Over the years we probably have discussed hundreds of instances where the American political class has failed to resolve a problem facing the country and Americans. They either never resolve a problem, they make the problem worse, and in the few cases they actually resolve a problem, they do it far more expensively and take much longer than any rational person would expect.
A perfect example of their ineptness is protecting schools from deranged killers. The first school shooting of recent significance was out in Columbine, Colorado which happened during the Clinton Presidency. Since then, there have been way too many other school shootings and mass killings. And despite the efforts of the American political class, they have accomplished nothing to stop these shootings.
If they had been capable of resolving this problem, it would have stopped mass school shootings years ago. Instead, politicians do a knee jerk reaction which results in more gun control that does nothing to stop future shootings.
They are incapable of understanding root causes of a problem and then attacking those root problems in a rational and sane manner. If you do not understand root causes of any problem, you have very little chances of actually fixing a problem. For decades, politicians did not understand the root causes that leads to a young person to find a gun and slaughter kids.
Unfortunately, this inability to understand school shooters, has resulted in a recent school massacre in Texas. And the knee jerk reaction to the shooting was to focus on gun control AGAIN. This approach never worked before and will not work now.
However, I recently came across a technique that a long time teacher uses in her classroom with her students. Please read what she does and I think that you will agree that she indeed understands a root cause of a potential school shooter. If only our politicians could think about root causes and bring some elegance to resolving this horrible problem. Obviously , their approach since the Clinton years has been an abject and fatal failure.
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Interesting and simply brilliant approach to inclusion:
Every Friday afternoon Chase’s teacher asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they’d like to sit the following week. The children know that these requests may or may not be honored. She also asks the students to nominate one student whom they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are privately submitted to her.
And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home, Chase’s teacher takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her and studies them. She looks for patterns.
Who is not getting requested by anyone else?
Who doesn’t even know who to request?
Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated?
Who had a million friends last week and none this week?
You see, Chase’s teacher is not looking for a new seating chart or “exceptional citizens.” Chase’s teacher is looking for lonely children. She’s looking for children who are struggling to connect with other children. She’s identifying the little ones who are falling through the cracks of the class’s social life. She is discovering whose gifts are going unnoticed by their peers. And she’s pinning down- right away- who’s being bullied and who is doing the bullying.
As a teacher, parent, and lover of all children – I think that this is the most brilliant Love Ninja strategy I have ever encountered. It’s like taking an X-ray of a classroom to see beneath the surface of things and into the hearts of students. It is like mining for gold – the gold being those little ones who need a little help – who need adults to step in and TEACH them how to make friends, how to ask others to play, how to join a group, or how to share their gifts with others. And it’s a bully deterrent because every teacher knows that bullying usually happens outside of her eyeshot – and that often kids being bullied are too intimidated to share. But as she said – the truth comes out on those safe, private, little sheets of paper.
As Chase’s teacher explained this simple, ingenious idea – I stared at her with my mouth hanging open. “How long have you been using this system?” I said.
Ever since Columbine, she said. Every single Friday afternoon since Columbine.
Good Lord.
This brilliant woman watched Columbine knowing that ALL VIOLENCE BEGINS WITH DISCONNECTION. All outward violence begins as inner loneliness. She watched that tragedy KNOWING that children who aren’t being noticed will eventually resort to being noticed by any means necessary.
And so she decided to start fighting violence early and often, and with the world within her reach. What Chase’s teacher is doing when she sits in her empty classroom studying those lists written with shaky 11 year old hands - is SAVING LIVES. I am convinced of it. She is saving lives.
And what this mathematician has learned while using this system is something she really already knew: that everything – even love, even belonging – has a pattern to it. And she finds those patterns through those lists – she breaks the codes of disconnection. And then she gets lonely kids the help they need. It’s math to her. It’s MATH.
All is love- even math. Amazing.
Chase’s teacher retires this year – after decades of saving lives. What a way to spend a life: looking for patterns of love and loneliness. Stepping in, every single day- and altering the trajectory of our world.
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An interesting and apparently sane, rational, and root cause approach to the problem. This does not mean we should not harden our schools against attacks. This does not mean that we should not monitor social platforms for hints at future behavior. This does not mean that school personnel and local police departments should not have a plan in case of an attack (something that did not happen in the latest Texas shooting).
But this teacher's approach to understanding how kids might go wrong merits serious consideration. Lord knows that politicians approach to the problem has not been serious... or successful. You either understand root causes or fail in any aspect of life and reality.
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