Terracycle

Back in 2010, I was still kind of a newbie in the school district I was working for and I was a paraprofessional.  It was safe to say that back then, as a paraprofessional, I had more time on my hands as the students I was working with were more manageable.  So I decided to take over some of the fundraising opportunities that the school was participating in.  Now, participating is a strong verb to use here in this case.  Basically, there was a box sitting in the school office and it collected a few Box Tops, a few Campbell's Soup labels, and maybe a couple of Kemps Milk Caps.  Kemps and Campbell's has since ended their programs.  Then I was in the grocery store one day and I was picking up some items for school.  I ended up seeing on a box of Capri Suns that there was a fundraising opportunity for schools, and I had to read the back of the box.  So being the fundraising guy, it caught my eye.  The program advertised on the back of that Capri Sun box was a program called Terracycle.

Terracycle is a great program.  Terracycle is a company located in New Jersey and it has grown and become international. It has more than one purpose to it and it was also a good lesson for the students in addition to being a fundraiser for the school.  Terracycle recycles, or upcycles, waste that isn't usually accepted in normal curbside recycling programs.  There are many initial assumptions as far as what Terracycle takes, and please don't go thinking it is like the movie "Back To The Future 2" where anything and everything goes into the DeLorean for fuel.  However, there are things that you didn't think Terracycle would accept, but does.  Another assumption that people had when I tried to explain the fundraising program was when they said, "So, I just have to bring you my garbage?"  That was gross when people wanted to participate and that's what they thought they had to do.  Even though the program involved waste, there was a process.

Of course, I jumped into this idea and program with both feet.  I had decided to enroll our school into the program and I basically introduced it to my coworkers at the time at a staff meeting.  I simply told them to remember the name Terracycle.  I said it was a program that we were going to do and that they would be hearing about it more often.  So I jumped in with both feet.  I probably should've stepped into this project one foot at a time, but I guess I was ambitious.

So Terracycle took things like candy wrappers, cheese packaging, and cereal bags and paid schools one or two cents a piece for the items.  Each collection that they upcycled was called a brigade and it was paired with a corporate sponsor so schools could send in the material for free by the shipping being covered.  For example, a candy wrapper brigade was sponsored by M&M/Mars.  The candy wrappers were from any brand of candy and that was the case with most brigades.  It usually wasn't brand specific.  There have been a couple of brigades along the way that were brand specific, but the idea here was to help schools and keep as much waste as possible out of the landfills.  When our school launched the program, the students had good intentions, but there were some really gross submissions.  So we had to make sure we were very detailed in explaining how to submit things for Terracycle.

Our school has recently passed the 10 year mark in being a part of Terracycle.  The most successful brigade that we had participated in was the candy wrapper brigade.  Come on, we are school, what do you expect?  Our school has approximately 60-70 students everyday in a school year, and we sent in over 11,000 candy wrappers totaling over $200.00.  Some people may say that it is only $200.00, but I look at it as we made $200.00 on candy wrappers that would've normally just made their way to the garbage can.  We have participated in 40 different brigades since we joined the Terracycle program in 2010.  As corporate sponsors decided to leave a brigade, sometimes that brought an end to the brigade, which is really hard to accept!  When you are used to turning in things to Terracycle and all of a sudden you have to throw those items away in the trash again, it's kind of sad.  Our school has raised almost $1,200 since we began 10 years ago, and we have upcycled over 67,000 items, which means over 67,000 items stayed out of the landfill.  Some of the other things we currently upcycle and send into Terracycle is air care products and packaging sponsored by Febreeze, most personal care and beauty items and packaging sponsored by Garnier, empty toothpaste tubes and floss containers sponsored by Colgate, empty deodorant containers and personal hygiene items sponsored by Tom's Of Maine, Burt's Bees items and packaging, and more.   Our school actually was surprised with an award once by the Terracycle program.  We had participated in a brigade sponsored by Scotch Tape.  This brigade accepted empty disposable tape dispensers, empty tape cores (the plastic middles of tape rolls, and all the packaging as well.  It was back in 2015, and our school was recognized by being one of the top 10 collection sites in the nation for submitting items to this particular brigade.  So, we were given a small cash bonus, and we were sent a box of Scotch Tape supplies for our school.  The funny story about this is I had no idea as the coordinator of the program for our site that this was coming.  One of my coworkers came up to me and said, "I saw the article in the paper... congratulations".  I just smiled and said thank you and I had no idea what he was talking about.  I had no idea that there was a press release that Terracyle did. Then, I found it.


