Leave a comment Posted on Back to School Night, Open House

Bring Back Parent Conversations to Open House

Get ready for a new kind of Open House experience, where having a quick conversation with your child’s teacher is discouraged, replaced with exhibits of student work.

Hopefully schools are getting this message out to parents in order to dampen their disappointment when they approach a teacher to discuss their child’s progress and are informed to make an appointment at another day and time.

Traditionally public schools have invited parents to two evening events: Back to School Night during the first half of the year, and Open House during the second half.   Since Back to School occurs about a month after the start of school, its purpose is to introduce parents to their children’s teachers and the curriculum.

At the secondary level, parents follow a bell schedule marching from one room to another for 10-minute sessions.   It is deliberately controlled, allowing little time for parents to ask questions.

That’s where the role of Open House comes in (or used to be).   With the majority of the school year past the midway point, and progress reports sent home, this is the perfect time for a check-in on how a child is doing so that modifications can be employed to improve performance.

For schools to deny parents that opportunity is unfortunate.

Of course, school officials will tell you that all a parent has to do is arrange for a private conference with a teacher.

While that would be feasible for an elementary school teacher with 35 students, how about the high school teacher with 175? Arranging private meetings of that size would be daunting.

That’s the beauty of the traditional Open House. I have found that most parents just want to say a quick “hi” and ask how their child is doing. No need for a 30-minute conversation.

I am able to meet dozens of parents efficiently and thereby eliminate many time-consuming conferences and emails, making the event productive for all.

When I asked administrators in both Glendale and Burbank about the shift towards student exhibits and demonstrations, they privately told me that it is in the best interest of the teachers to avoid ambushes by parents.

To prevent that, schools are rebranding Open House as a showcase of student work, more of a public relations event. The concept of “selling” a school is sound, but it should occur at another time. For example, the Block Party hosted by Keppel Elementary, Toll Middle, and Hoover High Schools on a Saturday afternoon in April serves that function.

Parents attending Open House are already invested in that institution—no sales ploy needed.

Here is what I propose. Take those two pupil-free days when students stay home and teachers attend meetings and put it to good use by scheduling conferences with parents arriving at appointed times to pick up their child’s report cards and chat with one of their child’s teachers.

Elementary schools already do this. They take a whole week of shortened days and meet with parents in the afternoon hours to discuss grades. Usually the meetings last 15 minutes.

Since secondary teachers have a much larger workload, the meetings would have to be shorter but could still be meaningful. And it would provide parents with a sense that their concerns were heard.

So, parents, please don’t blame the teachers if they are hesitant to say a few words about your child, for while it is still called Open House, conversations are closed.

 

Leave a comment Posted on Presidents' Day

Do You Know the Year Washington was Born?

Today is the 207th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. If you already knew that, congratulations, you are in a select minority who do.

See, while schools close for two days in February, the reason for these closures remain vague for most.   All it means is a three-day weekend.

If you are as old as I am, you remember schools used to have two holidays in February for the most revered U.S. Presidents: Abraham Lincoln, Feb. 12, and George Washington, Feb. 22.

It used to make sense. Have a day off to recognize America’s first president and another for the man who held this country together through its only civil war.

What is curious is that schools that close for Lincoln’s birthday do so independently for there is no federal holiday for Honest Abe.

And while a day off in honor of George Washington has been a federal holiday since1885, it has been decades since it was celebrated on his actual birthday.

Signed into law by President Johnson in 1968 but not enacted until 1971, the Uniform Monday Holiday Act mandated that Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, and Veterans Day move to Mondays.

Why? To provide Americans additional three-day weekend opportunities to help the economies of the tourism and retail industries.

This meant that the real Armistice Day of Nov. 11 was pushed back to the fourth Monday in October. Due to the outcry of Veterans groups, the day was relocated to its proper month. In recent years, schools have attempted to observe it on the real day unless the 11th comes on a weekend.

