Teachers Perspective

The challenges teachers face in trying to pay more attention to their

students’ behavior are myriad. During the course of any day, public high

school teachers may instruct upwards of 100 students. The range of normal

behavior they observe spans from outgoing and boisterous to quiet and bookish.

And even when disturbing behavior becomes apparent, it’s difficult for them to

do anything without treading on privacy rights.

So how do teachers ferret out and deal with the often subtle clues that

something is awry? Richard Ellsworth, a social-studies teacher at South High

School in Denver, says the process is one of observation. “One of the first

indications is when a kid doesn’t act like a kid,” he says. “I look for

anything out of the norm – when they act very different from the way they

acted before. I ask if anything is wrong, and if there is, I try to get help

for them. But it doesn’t always work.”

With nine deadly school shootings in the US during the past three years,

teachers and administrators have been searching for ways to improve the dialogue between

students and teachers. Yet, at the same time, they are having to deal with

expanding class size and shrinking funding. “In these huge schools, you don’t

have the luxury of developing close relationships with students,” says Richard

Kraft, an education professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder. “It’s

a tremendous challenge teachers face.”

Steve Lantz, a science teacher at Cherry Creek High School, struggles with

this daily. With a student body of 3,600, Cherry Creek is the largest high

school in the Denver area – and one of the largest in the nation. “You do pick

up on trouble spots, but on every single day you can’t know what’s going on in

the lives of the 140 kids you teach,” he says. “With 3,600 students, the

statistical probability that you’ll have someone with buried anger exists.”

So in response to the shootings in Littleton, Cherry Creek has focused on

prevention. “We’re telling the kids, don’t be afraid to tell us a rumor you

hear,” he says. “Even if they don’t take it seriously, we want to know about

it.”Indeed, over the weekend, investigators said the two suspects in the

Littleton shootings had compiled for more than a year a diary plotting the

attack, adding that others may have been involved as well. In light of these

discoveries, many people here say it’s likely that some

students may have heard of the plan but didn’t tell anyone.

At Cherry Creek, teachers are holding in-class discussions about student

violence, and stressing the need for tolerance. “We teach kids that diversity

is to be celebrated,” says Mr. Lantz. “We tell them that they can’t live in a

modern world without respect for others.” When a student is identified as a

potential threat, though, “all the staff is put on alert,” he says. Lantz

recalls one student who seemed obsessed with the darker side of life: “His

papers included sketches of death scenes, and for a research project, he chose

the topic of death.”

His parents and the school counselor were notified, and the staff kept an eye

on him. He graduated without incident. “Teachers do know how to spot that sort

of situation, and we look for it on a daily basis,” Lantz says. Yet teachers

also must proceed with caution when they delve into personal areas,

considering both privacy issues and legal liability, says South High teacher

Ellsworth. For example, if a teacher is especially attentive to a student – or

meets with one privately – it might prompt accusations of an inappropriate relationship. “The way the world is today, everything is controversial,” he says.

Tim Hillmer, who teaches English at Monarch High School in Louisville, Colo.,

gets his clues on students from their writing assignments. At the beginning of

each year, he asks students to write a report on their life history, charting

the highs and lows. “I find that helps me get to know the kids real quick.”But

identifying a troubled student can be the easy part of the solution. “It can’t

all be put on teachers or schools,” he says. “It’s got to be the parents, and

it’s got to be the community, too.”

– The Christian Science Monitor