Day 3: Sustaining Prevention Efforts through Policy and Education Reform

Day 3: Preventing a Crisis

Click on the icons to the right to hear Mark Weist explain the importance of a positive school climate for student well-being*. Click here to read his comments.

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Part 1

Part 2

Mark Weist, Ph.D., director of the Center for School Mental Health Assistance, University of Maryland

Before Nathaniel Brazill age 13, shot and killed his language arts teacher, he told his friend that he would come back to the school that day with a gun. He told her four times.

She thought he was joking and did not report his threat to teachers or anyone else at the Palm Beach County, Florida middle school. On that last day of school in May 2000, Brazill was angry over his suspension for throwing water balloons. Witnesses later testified that Brazill told them that he was going to shoot the counselor who suspended him. He told one friend, "Watch, I'm going to be all over the news."

Later that day, Brazill walked up to seventh grade language arts teacher, Barry Grunow -- one of his favorite teachers -- and asked to see a girl in Grunow's classroom. Grunow refused. Brazill pulled out a gun and shot him once, killing the Lake Worth Middle School teacher.

At a youth assembly in Palm Beach County, Florida Nathaniel's friend Michelle spoke, urging her peers to take threats seriously. As school officials grapple with ways to prevent a crisis like a school shooting, they realize that students may be their best ally.

"We know that students have a lot of impact on fellow students in middle school -- more influence than adults. Students see and know things that adults don't know on campus," says Rick Lewis, training coordinator for the Department of Safe Schools of the School District of Palm Beach County. According to a U.S. Secret Service report, in more than 75 percent of school shootings, other students knew of the potential violence but did not report it to authorities.

The U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Secret Service recently released reports detailing the results of a three-year study that examined 37 incidents of targeted school shootings and school attacks that have occurred in the United States since 1974. Investigators paid particular attention to identifying pre-attack behaviors and communications that might be detectable and could help in preventing future attacks. Their full findings and recommendations are detailed in two publications on threat assessment in schools. Threat assessment is an essential part of a school's comprehensive violence prevention strategy.

A key component in threat assessment is persuading students to speak up about threats made by their peers. But that can be tricky. After Grunow's death, the Sunshine State School Public Relations Association (SUNSPRA) searched for ways to encourage students to speak up when they learn about threats. SUNSPRA staff held 14 focus groups with teenagers across Florida. Teenagers expressed strong reluctance to report threats. They did not want to be labeled a "snitch", and they did not trust adults to be responsive or protect their anonymity.

But if anyone could persuade teenagers to speak up, it's fellow students, the focus groups reported; in fact, they said that adolescents need to be reminded of the serious consequences of not speaking up.

Based on the focus groups and national research, SUNSPRA piloted the Silence Hurts campaign. The campaign teaches youth to speak up if someone's life is in danger. It seeks to build a community of caring that will make students feel safe enough to talk to adults about potential threats from other students. Strong messages, developed by teens for teens, are crafted to help break the "code of silence" to prevent school violence.

A student-led youth group, called Safe Ambassadors, guides the school in the initiative. Safe Ambassadors are either popular or influential kids in the school. The campaign gets the message out through public service announcements, banners, posters and other means. It teaches students to talk to a teacher or another adult if someone's life is in danger. Various teachers are identified as "listeners". They have information posted in their classrooms so that students know that they can share important information with them. The teacher will then notify an administrator who can take action. The student's identity is kept confidential.

"I have seen a change in students at Lake Worth Middle since [the shooting]," wrote Joanne Gendreau-Gaydos, a teacher at Lake Worth Middle School who witnessed the shooting, in the Palm Beach Post. "Under Principal Frank Mascara and Lake Worth police officer Debbie Wilson, students are learning about how silence hurts. The school's peer mediators and guidance counselors direct students as they watch a video and discuss the important topic of students bringing weapons to school. Students have come to understand that there are severe consequences when they don't speak up about a friend who plans to bring a weapon to school. Students now realize that seeking an adult's help could save people's lives."