Meanwhile, once Washington’s Birthday was altered, the holiday became mistakenly known as Presidents’ Day. The federal government still refers to the third Monday in February as Washington’ Birthday even though on nearly all calendars and advertisements “Presidents’ Day” is used.

I don’t know about you, but should we really honor every past president, even the 32-day tenure of William Henry Harrison?

Even more baffling is that the third Monday in February never falls on Feb. 22. In other words, the U.S. law guarantees that no one will know the year when the father of this country was born.

Look, few of us put forth an effort to recognize the holidays we are given days off from work. How many attend a Martin Luther King parade or visit a veterans cemetery on Memorial Day?

The one constant that unites us on all holidays is the freedom to do whatever we want to do. Stores no longer close on Thanksgiving or Christmas. People can now exercise their normal spending habits any day, go to a movie, eat a meal, buy some clothes.

And in having 24/7 access, we are depriving ourselves of slowing down a few days a year, and honoring people who have sacrificed for our privilege to eat a Big Mac and drink a zebra Frappuccino anytime we desire.

As long as we aren’t the ones flipping the burgers or stirring the drinks, working on holidays has no impact on our lives.

Even Daylight Savings Time was devised so that people would have more light to buy more stuff.   And by the way, how about renaming it Standard Time since we are on non-standard time 66% of the year, from March 12 to Nov. 7 in 2016.

President Obama should issue an executive order moving Washington’s Birthday to the fourth Monday of February; a week later would make no difference in retail sales.

Since Feb. 22 falls on five Mondays over the next 33 years, we can least get it right a few times.

Now, who wants to join me in starting the petition to make this happen? I’ll bring the cherry pie.

 

 

Leave a comment Posted on CAHSEE, college ready, NCLB, parents, Public Education, public schools, reading, schools, students, teachers

CAHSEE: RIP

This year’s 10th graders have reason to celebrate since they no longer have to take the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE).

Last October Gov. Brown signed into law SB 172 suspending the test for three years through the 2017-18 school year.

Since 2004, the CAHSEE was administered to the state’s sophomores to test their ability in math, English, and writing.

Former Glendale superintendent Jim Brown served on the original committee whose intent was to develop a rigorous enough test to certify that a high school diploma meant something. If a student did not pass either portion of the test, he did not graduate.

However, when the test was piloted, it was discovered that half of all students could not pass the test.

Since schools could not have survived the public relations nightmare of a 50% graduation rate, CAHSEE was redesigned, or dummied-down, testing 8th grade level math and 10th grade level English to represent 12th grade competency.   The original two essays were downsized to a single piece of writing.

The writing prompts demanded little on the part of students, asking them to discuss a place they would like to visit or a toy from their childhood. And with such competency they are ready for college?

Even with a passing threshold of 55 percent in math and 60 percent in English, plus a host of free intervention classes and one-on-one tutoring, along with multiple chances to pass the darn thing, one out of every ten California seniors still did not pass it.

For those reasons, I never knew a single student who proudly proclaimed, “I passed the CAHSEE!”

State Sen. Carol Liu of La Canada Flintridge who sponsored SB 172 told me that she agrees “passing the exit exam in and of itself [did] not ensure students [had] mastered grade 12 standards.”

Think about the tens of millions of dollars and dozens of school days wasted on this endeavor. The biggest impact CAHSEE made in the past decade was enriching testing companies.

Besides suspending the test, the measure that went into effect the first of this year allows the 32,000 students who never passed the CAHSEE to now receive their diplomas. In other words, all the students who ever took the exit exam have officially “passed it” making the rationale behind it in the first place a very expensive joke, a high-priced feel good award akin to all kids on a sports team earning trophies regardless of merit.

Unfortunately, CAHSEE may return in a different form in the future.

One foreboding element of the law stipulates that “the Superintendent of Public Instruction convene an advisory panel to provide recommendations . . . on the continuation of the high school exit examination and on alternative pathways to satisfy the high school graduation requirements” as worded on the California Department of Education website.

Sen. Liu believes that future students could be looking at “multiple measures, such as an exit exam, coursework, and a project-based assignment” to prove they have earned a diploma.

