a methodical search of the shopping center and its surrounding area, a cooperative witness provided the Sheriff’s Office with video footage taken by cell phone. What is believed to be gunfire can be heard in the video and an individual is seen approaching and entering a passenger vehicle, then leaving the area as the reverberations continued.

The Sheriff’s Office believes the individual in the video may have also heard the gun fire, or have witnessed shots being fired. This individual and others who saw, heard, or know something related to this incident are encouraged to contact the Sheriff’s Office at 303-271-0211 or Crime Stoppers at (720) 913-STOP (7867); reference CR 18-4549.

As you read, you can see how the vagueness of the situation would keep the community in a state of uncertainty, especially in light of the recent school shooting incidents.  In total 11 schools within a five mile radius were placed on "Lock-Out" for at least a portion of the morning.  Our lock-out was lifted at 9:45.

With hopes that my voice sounded positive and reassuring, I put a message out to the families telling them to bring their children to school.

What I said:   "I will be out front to greet you!"

What I was feeling:  "Please trust me with your child.  I will do everything in my power to keep them safe.  Dear God - give me strength to exude calm confidence outwardly even though I am not feeling that way inside.

I have now had one week to reflect upon February 23rd.  I have replayed the decisions that were made by our law enforcement, our school district, and the ones that I made for my specific school.  At the end of the day, all students were safe.  Families might have been inconvenienced, but that is a small price to pay for students' safety.  Some people say that we overreacted, but with the recent incident in Parkland, FL everyone was on high alert.  I have read about so many odd threats and reports across the country since the shootings in Florida.  It has brought back thoughts and reflections that (unfortunately) I have had on so many instances over the past years.  Mostly my thoughts focus upon being the person at my school where the "buck stops."  Yes, I have so many supportive staff members, students and families, but when it gets right down to it, it is my job to ensure that we have the safest school environment as possible.

I reviewed this article that I had read previously and was published just after the shootings at Sandy Hook in Newtown, CT in 2013.  That was so horrific and over five years ago.  This article put out by the National Association of Elementary School Principals capsulizes many of my thoughts about student safety and its importance.

STUDENT SAFETY—A PRINCIPAL’S FIRST PRIORITY

By Gail Connelly, NAESP Executive Director
Communicator
January 2013, Volume 36, Issue 5

Yes, principals may wear a lot of hats in schools—instructional leader, coach, disciplinarian, mediator—but their first priority undoubtedly is to keep students safe.

In the  days and weeks since that awful morning in Newtown, many of us—parents, educators, lawmakers and leaders alike—have struggled to find ways to prevent violence in our schools and take action to protect our nation’s children from harm. To this end, NAESP and NASSP joined together to offer recommendations to the National Gun Violence Task Force chaired by Vice President Joe Biden. In representing the majority view of the nation’s principals, together, we called for solutions that are multi-faceted and meaningful to schools. Foremost, our organizations do not believe that guns have a place in our schools, or that arming educators is the answer.

The tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School has shown that violence in our schools and communities is not a school problem or a community problem—it is both. While it is important to help principals address the immediate safety needs in schools—like installing the deadbolt on the classroom doors, or fixing the outside lock on the gymnasium door—principals have and are taking action to make schools safer than ever before. A principal's first responsibility is to foster a safe, orderly, warm, and inviting environment. To be effective, schools must be able to provide intervention and supports for students and families, and draw upon the collective resources of the entire learning community.

Our nation’s educators, including principals, teachers, as school psychologists and counselors, are deeply committed professionals who work tirelessly to address the safety, social, emotional as well as cognitive needs of students each day. They must be supported to work together. Going forward, NAESEP will work to provide principals the safety and planning that is necessary for keeping schools current on security measures, such as reviewing how district policies do or do not help principals meet the unique context of each school, and providing principals with adequate resources for updating and repairing security equipment. More importantly, we will also focus on incentives for schools, community-based health and safety institutions, providers, and policymakers to work together to ensure that schools remain community sanctuaries of non-violence that will protect the well-being of every student.    

