Teachers are watchdogs

As violence in classrooms and schools increase across the country, teachers are asked to go beyond education. 

---

Christy Larsen

---

Teachers must now be an important watchdog, preventing incidents before it happens and handling a crisis as it occurs.

The violent massacre at Columbine High School has brought attention to the crisis this country faces.  If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere. 

Teachers must be trained to recognize and report suspicious behaviors or actions that they see.  The schools may have its own procedures for crisis situations, but the teachers need to spend time in classes, learning how to deal with emergencies before they start their teaching assignments.

Teachers learn classroom management as part of their training, but their classes do not train them to deal with violence such as what occurred at Columbine.

What responsibilities should we take to prepare teachers for the level of todays violence, such as the case in the Columbine massacre?

Teachers spend many hours learning how to educate students, including how to deal with special-needs students, but their teacher credential program must also prepare them for protecting their students and themselves against the unwanted elements in our society that overflow in to classrooms and schools.

A safe environment for educating the students of our country should be an absolute top priority. The colleges and universities that are responsible for preparing these new teachers must incorporate essential survival skills into its teacher-education training. 
 Having to spend valuable training hours on something that may never happen may seem a waste of time, but the safety of our children cannot be left unguarded.