Identifying Student Violence
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