As I reread this article, I am struck by how little things have changed since 2013.  It seems like (as a society) we rally together for a short time after an incident occurs, but the efforts soon fade and we fall back into complacency for several weeks/months until the next event unfortunately occurs.  I can tell you that a school principal is not complacent, however.  There is not a portion of a day that goes by in which I don't think about something that is safety related.  It often occurs as I walk the perimeter of the building checking to ensure that all exterior doors are locked.  I do everything in my power to have a clearly understood and unified emergency management plan for our school.  It has been developed and tweaked over the years, and everyone is trained on the plan.  We have a Watch D.O.G.S. (Dads of Great Students) program where several dads volunteer to spend time at school to volunteer in classrooms, be present at arrival, dismissal, and during recess, and serve as an extra set of eyes on our grounds. When we have our safety drills, it is evident that everyone knows what to do (staff and students).  The problem is that every real situation is different.  I am sure that there were things that happened at the Parkland school that had not been practiced by the students and staff.  How can you prepare for every situation when they are all so different?  All I can say about that is "you just have to do the best you can do."

People have asked me to share my thoughts about what should be done to keep our schools as safe as possible.  I am happy to share my thoughts, but I always know that there are varying opinions on most anything.  What I do not understand is how this issue has become so politicized.  How can children's safety not be something that would pull us together?  If it can't, then I am sad to conclude that we will continue to be polarized.

Let me start by saying that I do believe that we need to have stronger gun restrictions in this country.  Spending a year in Australia proved to me that a country can come together for action. 

As reported in the HuffPost (3-1-18) the country "hasn’t experienced a mass shooting since 1996, when a gunman wielding AR-15 and L1A1 rifles killed 35 people during the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania. Then-Prime Minister John Howard (who, by the way, is from the conservative political party) implemented a series of gun control measures, which banned certain types of firearms and created a registry for gun owners. He also introduced the idea of a government buy-back program, in which gun owners handed in hundreds of thousands of firearms between October 1996 and September 1997.  Australia has been cited as a potential model for the U.S., where calls for gun reform typically go unheeded."

Of course there were zero school shootings throughout the entire country during the time we were in Australia, and we only heard of a couple of deaths occurring from firearms at all.  Even though any death is tragic, these shootings were committed by rival gang members with guns obtained from the black market.  I realize there is the assertion that if people turn in their guns here a larger black market will ensue.  That may be true, but when the vast majority of mass shootings in the United States are committed with legally purchased automatic weapons, I can only conclude that the restrictions would lower the incidents.  Why does anyone need an AR15 unless it is to kill a lot of people in a short amount of time?  I don't think this type of firearm was what the founding fathers were thinking of when they drafted the second amendment.

So - Yes, I believe in tighter gun restrictions, but if that is all we do, we will NOT solve the problem of what I refer to as the "don't mess with my rights" mentality which is actually scarier to me than someone having the right to purchase a firearm. 

I think we should all be able to agree that individual rights should not infringe on the rights and freedoms of the common and collective good.  We may say this, but when it comes time to "live out" the limiting of our rights for the good of the whole,  there is an increasing resistance which has grown to unprecedented prevalence.

Signs and signals of the "don't mess with my rights" mentality are seen every day by those of us working in the schools.  This is my 36th year of being a school teacher, counselor, or principal.  In the course of that longevity it has been intriguing to watch a growing number of parents who find it very hard to allow their children to be required to take full responsibility for their actions.  I am not saying that when a parent questions a proposed disciplinary consequence for a child,  it means that the child will grow up to be a mass shooter. But with the mentality that everything is always someone else's fault, there is the tendency to develop a personality profile with a slant toward three characteristics that could lead a young person toward unhealthy behaviors in the future.  Before discussing these one at a time, I would like to preface the conversation with the point that these views are still in the minority, thank goodness.  I am happy to report that a strong majority of parents are doing everything in their power to raise up intelligent, strong, responsible, caring, and creative young people.  I just think it is important to note that the "don't mess with my rights" mentality is more prevalent now than in years past.

1.  An external versus an internal locus of control

OK - I am going way back to my counseling classes here with this concept, but its importance should not be minimized.  The concept of "locus of control" and whether it is external or internal was first developed by Julian B. Rotter.  Dr. Rotter was an American psychologist known for his research on social learning theory and locus of control. He was a faculty member at Ohio State University and later at the University of Connecticut.

In 1966, Rotter published a research article entitled Generalized Expectancies for Interval Versus External Control of Reinforcement.  I may be a nerd, but I have read this research and even wrote a paper on it once in school.

This study looked at how an individual person views the control that he/she has on what happens in their lives.  At one extreme are people who believe that most life happenings are due to fate or luck. They would be said to have an external locus of control. At the other extreme are those who believe that our states of life are a function of one's behavior. They have an internal locus of control. Rotter also created the Internal-External Locus of Control Scale to measure individual differences in this characteristic. 

