Welcome to the Classroom Narratives Healing and Education Podcast, the space where education meets resilience.
I'm Dr. Joey Weisler, and in each episode, we dive deep into the personal stories of educators, students,
leaders, and frontline advocates who are navigating the complexities within modern education.
Whether you're just starting your teaching journey or are a seasoned professional looking for inspiration,
we'll explore how to foster meaningful change, prevent burnout, and build trauma-informed communities within our schools.
Now, let's take a seat at the front of the classroom as we get started.
Welcome to the Classroom Narratives Healing and Education Podcast, where we explore stories of resilience, healing, and transformation in education.
Today, I am deeply honored to be joined by Dr. Scott Poland, an internationally renowned expert in school safety,
suicide prevention, and crisis intervention.
As a professor at Nova Southeastern University and the co-director of its Suicide and Violence Prevention Office,
Dr. Poland has dedicated his life to supporting communities through some of their darkest moments,
and his work has brought him to the forefront of critical conversations following tragedies like the Parkland School shooting
and in the ongoing fight against youth suicide.
So Dr. Poland, big thanks for joining us today. It's such an honor to have you with us.
My pleasure.
So I'd like to begin our conversation, Dr. Poland, by asking that you have worked very closely with the Parkland community
in the aftermath of its shooting, and I wanted to know if you could share some of the key lessons learned directly from Parkland alone
in supporting educators, students, and families through their traumas.
Well, I certainly can, and with a colleague, we did a short book on school shootings, lessons from the United States,
and in particular, recommendations that I've made numerous times after school shootings are to designate somebody as a recovery coordinator,
somebody who will focus on that district-wide, make that their sole job,
and probably there are immediately characteristics that would come to mind about who would be good at that.
Also, do not turn down any sources of assistance.
Realize you're in this for the long haul, and it would probably take many political twists and turns,
and focus on helping all of the adults first, helping parents understand typical reactions that children have to a tragedy.
They regress academically, behaviorally, have nightmares, sleeping problems, and worries about the future.
Those aren't the unusual. Those are pretty much every kid will have some of those.
And then help the school staff so that they are ready to really focus on helping students, listening to students,
focus slowly on everybody trying to move forward and find some of those keys to resiliency.
And one of my recommendations was to move trailers onto the campus.
Project Serves, Schools Emergency Response to Violence Money,
you're going to get a lot more mental health staff, but they need a confidential place
to be working with staff, students, and families that were affected by the tragedy.
And one thing I'm concerned about, Joey, is that decades ago, schools reopened a lot quicker.
We've had a tendency in recent years for the administrators to close the school for a week, two weeks,
maybe even almost a month in Oxford, Michigan.
And that largely leaves students to their own devices because the parents get up and go to work.
And kids are often almost desperate to get back into a routine, be with all their friends, classmates, and be with the teachers.
One of the other things I've seen happen is that there's often a lot of very well-meaning volunteers.
But I've had some Parkland students say that it was like they just kept changing my counselor.
And I felt like I was starting over with a new person time after time.
And I'm a big fan of the Eagle's Nest and all the community work.
And in reality, somebody should be writing all this up in a way that the next school that has a mass shooting
would have a little more insight into what worked the best in previous locations.
There was a time period where the U.S. Department of Education, I was asked,
"who do I think would be a good principal that I'd met responding to school shootings
that could be working for the department and being a consultant and helping the next school principal
that experienced a mass shooting?" And that was done for a while, but I'm not aware that that's being done anymore.
And people like Bill Bond from Paducah, Frank D'Angelo from Columbine, the experience they went through,
they could be of so much support to the next school. And unfortunately, there will be another one.
Definitely. And one thing that you've mentioned already is that teachers should also be equipped with certain skills and strategies
in order to help students who might be facing crisis.
What are some of those strategies that just the basic classroom teacher can acquire to help their students?
Well, you know, you make me think of when I worked with the Columbine teachers, basically, I said,
"let your heart be your guide". In your heart, you have really good ideas about how to help students.
Give them an opportunity to talk about it, write about it, music, artwork, project, ceremonies.