Um, whatever happened to using a student’s course grades in determining achievement as colleges do? No college was ever interested if a student passed the CAHSEE or not.

The costly lesson of politician-produced initiatives such as CAHSEE and NCLB (which officially ended last month) is that elected officials need to stop thinking of themselves as experts on how to improve education.

 

Leave a comment Posted on parents, public schools, school calendar, teachers

GUSD Should Copy BUSD Calendar

January will be a busy time for Glendale Unified school board members as they tackle two of the most significant issues left over from 2015: the search for a new superintendent and a new starting date for school.

While the public has a minor say in choosing a superintendent, parents can have a major impact voicing their views on when schools should open their doors by attending one of the upcoming meetings: Jan. 11 at Glendale High, Jan. 13 at Hoover High, and Jan. 14 at Crescenta Valley High.

As reported before in this space, opening schools in early August makes no sense. The desire to finish the fall semester before winter break pertains only to 7-12th graders who have final exams.

And the idea that high school students need more time to prepare for Advanced Placement tests before the May testing period is just that—an idea. There is no proof that students have performed better on AP tests ever since school was moved up several weeks to early August.

In fact, AP test results have suffered in recent years ever since pre-requisites to taking AP classes were eliminated. Plus, this affects only a small portion of high school students. The majority of the K-12 student population does not need to follow a college calendar.

Thumbs up to parent Sarah Rush for spearheading an online petition to start school later that garnered 2,000 plus signatures. It definitely got the attention of GUSD more than this writer’s musings.

Thumbs down to GUSD for shelving this discussion even though parents expressed themselves back in August allowing plenty of time to alter next year’s calendar.   One school board member rationalized that they could not change the calendar because people already have made plans based on the Aug. 8th start date. Really?

Number one, how many parents cement August 2016 vacation plans in August 2015. And, number two, if they did, so what. School would not be starting earlier, it would be starting later.

Unfortunately, GUSD was not interested in renegotiating the already approved 2016-2017 calendar. Understandably Glendale’s school board members had their hands full with myriad issues this year including labor negotiations with employee groups, a proposed charter school (recently denied), future realignment of the district, as well as the continuing Sagebrush saga.

On the plus side, GUSD finally followed what Burbank Unified has done for years by posting an online survey for parents between Jan. 8 and 22 on this issue. And the district has formed a 27-member Superintendent’s Committee on Calendar Development that will meet five times (do we really need 27 people to devise calendar options?).

I find Burbank’s school calendar the most efficient. School opens Aug. 15 and ends on May 25. The 11-week summer allows more time not just for travel but for kids to enroll in enrichment classes or to get jobs. Conversely, Glendale schools start Aug. 8 and end June 1 with a 9-week summer.

I’m not sure why GUSD’s 27-member committee needs five meetings to devise a new calendar when their municipal neighbor already has one that they can adopt. Not having the Friday off before Labor Day, limiting the Thanksgiving holidays to three, and keeping Winter Break to two full weeks is how they do it, fitting the state-mandated 180 days of school within 284 calendar days instead of 298.

There, you can cancel four of the meetings right there.

Both cities share similar demographics and the same delicious bakery, Porto’s. So, to start the New Year right, hold a joint meeting of BUSD and GUSD and come to a consensus on the same school calendar. Potato balls, anyone?

 

Leave a comment Posted on children, homework, public schools, reading, teachers

Johnny Doesn’t Read Even When He Can

For years I required my advanced 10th graders to read 2,000 pages a semester, averaging 100 pages a week, based on books that they chose. That way if a book we studied in class didn’t catch their fancy, they had the freedom to find books that appealed to them as long as the selections were appropriate for their grade level and school use.

However, after struggling how to ensure that the reading logs students turned in each month documenting this task were completely honest, I decided to decrease the amount to 1,500 pages this year, 70 pages a week, hoping that would diminish falsifying the logs.

So what happened? The strategy did not work.

