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Credit: National Association of Secondary School Principals
6 lessons principals learned in the wake of school shootings
Leaders who survived shootings at their schools reflected on their
experiences at a National Association of Secondary School Principals
event, noting they are in a club no principal wants to be in.
Naaz Modan
Feb. 13, 2020
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Pointing across the room, Frank DeAngelis singles out Jake Heibel as he’s leaving.
“Take care. Please,” DeAngelis insists. “I’ve got an ear.”
DeAngelis, a former principal of Colorado’s Columbine High School, and
Heibel, principal of Great Mills High School in Maryland, are part of a
club of which no principal wants to be a member: They both led schools
that experienced mass shootings.
The two were joined by a small group of school leaders Wednesday
afternoon who are members of the National Association of Secondary
School Principals' Principal Recovery Network, a formal support system
and advocacy group launched last year by NASSP for administrators who
have lived through gun violence in their schools.
“The principal must collect the broken pieces of the community
and restore them whole,” Beverly Hutton, NASSP’s deputy executive
director, said at the event. “It’s a very difficult and isolating
position for any principal.”
But over the years, Hutton said, there have been enough school
shootings to recognize the pattern that follows. Here are six things
administrators shared while reflecting on their experiences.
A shooting can happen anywhere, but relationships make a difference
“If you were to tell me Columbine were to happen in Columbine, I
would’ve said no,” DeAngelis said. But his "worst nightmare became a
reality" on what DeAngelis remembers as a beautiful spring day in 1999,
when two seniors killed 15 and injured 24 students and educators in the
Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, a small suburb in the
Denver-metro area.
True to fact, a Secret Service report recently confirmed that school
shooters have no standard profile and attacks can happen in schools or
towns of any size.
But before, during and after school shootings, creating a culture that
encourages students to reach out to trusted adults in the school
building is pivotal to prevention, mitigation and healing, the panelist
said.
Principal Greg Johnson pointed to his experience at West Liberty-Salem
High School, when a student named Logan, who was shot and injured, and
a school coach successfully deescalated an active shooter situation in
2017. “At that point, the shooter started to second guess what he was
doing,“ Johnson said and, after the shooter turned the gun on himself,
“Logan started to talk to him about putting the gun down and getting
help.”
“We continue to look at safety as hardening schools, but don’t
underestimate the importance of adults in school and having programs
that can reach out,” DeAngelis added, saying he recalled looking at
photos of the Columbine shooters when they were small children “in
their soccer uniforms with missing teeth.”
“What happened between that period of time when they were young until
they walked through those doors?" he said. "Did we miss something?”
Bottom of Form
Watch and listen closely to students’ needs
After Elizabeth Brown stepped in as principal a little more than a
month after a 2018 shooting, on Columbine’s 19th anniversary, at
Florida’s Forest High School, she said her first task was to meet with
student leadership to gauge their needs and vision.
And after listening to concerns from his students, Johnson said his
school added retrofitted egress windows and bullet-resistant film for
glass entryways, as well as additional SROs and counselors to put the
community at ease.
But staying in tune with the needs of students is not just hardening
buildings — it also means training around trauma-informed practices and
providing immediate and sustained mental health services.
Because Johnson was “very intentional” in listening to students, he was
able to identify and eliminate what would have otherwise been
unpredictable triggers, including balloons at homecoming or prom and
the starting pistol at track meets.
But trauma-informed instruction wasn’t commonplace during the aftermath
of Columbine, when teachers re-entered their classrooms with little
understanding of how students would react. “[When] a social studies
teacher played a video tape of World War I or II and there was a
gunshot, kids went into panic mode,” DeAngelis recalled, noting even
day-to-day instruction and behavior — like loudly slamming doors — had
to change.
There is no deadline on healing, everyone processes differently
“We [cannot] assume what the healing process will be and the time frame
for healing,” Brown said. And during that undetermined period of
healing, everyone reacts differently, making the challenge all the more
difficult.
“At a staff meeting three months after the shooting, I had 50% of my
staff for which the shooting was the last thing they wanted me to bring
up,” Johnson said. “Then I had others that needed to hear about it.”
There will also be teachers who are very open about the support they
need and others who process the situation on their own, he said.
Brown recalled a minor incident lockdown that led to the resurfacing of
“resonating triggers” among students and staff. “My perception of the
level of healing of my students was completely wrong.”
In case of active shooter drills following an incident of gun violence,
giving plentiful notice to students and parents, making clear it is a
drill rather than a real incident, and excusing the absences of
students who cannot handle reliving the trauma are all ways to
facilitate the healing process.
Refine your messaging
Because some shootings have few or no fatalities, incidents and their
impact can become trivialized and struggles discredited. But Johnson
pointed out that “your response isn’t proportional to your level of
tragedy.”
George Roberts, former principal of Perry Hall High School in Maryland,
where a shooting occurred on the first day of school in 2012, said even
though fatalities and injuries can vary, healing will be a “years-long
process.”
“I was guilty on our first day back” Johnson said, “for praising our
students for being so strong and so resilient and so tough.” Over time,
he said, he had to learn to change his message to one that didn’t
conflate resilience with not asking for help.
Prepare for turnover and difficult decisions
“If you are a survivor of 9/11, you can decide to not go back to that
[New York City] site,” DeAngelis said. But teachers and other school
staff must return to the building of their trauma. “We all decided to
stay together with our kids until our freshman class graduated in 2002.”
After that, according to DeAngelis, Columbine High School saw an approximately 50% staff turnover rate.
In some cases, teachers may need days off and could benefit from “pools
of substitute teachers” who can step in. But it could become a fine and
difficult line to walk if the same teacher is consistently triggered,
DeAngelis said. “That’s when you need to have the conversation of:
‘Would a placement in a different school be better for you and the
kids?'"
Principals must care for themselves consistently
For some principals, it can take years before realizing their need for
self-care. Educators are trained to prioritize others first, and,
particularly in the aftermath of a shooting, this can hurt
administrators rather than be an asset.
“When I called Ty Thompson from Parkland,” DeAngelis said, “I said, ‘Ty
I know what you’re feeling.’” Seeking and offering that support should
never be a one-time phone call. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.”
For Johnson, being open about the struggles he faced during his
recovery process and the help he was seeking connected him to his
community. “I think it broke down walls,” he said.
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