And don't be afraid to share some of your own emotions. I think in an ideal world, there would be regular
in-services for teachers on helping students after tragedy. Now, obviously, we're talking about one of
the worst school shootings in our history, but virtually every teacher out there has had a student's
best friend die, somebody's sister dies, or even one of their coworkers die. And it's like, it doesn't seem
to really be a part of that training. And yet a lot of it is just compassion, caring, being a good listener
and being willing to say, these are some of the thoughts I'm having and let's talk about it.
I like to, and responding to tragedies in schools, I like to put all the desks in a circle and I sit down.
And the less I say and the more they say, the better. Kids just want to, they want to talk about the person.
They want to reminisce. There's a beautiful thing about, especially adolescents, I like to call it the gift of hope.
They want to make the world better. And the March for Our Lives out of Parkland was a fantastic movement
to make the world better. Now, unfortunately, they didn't get the national support they needed, but
I applaud them. And you're reminding me of a line from Frank D'Angelis. I believe I read this in one of
his anthologies. And Frank D'Angelis, who are listeners, is the acting principal of at Columbine
during their tragedy. And D'Angelis said that when he came back, he had to lead from the heart.
And his ability to lead his staff from the heart was taking that first step towards vulnerability
and courage and letting them all find their sense of recovery, whatever that looks like for them at
that time. So I wanted to also turn our attention for a moment towards youth suicide awareness and
addressing the crisis of youth suicide. So I wanted to think about how your work and youth suicide
prevention has been so instrumental across all different types of schools and platforms nationwide.
And what are some of the most critical warning signs that you have seen that educators and parents
should be looking out for with mental health and students? Well, great question. And I'm reminded of
a Parkland parent not too long ago that said, "how do I know my teenage daughter is depressed?" I mean,
she's a teenager, right? They're moody, they're irritable. She may be preparing me for she's going
off to Florida State next year. Well, dad, let me ask you a couple of questions. Is this persistent?
Has this gone on for several weeks in a row or more? Yes. Is it pervasive? Is it affecting homeschool
peers pretty much all aspect of her life? Yes. Did she drop out of something that was previously
pleasurable? As a matter of fact, she did. She was on the dance team for years. This year, she said,
I don't care about it. Very likely, dad, you have a depressed teenager. And there are some very
specific ones with regards to suicide, researching suicide, of course, giving away prized possessions,
making out of will, in addition to those dramatic changes in behavior that I mentioned. And the
scope of this problem, it's really unbelievable. But one of my friends said he was cleaning out
his closet. He found a 1985 copy of Time Magazine with the cover story, teen suicide is an epidemic.
It's done nothing but go up for the last 39 years. Second leading cause of death for middle
schoolers, third leading cause of death for high school students, more and more upper elementary
students threatening suicide. And in my career, I've responded to the suicides of two kids that
were only nine years old. So and maybe to quote our surgeon general, we got to talk about suicide
prevention more at our homes, our schools, in the workplace, and the places of worship. If you were
to ask me the one thing holding suicide prevention back, it's the fact that we don't want to talk
about it. But it's on the minds of a lot of young people. And the second thing that is so critically
important is remove the lethal means. And in America, that means a gun. More than 50% of the
suicides in America were the result of a gunshot. But guns were actually only used in 5% of attempts.
They're just incredibly lethal. And I remember a Houston teenagers goodbye note to her parents. It
said, why did you make this so easy? Why did you leave this gun available to me? And a frustration
throughout my career is I'm telling the parents the extensive intervention their kid needs,
and that they need to suicide proof their home. And that involves locking up the gun,
medications, and they don't do it. And a tragedy results. That is so frustrating.
So for places like schools where it is still seemingly taboo to approach that conversation, how can it be done?
Well, unfortunately, our state has no mandates for suicide prevention in schools.
About 25 states do. Florida does not. Florida does have a certification program
that actually helped develop a decade ago. Building principals could decide to have their
school become suicide prevention certified. It would involve basically two hours of training
for all the staff. So in 10 years, how many Florida schools have gotten certified?