When asked if they honestly did the 70 pages of reading each week on their own, an average of 10 pages a day, 66% said that they had done all of the reading while 34% said they had not.

Here are some of their responses.

“I honestly have no excuse other than the fact that I have no time to read every day.”

“In this day of competition and cheating in school, it’s difficult to be completely honest because it can be damaging to yourself, sometimes even more than being dishonest.”

The biggest reason given for not reading was a lack of time. Yet teens find the time to watch nine hours of entertainment media a day according to Common Sense Media’s study released last month.

They can’t seem to find 10 minutes a day to read 10 pages in a book that they personally chose for themselves.

While many students did write that “reading is absolutely essential” to their academic and career success, some did not see it that way.

“I don’t think it is essential to get through high school and college.”

“We are used to visuals; one would rather have it read to us than read ourselves.”

“Reading books is pointless, they are just really dumb.”

“If I felt like it, I could be at least mildly successful without reading another written word in my life.” Remember, this student volunteered to enroll in an honors English class.

By the way, one of the requirements of the reading log is for the student and his parent to sign off on the paper as a way of securing the veracity of the work.   Evidently, students do not take signing one’s name to a piece of paper as meaningful.

I tell my students the best way to improve their writing and speaking skills is to read material at or slightly above their reading level. Just by seeing words in print will expand their vocabulary database.

Renaissance Learning, an education analytic company, discovered that students who read 30 minutes a day were exposed to 13.7 million words by the time they graduated high school, while those who read fewer than 15 minutes viewed only 1.5 million words.   Unfortunately, the former group represented 18% of kids while the latter 54%.

And the problem gets exponentially worse in college where there are textbooks not as watered down as the ones kids read in high school, another factor why so many college students struggle finishing a degree.

We are living at a time when reading books is not a viable option for kids in their spare time. Perhaps if they observed more of their parents reading a book it would interest them.

Think about this: how many teenagers will be receiving books as presents this Christmas compared to video games?   Books have become the new “underwear” present that evidently few people want under the tree.

 

 

Leave a comment Posted on Frank Sinatra, students

Sinatra’s Centennial Matters

New Year’s Day. 1994. Las Vegas. Frank Sinatra.

A moment when my life changed for the better.

That was the only time I saw Sinatra perform live.   And because of it, I have learned why Frank Sinatra is considered by so many as the greatest popular singer of all time.

What amazed me about the show was that at age 78, a time when he could have just sat on a stool and read off the teleprompter, he moved gracefully about the stage singing the songs as if it were the first time he sang them.

I went from buying the first “Duets” album that came out in 1993 (which was the number two album in the country on Billboard’s 200 right behind Pearl Jam’s “Vs.”) to now owning 70 CDs, 14 LPs, 7 box sets, 24 books, and 18 DVDs and videotapes.

As a teacher, you want to share your passions with your students, so I have infused lessons on connotation and tone with Frank Sinatra’s work.

When I teach Shakespeare, I use Sinatra’s rendering of the Gershwin classic “Someone to Watch Over Me” to show the importance of the proper reading of a line.   Just as some actors struggle making sense of the Bard’s iambic pentameter, others can make even the most novice viewer understand what the character is saying, retaining the musicality of the words.

In “Someone to Watch Over Me” the lyric goes “even though I may not be the man some girls think of as handsome.” Sinatra purposely links the words “man” and “some” to create the non-existent word “mansome” so that it rhymes with “handsome” the way George and Ira intended when writing the song. When other singers pause after “man,” the rhyme is lost.

To demonstrate how the same words can have different meanings depending on how they are said, I play two versions of Rodgers and Hart’s “Where or When,” one recorded in 1958, the other performed live in Las Vegas in 1966.

In the earlier Capitol Records session arranged by Nelson Riddle, Sinatra narrates a wistful tale of love emitting a melancholy tone accompanied only by longtime pianist Bill Miller until an orchestra comes in during the final forty seconds.   And when it does, Sinatra, who was practically whispering the words with the solo piano, expands to full voice louder than the instruments. The effect emphasizes how the speaker cannot remember when this chance encounter will happen again.