The Silence Hurts campaign is part of a broad strategy to prevent violence and create safe schools by officials at the School District of Palm Beach County, which oversees 150,000 students and 150 schools. The district has its own safe schools center, which coordinates these initiatives. Although just one example of many possible approaches to violence prevention, Palm Beach County's plan is quite comprehensive; it includes creating a school climate of ownership and pride, including clear expectations about behavior, involving students in decision making, encouraging warm student-teacher relationships, building partnerships with families, teaching conflict resolution, and providing a safe physical environment.

Like many school districts, Palm Beach County has a lot of students who do not have the skills to manage conflict. Officials looked for a curriculum that addressed all types of kids -- popular, on the fringe, rich, poor, and of all ethnic backgrounds.

They settled on Aggressors, Victims, and Bystanders: Thinking and Acting to Prevent Violence, a 12-week curriculum developed by Education Development Center, Inc. The aim of the curriculum is to equip students with the knowledge and skills that will enable them to successfully resolve conflicts without resorting to violence. The 12-week class focuses on the key role that bystanders can play in helping to defuse a conflict. In Palm Beach County, police officers assigned to schools teach the course.

"Police officers bring something to a classroom that teachers can't bring, and that's their personal experience around this issue," says Rosemarie Backhus of the Aggressors, Victims, and Bystanders program at the School District of Palm Beach County. "Police officers have a lot of training in how to defuse a person and disengage them from their behavior. It's that and the relationship that develops between the officer and the teenagers, which spills over into the campus and the community. They see each other. It's the familiarity, the rapport, and the trust that is built between them."

The curriculum was pilot-tested at about 12 middle schools and is now expanding to all 30 middle schools in the Palm Beach County school district. The curriculum ties into the Silence Hurts campaign so that students have someone to talk with when they learn of a threat.

A police officer who teaches the curriculum to sixth graders wrote a letter about an incident he witnessed:

"I was in the hallway as classes were changing. I was between two sets of lockers. I noticed two students standing face to face with angry looks on their faces, and it looked like they were going to fight. I didn't recognize the students, so they must have been in the seventh or eighth grade. Just as I was going to step out and separate the two, I noticed one of my sixth graders pass by and stop. Of all the sixth graders that had to stop, it had to be Junior. You could classify Junior as an active aggressor. Throughout my program, while Junior was my student, he did nothing but talk and clown around. At one point I had to send him out of class, because his interruptions were hindering other students from learning.

"I thought to myself, I am about to have a three-way fight on my hands.

"But I couldn't believe what unfolded. Junior began to talk to the students. In a calming voice, he began to reason with them, telling them that fighting wouldn't solve the problem, and it would get them suspended. Junior became a successful problem-solving bystander. The two students listened to what Junior had to say and went their separate ways.

"Stunned and proud, I stepped out from behind the lockers. Just then, Junior turned and saw me. It was what he said next that made me appreciate the program even more. 'I guess I was paying attention in class,' he said.

"This just goes to show you that even though students may look as though they aren't paying attention, we can't give up, and we must continue to teach them. They are listening, if we are willing to instruct them."

Activity and Discussion

Please review the Day 3 Activity and then think about the following questions:

What is missing from your school's prevention plan that specifically addresses crises?

How would you prioritize which prevention interventions to advocate for your school?

What are some no- or low-cost prevention ideas that you could easily help put in place?

* U.S. Department of Education, Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program; The Harvard School of Public Health; Education Development Center, Inc., and Prevention Institute (April 23, 2002). The Three R's for Dealing with Trauma in Schools (satellite broadcast). Retrieved August , 2002, from www.walcoff.com/prevention/. (Copyright 2002: U.S. Department of Education and Harvard School of Public Health, Division of Public Health Practice.)

This completes today's work.

Please visit the Discussion Area to share your responses to the discussion questions!