Hardened Schools and Hardened Hearts

So already, before the massacre at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas last Tuesday, mass shootings--and school shootings in particular--were already on my mind.  

 

Six days after a shooter set on killing African-Americans murdered ten people in Buffalo, my husband and I, driving through Connecticut on Route 84 West en route to my cousin's wedding in Pennsylvania, passed the Newtown and Sandy Hook exits. They looked just like any other exits.

 

They reminded me of the first question that came to my mind when I visited High Tech High School* in San Diego early April 2013.

 

High Tech High's physical space--airy, bright, and alive--was designed to support project-based learning and collaboration. Its interior glass walls were intended to make student work--and students working--visible so the whole community might engage with the learning and projects connected to them. Windows and sight lines everywhere!

 

"How the hell do they lock this place down?" I wondered.

 

The minute I voiced that question to myself, I was stunned. I'd been teaching for thirty-four years; even five years earlier, despite Columbine, I didn't think I would have thought to ask that question. But seconds later, my question made sense to me. Since Sandy Hook, I'd become used to practicing lockdown drills with my students, to scoping out possible exits, to checking whether doors had windows, to thinking which objects might successfully shield or hide a student from a shooter.

I was at High Tech High for a conference about deeper learning, and, in fact, I had one of the most meaningful professional learning experiences of my career on the first day of the conference. Project-based learning and place-based learning coincided when a group of us crossed the border into Mexico at Tijuana as pedestrians in order to begin to explore the question of "How does the US-Mexican border impact our community, and how do we impact the border?" 

 

The experience was designed to be "a day long launch into an essential question important to our area." Clearly, High Tech High School, at least in 2013, valued porous, flexible walls between school and community, school and the world. At CRLS too, the world beyond the school building was considered to be a great learning resource, though making use of it required vigilance, deliberateness, and adherence to district policies. Plus it was nice for kids to be able to walk across the street during lunchtime and buy a piece of pizza.

So when I think about Ted Cruz's remarks yesterday at the National Rifle Association convention about "hardening" schools, I get furious from both a learning and emotional perspective. Who wants to send their children to a hardened school, as opposed to a safe one--one that offers emotional as well as physical safety?

 

I've led workshops at schools within walled compounds with entrance gates patrolled by armed security guards, but they've been in other countries. I haven't wanted this to be the American norm; I haven't wanted the neighborhood school to have to separate itself from the neighborhood rather embed itself in its fabric. But I write that knowing that some neighborhoods offer swaths of dangerous fabric, even if school shooters aren't lurking in them.

In Sandy Hook, according to Education Week, the new elementary school has been designed  to be more of a "safe haven" than a "fortress."***** Would that all communities could afford such a school.

What I mostly fear is that the more time, energy, and money goes into hardening schools, the less time, energy, and money will go into educating and caring for the students who attend them. And as the pandemic wears on, our kids need more personal attention, individualized instruction, and emotional support then ever to realize their potentials and move forward with hope. School has to be about much more than keeping them alive.

It takes hardened people to embrace the idea of hardened schools--schools to which they probably wouldn't send their own children.

* Screenshot of google maps image in Trotta, B. (2019, October 7). I-84 Westbound Ramps in Newtown To Be Closed Every Night This Week. The Wolf: Hudson Valley's New Country.
https://danburycountry.com/i-84-westbound-ramps-in-newtown-to-be-closed-all-this-week/

**  Highly regarded High Tech High School was co-founded by two of my former Cambridge Rindge and Latin School colleagues, Rob Riordan and Larry Weinstock, and I was truly excited to finally be visiting it.

*** Screenshot of photo taken by author accompanying Schwartz, K. (2018, February 6). What's So Different About High Tech High Anyway? KQED/Mind/Shift. https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/50443/whats-so-different-about-high-tech-high-anyway 

**** Screen shot of image accompanying Dreith, B. (2022, May 27) Texas senator proposes design measures to "harden schools" in wake of Uvalde shooting. Dezeen. https://www.dezeen.com/2022/05/27/ted-cruz-one-door-uvalde-school-shooting/ 

***** Screen shot of photo from Robert Benson photography accompanying Klein, A. (2019, March 12). Making School a Safe Haven, Not a Fortress. EducationWeek: Special Report. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/making-school-a-safe-haven-not-a-fortress/2019/03