While only eight years apart, the two versions vary so much in approach that they almost sound like different songs. With the tempo tripled, the 1966 translation arranged by Billy Byers is swinging, upbeat, sung by a narrator without a care in the world.

Horns not strings are prominently heard along with a driving percussion with the signature Count Basie sound beneath Sinatra’s carefree tone.

Playing one of the lovers, Sinatra interprets the lyric that if they were to meet again, okay; if not, that’s okay, too. No hard feelings. Move on.

He halts before uttering each “before” in “it seems that we have met . . . before and laughed . . . before, and loved . . . before” emphasizing the deju vu element of the couple’s feelings. Sinatra’s interest is more in the playing with the words rather than exuding the emotions in them. He then holds the final “where or when” as long as he can, emphasizing more of an end than an open-ended question as in the 1958 take.

This interpretation was the one that Sinatra continued singing in live performances the rest of his life.

And while that life ended in 1998, next week marks the centennial of his birth, an apt moment to reflect on why Sinatra matters in the history of American popular music.

 

Leave a comment Posted on 9/11, children, parents, Paris terrorist attacks, Uncategorized

How do you explain the Paris attacks to a youngter?

When my 12-year-old son asked me why the French flag appeared on Google last Friday, I knew I had to muster the best of my parenting skills to carefully answer his question.

This led me to thinking: With the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, just how much awareness should children have of what is going on in the world?

Ginny Goodwin, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and the director of Burbank’s Family Service Agency, advises that parents consider a child’s age and maturity when discussing these events.

“Withholding information needs to be considered [including] limiting television viewing and protecting them from images” especially for youngsters, Goodwin said.

For more social media savvy teens, parents should “answer questions and help them process their fears and concerns.”

“Children need to feel secure, that adults have some control [and that] our country is working hard to protect all of us,” added Goodwin.

Parents need to understand that their children may pick up on their own fears so it’s important not to share such anxieties within “earshot of children.”

I remember on the morning of the 9/11 attacks, my wife and I made sure not to watch television until we dropped off our two-year-old at his daycare center. When I picked him up that afternoon, I was aghast that the teacher and aides were talking about the planes hitting into the buildings right in front of the kids.   I told the center’s director about the inappropriateness of doing that.

LMFT Samantha Bookman of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Program at Kaiser Permanente in Woodland Hills agrees that “it is imperative [parents] be highly vigilant about what adult conversations are happening within earshot of kids and not show their anxiety in front of them.”

“They are always listening, even when they don’t seem to be paying attention,” Bookman said.

Additionally, since “children and teens have an under-developed pre-frontal cortex, the area of the brain behind the forehead which calm fears,” explained Bookman, absorbing “scary information can be overwhelming and debilitating.”

The fears that exist today about unexpected horror that could happen in a flash harken back to what earlier generations must have felt during the Cold War with the potentiality of a nuclear holocaust hanging in the air.

Even today’s lockdown drills are reminiscent of the Duck and Cover drills school children practiced in the event of a nuclear attack during the 1950s and 1960s.

It makes one wonder when was the last time an American generation did not have the sense that the world could end or at least turn upside down in a moment.

I asked history professor Christopher Endy of Cal State Los Angeles this question.

“The 1920s and 1930s were the last decades when Americans felt free from fear of widespread catastrophic attack,” said Endy. When relations with the Soviets “soured in the late 1940s . . . Americans’ fears increased dramatically.” And have remained so ever since.

While we can’t control what course of action governments undertake to combat the threat of terrorism, experts say that the average citizen’s best action is to go on with normal activities while being vigilant.

“There is risk in our lives every day . . . but we forget about it so that we can live our lives happily,” said Bookman. “And guess what? We are almost always just fine.”

 

 

Leave a comment Posted on reading, students, teaching

Evidently Reading is No Longer Fundamental

Kids don’t read that much today whether the material is e-books, online magazine articles or student newspapers; in fact, some don’t read at all.