The last figure I had was a total of 66. My estimate is we have more than 5,000
public schools in Florida. So I'm being very frank today, it's school administrators and
superintendents that are holding back suicide prevention in the schools. They really don't
know much about it. They're afraid of the topic. And having been at this for 40 years,
if there's any choice of the training session, they're not going to come into mine.
They're going to go to anything else. But I do believe that if they come into my session
on suicide prevention, I will hold their attention. The problem is getting them into the room.
Because those figures seem quite disturbing. So which leads me to ask,
one of the challenges in addressing youth suicide being just breaking through that isolation in
terms of talking about it and for those who are experiencing it as well. What can schools,
teachers, and community members also do alongside their administration to ensure that at-risk youth
can feel seen, heard, and supported before tragedy happens? Great question. And I am not a fan of our
massive schools. I mean, I believe we have a middle school in the area with more than 2000.
We have a high school with more than 5,500. It's about building relationships. And I love this
quote that I got from a teacher. "I want to be armed, all right. I want to be armed with smaller
classes so I can build relationships with my students. I want to be armed with the social
worker and a psychologist". So I believe we're doing a great disservice to our young people
to have these massive high schools. I went to a high school with 320 kids. And what that meant,
Joey, was I was needed. You want to play football, you bet. You want to march in the band at the
halftime, do that too. You want to be in the junior play, here's your part. That's just not
the way it is for the majority of the students right here in Broward County. It's like a kid is
lucky if they are gifted enough to be able to do one thing, whether that's dance, soccer, whatever,
or be on the debate team. It's just competition and pressure definitely is connecting to youth
suicide. And these massive high schools just really breed anonymity and pressure. Obviously,
good public education is not solely about money, but pretty much every state in the south
underfunds their school. If you were a dad and your kids were going to school in Massachusetts,
on average, the school district would be spending twice as much money to educate your kid. So it's
just like, really? How can we be satisfied with Florida being near the bottom of school funding?
And I am not a fan of taking the money away from the public schools and giving it to private schools.
It's like, let's fund these schools. These students represent the most important part of the
schools. These students represent the future of our country. Let's prioritize children.
That's a great point, especially to prioritize children and the needs that they would
require in order to be successful, like the mental health counselors and social workers,
that they can continue connecting to with continuity in order to make sure that they
have visibility that they need in order to thrive. So I wanted to also ask in terms of stretching
beyond the Parkland tragedy, going back to our initial conversation here on mass violences and
mass casualties, having assisted several different communities through many different tragedies,
including over 16 school shootings and about 30 years worth of work, 40 years, right?
What would you see to be the most effective strategy that schools can implement in order
to prevent violence and foster a culture of resilience? Well, we've already touched on some
of it, which would be relationship building, smaller classes, dramatically increase the number
of school mental health professionals. Then, you know, maybe a really great frustration
is that most school shootings should have been prevented. The Secret Service Study, 81% of school
shooters told at least one person what they were going to do. And how do we end what I like to call
the conspiracy of silence that allows suicidal, homicidal statements to go unreported to adults?
I had one simple wish. It would be that every student in a classroom in America today
would be asked to identify their go-to trusted adult. And then there'd be a discussion about
why is it Coach Pinkle that you would go to? And then a discussion about what would be
the scenario where you shouldn't hesitate. And I think we would unfortunately identify
that a lot of students don't have that go-to trusted adult at school. And that takes us back to
that fourth R, which is relationships. And kids connected to school. That is so positive for their
mental health. And if we were to start looking closely at most of our school shooters, they weren't
playing on a basketball team. They weren't in the band. You know, they were disconnected and
disillusioned. And every school has those. I love this quote that I got from Craig Scott, who survived
being under the library table at Columbine. And he lost his sister, Rachel. He said,
"in our schools, we must reach the unreachable". And I want to give you an example of something that
I did to try to reach more students. In my previous school job in Houston, Texas, I raised the money
and I built and ran four ropes courses, basically adventure-based counseling and getting kids out,
working on problem solving and trust and communication. And I had more than 100,000 students
participate in 14 years. We got a new administrator, Joey. He closed the program, never even visited.