Our locus of control describes how much credit or blame we take for the outcomes in our life. Someone with an internal locus of control then will be prone to take credit for their successes, as well as to take the blame when something goes wrong. On the other hand of course, someone with an 'external' locus of control will be more likely to blame their current situation on outside factors – the circumstances, other people, luck, or fate.

How this plays out in a child's emotional development over the course of time is this:

Every time a child makes a mistake and is not allowed to take responsibility and face a natural or logical consequence, we are telling the child that they are not responsible for their actions.  This then, plays out as a person who does not view him/herself as having the inward ability to take both credit and blame for what happens in their lives.  It also tells a child that rules "do not apply to me."  Helping children see that mistakes are wonderful opportunities for learning is critical in their healthy emotional development.  The learning from the mistakes does not need to be framed as "punitive in nature." We just need to let the consequences fall, and help the child see that she/he will have control over their response in a similar situation in the future.

2.  Fear and Isolation

Unless there is significant trauma in a child's very early years, I have found it atypical for an elementary school aged student to choose isolation over interaction with peers.  They generally want to have friends and even though they are learning what it takes to be a friend, they want to belong to a group.  Over the course of time, however, of a child being "told" that he/she is not responsible for actions several things happen:

1. The other children begin to not want to be around the child.  They grow to have a lack of trust that this person will act responsibly.
2. Then, the child will start saying things like,"they are being mean to me."  "They won't let me play with them."  
3. The child (because she/he is trying to force the friendship) will do something like call the others names, push, shove, hit, pinch, etc.
4. Then, the child will need to be held responsible, but the parent will not allow it because from their child's viewpoint and their own parental perspective it is the other children's fault because they would not let him play with them.
5. We then come full-circle again with not being responsible - it is always the other person's fault, the world is out to get me, I am being bullied, etc.

There have been times when I have come close to begging a parent to allow a consequence to fall because it is exactly what needs to happen for the benefit of their child.  It makes me sad when over time I see a child withdrawing more and more because they start to feel fearful and isolated.  They need to be given the confidence that they do have control over their circumstances and that they can figure this out with adult scaffolding, of course.  Can you see the growth pattern that can happen even though the parents are doing what they think is best for the child?  They, themselves have the feeling that it's "us against them", so it is passed down to their child, even if it is unintentional.  And, what I am unfortunately seeing is that this "world view trend" is becoming more and more prevalent over time.  How do we change this?  

Short of "getting it out there and talking about it," I am not sure.

3.  Inability to Feel Regret and to Say "I was wrong, I am sorry."

I am uncertain at what point it became a sign of weakness to admit that we feel regret and to apologize for actions.  For some children it is next to impossible for them to get the words out of their mouths.  I have the following laminated sign in my office:

There are alternating views about requiring a child to say "I'm Sorry."  Over the years I have had more than a few parents tell me that requiring a child to say those two words is "senseless."  

Their stance on the issue is that we can not make kids regret something. We cannot force them to feel something that they don't actually feel and to internalize that they hurt somebody.

These statements may be true, but in my years of working with children the emotional skill of empathy must be taught just like the other skills that children develop as they grow.  For most children this skill is "on the way" to being developed prior to entering elementary school.  These kids come in knowing that it is OK to make a mistake, feel some regret that doesn't last too long, recognize the responsibility of their actions, make amends, and "set things right" with the other person.  They then go on about living their happy childhood lives.  The "don't mess with my rights" mentality will drag out the process, search high and low for someone or something else to blame, turn the situation around to where they are the victim, and never accept the fact that if they would just take some responsibility they would feel better about the whole thing themselves.  

So - I may be from the "old school," but I will continue to believe that it is important for children to learn the skill of being able to apologize.  It can only help them in any relationship that they will have throughout their lives.

Here is a free digital download for an "I'm Sorry" protocol from techiechic.net.

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I'm Sorry Protocol

Never fear - my long rambling is about to come to an end.  The original question was "Mrs. Hankins - what do you think about the issues of school safety and possibly gun control?"  Here is my answer in a nutshell (well 5 points):

1. We all must work together to help our schools ensure safety for our students and staff.
2. We must get a handle on the ease and prevalence of legal and illegal purchase of firearms.
3. Our schools need to be communities where no bullying is tolerated.  This must be understood and agreed to by all - staff, students, and parents. 
4. The "don't mess with my rights" mentality needs to be countered with teaching our children the skills of emotional intelligence, connection to others, responsibility, and respect for the common good.
5. Never succumb to fear.  Our children need to be able to grow up believing that their lives are happy and our world is good.  It's up to the adults to model those beliefs for them.

I am interested in your comments, so please chime in!