This is not a scientific fact. I have no Gallop poll or think tank report to prove my point.   This conclusion is based on my first-hand observations along with nearly the unanimous view of fellow teachers.

Teachers have a tough decision to make with students who don’t read: go ahead and test them on material knowing that they will fail, dummy down the assessments so that even those who didn’t do the reading can still pass a test, or cut down on the amount of reading.

After years of resisting change, I have succumbed to the last choice. For the first time in my 27 years of teaching, I have lowered the amount of reading I expect students to do on their own.

Instead of asking students to read 30 pages in a book each night, now I have them read 20 pages. Let’s say it takes two minutes to read one page; that would translate to 40 minutes of homework.

During a recent short story unit, I discovered that a good one-third of my advanced students felt incapable or uninterested to read an 8-page story that would have taken about 15 minutes of their time; for them, this was a mountain to climb, a task they could not or would not complete.

And this assignment was for an honors English class where students receive an extra grade point like an advanced placement course.   These kids are considered to be at the top of their class, a cut above the rest, the type who will graduate college and end up in good paying professions.

What this tells me is that it is not about how many pages kids have to read, it’s that they just don’t want to read.

When faced with a hardbound book without pictures versus a handheld device with streaming video, there is no contest.   Devices rule.

The dilemma is, do schools continue doing what they have long been doing, handing out printed books and assigning nightly reading, or do they go in a different direction?

I had a colleague who didn’t trust that his students would do the reading of “Hamlet” so he read the whole text out loud.   Some would say that this was not the best use of precious classroom time, but others would say that at least the kids gained knowledge about the Prince of Denmark.

Years ago students who did not want to read books used Cliffs Notes. In today’s Internet age, it is Shmoop.

But there are students who don’t even put forth the minimum effort to read these so-called study aids.

It makes me wonder if reading is on the way out along other modes of increasingly anachronistic abilities such as writing in longhand and speaking over the phone.

Remember the old public service announcement slogan, Reading is Fundamental? Well, the organization behind it is still in existence.   Julie Rodriguez, vice president of literacy services, told me that an important aspect in getting high schoolers to read is explaining “how it will help them” in their future.

That is quite a challenge in a world dominated with emoji and emoticons as the modus operandi for communicating.

Nevertheless, teachers should not give up on expecting students to read.   Of the myriad services schools provide, let us not underestimate the refuge reading offers students from the electronic devices that consume their time outside of school.

Leave a comment Posted on parents

When You Care Enough to Send the Very Worst

Last weekend I went shopping at a Hallmark store to buy a birthday card for my youngest son.   I had a hard time finding one appropriate. The “son” cards fell into two categories: for little boys and for grown men.   Hardly anything fitting a child between 8 and 20.

What I had no trouble in finding, however, were raunchy cards which have taken over a sizeable portion of the shelf space.

One card showed a young boy discovering his mother’s tattoo near her rear end. Another one said “wishing you a birthday full of knockers, jugs, and hooters.”

Then there was a card with a drawing of excrement on the front with a saying inside not suitable for a family newspaper.

By the way, all of these tasteless cards were displayed at a child’s eye level with nothing to shield the front of them.

Years ago, there were alternative card shops whose specialty were risqué greeting cards. Never did I think I’d see those products in a Hallmark store.

In the press release for the re-launch of this Shoebox line, the company freely admits that “the entire collection has been updated with . . . language reflected in today’s world” and

“reflects how people today talk, text, tweet and post.”

If the litmus test is “language that reflects today’s world” then why not just delete any level of decency and publish cards with f-bombs and drugs?

On their website, Hallmark states “that our products and services must enrich people’s lives” and that we “are committed to . . . high standards of ethics and integrity.”

How do these repulsive cards follow those guidelines?

I contacted Hallmark to see how they can justify offering such an off-color line of cards and still uphold their company’s core values so explicitly expressed on their website.

