Addison Duane, adjunct faculty for the College of Education in Educational Psychology, quoted in K-12 Dive, “Diverse student needs must be considered in school shooting responses”
K-12 Dive, 6/7
Diverse student needs must be considered in school shooting responses
By Naaz Modan
Recovery following the trauma of a school shooting is not uniform – it varies by community, from school to school, across student subgroups and even among individuals. It is also impacted by factors like the availability of school counselors, barriers to accessing mental health support and pre-existing traumas. Family structure, how different communities grieve, and past experiences with gun violence and law enforcement can all inform this process as well. Because of these differences, measures commonly adopted by schools nationwide in response to school shootings — like doubling down on school police or bringing in grief counselors — should be tweaked or reconsidered to fit the needs of Black, Hispanic and immigrant communities, according to school trauma, crisis and security experts. As part of that crisis response, many lawmakers and school leaders have discussed increasing law enforcement and security in schools. However, this option may not be suitable for all students. Black and Hispanic students are already more likely to be in schools with police presence – which is associated with increased school arrests – than their white counterparts. “Schools cause trauma. And not just through school shootings, but in a myriad of ways, especially for historically marginalized and systematically oppressed groups,” said Addison Duane, a former elementary school teacher with a Ph.D. in educational psychology and now a professor at Wayne State University. “And I think that, in the wake of something as horrific and preventable as a school shooting, the trauma compounds.”