Didn't even know what he closed. That has a lot to do with why I'm sitting here at NSU. But there's
nothing stopping schools from getting a lot more creative and adding programs and figuring out a
way to reach more students. I think those schools that we built should basically be used the majority
of the day and evening in some way to serve the students and the community. I also think we send
kids home from school way too early. We send them home to empty houses and there's a lot of potential
to get in trouble. It's like we should lengthen that day and have a wide choice of after school
activities for everybody. Agreed. And so what would you say could be one takeaway that our listeners
could walk away, especially our listeners who are in positions of leadership or power, what could be
one takeaway that they could walk away with from our conversation today? Well, one of my main
recommendations about school safety is to have a task force. And first, the most basic thing,
let's survey our staff and students. Let's find out about connections, about safety, about bullying.
And I'm going to quote my previous superintendent. You know what he said to me, Joey? He said,
"Scott, if we were to survey these students and teachers and if there was a problem,
well, we'd be held accountable to do something about it. Permission to survey them is denied."
So I like to say school safety is an inside job. And when my wife was a high school principal,
she had every homeroom elect a school safety representative and she met with them every week.
And she had a script for the homeroom teachers at least two days a week to talk about
contemporary issues and safety. And here's a really basic question.
If a parent were to call the Broward superintendent's office today and say,
hey, I have some ideas about school safety, would those ideas be welcomed or would they just
immediately be turned away? So that task force should involve school staff, students and parents.
And I am pretty doubtful that a task force recommended walk through metal detectors
because that's not what the research supports. But that's what we're doing now. And all the Broward
high school walk through metal detectors. I'm concerned that we give kids the message that
they are unsafe in possibly the safest place they possibly go. Joey, most kids in America
get murdered at home or on the streets. And of course, one school shooting is one too many.
But we need to be careful with some of the messages we are giving and too much of the
too much of the money, in my opinion, is going to hardware measures, hardware measures, our school
resource officer, a surveillance camera, a metal detector. Where is the focus on more mental health
personnel, more anger management, conflict resolution, learning to basically manage
emotions? Where is all of that? So we need a balance between hardware measures and software measures.
But you almost seems to echo this idea of proactive strategies versus reactive strategies.
It sounds like the metal detector is more of a reactive strategy or a reaction to a crisis
when there could have been other steps to have implemented before the crisis as a way to be
proactive. So what does the research support? Now that you mentioned it in terms of being proactive
with those types of measures. Well, I'm a fairly big fan of the violence project. They've done
a lot of research and basically the research does not support active shooter drills. Basically,
you're running students through a drill and the most likely school shooter is one of your own
students. So you're basically teaching them exactly what you're doing. So the research
supports some things like identify a hard corner in the classroom and keep that free of stored
materials. It's the corner furthest away from the doors and windows. The research supports
safety audits with local police, locking all but the front door, maybe even having
two sets of doors. So somebody comes in the first door, then they're being interacted with before
they're allowed to go in another door. And the research supports the anonymous tip lines. Here
in our state, I always like to ask students, what's Fortify Florida? And sometimes they're a little
disappointed that they don't know what it is or how it works. And we need Fortify Florida posters
up on the hallways. And the bottom line, in my opinion, Florida was really behind the times
with School Safety Center. Texas has had one, a very well-funded one for 30 years. Florida created
its first Office of School Safety only after Parkland. And admittedly, they have done great
things, but that should have been in place decades ago, as it was in Texas and in a lot of other
locations. And you mentioned Fortify Florida. That's a great resource for our guests to know
about. So tell our listeners a little bit about what Fortify is and what they can do with it.
Well, it's anonymous reporting system. And you put the app on your phone and something not quite
right. Somebody's made threatening statements. Maybe there's supposed to be a big fight after
six period today in a parking lot. That tip goes right in. And it's, of course, monitored 24 hours
a day. And school officials and school resource officers are immediately alerted. And many
tragedies could be prevented. And here's something I'd like to say to your listeners. It's pretty
simple. It's like, you got to talk to your children. You got to let them know that you cannot even make
a joke about a school shooting. It doesn't matter that you don't have a weapon. You aren't trying to
get a weapon. You don't even have grudge or motivation. If you say something stupid and
impulsively about a school shooting, you're going to be hampered. And by the way, kicking students
out of school is not the answer. Effectively, Parkland got rid of Nicholas Cruz, but he came back.