Senior Vice President of Public Affairs Steve Doyal told me that “our goal is to appeal to a wide range of people who want to connect with one another through laughter.” It appears that Hallmark is hiding behind the “humor” rationale to explain away the crass words and images that appears on several of their cards today.

Some of the high school sophomores I teach to laugh at immature jokes that are not suitable for young kids. But they are 15-year-olds.   So when companies create sophomoric material, ignoring that there are impressionable children among us, it boggles the mind.

Anyone who wishes to provide feedback on these vulgar products can comment on Hallmark’s website. Curiously, when I submitted a comment mentioning a card with multiple uses of the f-word that is slang for flatulence, the following error message appeared: “We’re sorry, but we have encountered the following issue(s): your text contains inappropriate language.”

Exactly my point.

According to company spokesperson Jaci Twidwell, Hallmark does have taste guidelines, yet strives to provide a “wide breadth of products” to their consumer base.

Even if one allows it is in good taste to print a greeting card depicting excrement, why not at the very least instruct your merchants to display these cards in some way so children don’t see them?

So in order to sell more cards, the standard has to be lowered, the content edgy.

The company’s long-standing slogan “when you care enough to send the very best” seems to have been forgotten.

I wonder what Hallmark CEO Donald J. Hall, Jr.’s grandfather and company founder J.C. Hall would think of this new line of greeting cards. His reaction might be so objectionable that it would fit right in among the other Shoebox offerings.

Leave a comment Posted on lockdowns, public schools, teachers

Schools Need More Secure Campuses

Everytown for Gun Safety reports that on average a school shooting occurs every week in America.

It is difficult to wrap one’s mind around such a statistic.   A school should be a haven for children, a safe place for parents to have their kids while at work.

When students go to school, all are expected to return home safely.

Only these days, there seems to be no sanctuary from maniacs causing death and misery to innocent people, the most recent example being the tragedy that happened last week at Umpqua Community College in Oregon.

How ironic that since 9/11 no foreign terrorist attack has hit our shores, yet terror has become more prevalent in the form of Americans who plan and execute random shootings on school campuses.

Have lockdowns and bomb threats become part of the culture of going to school for students and teachers?

When I took teacher credential classes at Cal State University, Northridge many years ago, there was never a discussion about what to do during a lockdown because Columbine was still more than a decade from happening.

As if teaching does not have enough challenges, now there is a sense of potential dread that at any given moment, completely unannounced and in the blink of an eye, a teacher and her students may face a deadly threat. Once that notion has been planted, it cannot be redacted from one’s psyche.

The common strategy on dealing with a shooter on campus is to have a lockdown, locking doors, turning off lights, and hiding under desks.

I have had to sweat it out over two real lockdowns that thankfully turned out to be harmless but were still emotionally trying for the two-hour duration as I huddled with 30-some students under tables on the floor with the lights out, some students sobbing.

The main rationale for this procedure is so that when the police arrive on the scene they won’t confuse who the shooter is.   Frankly, if I heard shots in the classroom right next to mine, I have no idea how I might react. It seems to me that making a run for it in the opposite direction of the shooting would produce a higher survival rate than cowering on the floor and listening for the shooter to approach.   A locked door would hardly deter a determined killer.

While the public and political pundits debate gun control, the local schools boards in our communities should work independently on how to better secure school facilities.

In Glendale, all elementary schools have secured entry doors that require a buzz-in.

Scott Anderle, Assistant Director of Student Support Services for GUSD, said that due to the recent bomb threat evacuation that took place at Hoover High, the district was able to put into use newly installed high definition cameras that aided in the investigation.

But even the most sophisticated equipment can’t detect an impending threat. That is where vigilance on the part of everyone is needed.

“We get our best info from students,” Anderle said.

The district will be examining modifications to its current lockdown procedures for an active shooter such as allowing the classroom teacher to make the decision whether to stay put or to relocate students to a secured location away from the incident “if it is safe to do so.”

No one wants schools to resemble penitentiaries, but in today’s America, prisons seem safer than schools.   When is the last time you read about a mass shooting at a prison?