So it's like, where's the next level of intervention? And at the simplest level,
couldn't we all agree that school students do not need access to guns unless supervised by their
parents? Why? Why is that so hard? That's not saying parents, you can't own a gun. That's
saying parents, you can't own a gun. It's saying to you, you must be responsible. Secure this gun
in your home. Now, Michigan passed a law. If you have a kid under 16 in your home, you must lock
up your guns. That should be a national movement. And I'm actually glad that a few parents are
starting to face charges and jail time. If a kid doesn't have access to a gun, they can't shoot
anybody at school. It's that simple. And that has not been part of the national mantra about any of
this. The mantra has always been more police, more hardware measures. And I love this quote from
Nicole Hockley, one of the founders of Sandy Hook Promise. Here's what she said.
"Too much of the focus on school shootings is on the moment of the shooting. Instead of stopping it
in the first place". If your readers were your listeners, rather, would Google safest high
school in America. They'll find a principal in Indiana who proudly says, "bad guys in the hallway.
I just push a button. The smoke cannon fills the hallway with smoke. They won't be able to see
where they're going!" Do you think that's a good use of our tax dollars? To fill the hallway with
smoke? That's the moment of the shooting. Where are all the primary prevention, the mental health,
securing weapons, getting kids to understand their important role in school safety, and coming
forward? Those are the foundations of all of this.
Well, I definitely want to share more about Fortify in our show notes. So I encourage our viewers to
go visit that link that will be available for more information about what the Fortify app can do,
especially for those of us local here at Broward County, Florida, where we are filming today.
Scott, for our last question, I wanted to talk about how, again, some of our local listeners
are out of Florida here. What can you tell us about the Suicide and Prevention Office at
Nova Southeastern University? For those that might be struggling, where can they find help and support?
Thank you for letting me talk about our office. I want to applaud Nova. I think if you started
searching in other universities and you were trying to find who's in charge of suicide
prevention, I think you'd be pretty frustrated. So here we do have an office. It's a small part of my
job. I am the director of it. I do have an assistant, but we have done hundreds and hundreds of
presentations on campus and in the community on suicide prevention, what to look for and what to
do. And now for about a year and a half, we've had 9-8-8. And it is critical that everybody
understand all you have to do is punch 9-8-8 and you're connected 24 hours a day with a trained
crisis responder to help you get through those difficult moments. And I've also become a really
big fan of what's called a written safety plan, where we're asking someone, what can you do
when you have those thoughts if you're all alone? So we're trying to identify internal coping
strategies. Who can you call on for the X-Term? And that needs to be written. And there's actually,
there's a safety app, for example, and our mental health professionals need to be following up and
making sure that young people still remember that plan. They took a picture of it on their phone.
They are using the safety or there's another one called the Calm app. They're using those
to help them get through just a few difficult moments. And we all need to be very alert for
what are called the precipitating events to use suicide. So what do I mean by that?
We have a lot of young people that think about suicide, but what causes them to actually take
action? Severe argument with the parent, breakup of a romance, severe discipline problem,
severe humiliation. So something might happen today that causes someone to take action on these
previous suicidal thoughts. And I'm sorry to report that adolescents are the most susceptible
to imitating suicidal behavior. I've actually gone now to 17 communities that experience what's
called a suicide cluster. And what's it take to stop the suicide cluster? It takes the entire
village, which would be students themselves, parents, school leaders, civic leaders,
local law enforcement, mental health, physicians, survivor groups, clergy, takes everyone coming
together to promote suicide prevention awareness and promote resources.
Well, Dr. Poland, thank you so much again for joining us today as part of the podcast
conversation, because I would like to echo that the work being done in suicide and violence
through Nova Southeastern University has been nothing short of inspiring. And I'm hopeful that
our audiences will continue to engage and reflect on today's dialogue here in order to make us a
suicide safer community. Thank you for joining us on the Classroom Narratives Healing and Education
podcast. If today's episode inspired you or made you think differently, I'd love to hear from you.
Drop a comment or review wherever you listen to podcasts and stay connected with us on the
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