I am really glad that our school has participated in this program for 10 years.  I am also glad that our school still found a way to currently participate in this program because so much has changed as far as our what our school needs have been over the years.  I will tell you that the most important thing that has made this a successful program at our school is the staff buy-in.  Our school has a couple of major key players that has made this program be a complete success.  Their passion has motivated our students to pay attention to this program and has inspired them to want to help by submitting items of their own instead of throwing them away in the garbage.  That is the coolest part of this, the students learning the valuable life lesson of doing their part in taking care of the environment.

Be Kind To Everyone.

Distance Learning: Six Weeks Later

Here in Minnesota, we are in our sixth week of distance learning.  I can't believe that Friday, March 13th was our last day of school in person with our students.  I never anticipated it to be this long.  As a Behavior Interventionist, I was worried that Friday the 13th was going to influence the student behaviors that day.  It turns out that it ended up being the least of my concerns.

As the school week of March 9th arrived, and as each day happened throughout the week, more and more changed.  The biggest change that made everything real and take it to the next level that week was the evening of Wednesday, March 11th.  I remember that the talk of Coronavirus was really heating up and on March 11th, that was the night that the NBA became the first professional sports league to suspend its season.  I remember laying in bed about 8:30 p.m. CST and I was looking at my phone.  I had seen on Twitter that the NBA was going to suspend their season after that night's games.  I immediately turned my television on and went to ESPN, who was showing NBA games that night.  The game that was currently in action was still going on.  The announcement came in the second quarter of that game.  I watched the rest of it, and the play by play announcers were calling it like it was going to be the final game ever.  This was the first time I really felt uncomfortable with the Coronavirus, or COVID-19.  So that game I was watching came to an end, and there was to be one more NBA game on ESPN before the season was suspended.  So I tuned in, and sure enough it was cancelled because one of the NBA referees had been an official at a game a few nights earlier where the first NBA player who tested positive for COVID-19 had played in.  This announcement changed everything, and everything fell like dominos after that, including moving the Coronavirus into the A topic on all the news channels.

I remember going to work the next morning, on Thursday, March 12th, and my principal, who was out on medical leave, was communicating often about the changes with school that seemed to be changing hourly at that point.  By the time Friday, March 13th, had arrived, our school staff was told to take home things that they may need long term.  At that point, long term was translated as a week or two.  I didn't think we would be here on May 4th saying that we are still in distance learning and we will be doing distance learning for the remainder of the school year, which goes until June 9th for our school.

Early on when all these changes were happening so fast, as an educator, I really didn't take time to stop and think about it too much.  I mean there was so much to be done in a short amount of time.  Our school only had student Chromebooks for the last couple of years.  The school I work in is a public school that is located in a residential treatment facility for adolescent males and that is why we just started integrating more technology within the last couple of years.  It was a blessing in disguise. We had no idea that we were silently preparing for distance learning.

As a Behavior Interventionist, the meat and potatoes of my job is to be an out of class support to students as well as to be on the front lines when a crisis or behavior issue is taking place in a classroom.  A lot of my job is to build student relationships, build trust, help create an environment of feeling safe, which all of my coworkers and I helped make happen.  We also focus on developing and practicing healthy life skills.  I also coordinate a school wide behavior level system, which all of our students participate in.  The obvious question that I asked myself was, "How I am supposed to do this all over a computer from a distance?"  It's a variation of the same question that all the teachers were asking about the curriculum they were going to change and provide.  For the support staff, the most underrated piece of the whole education picture, what was going to be their role from a distance?  Thankfully in Minnesota, the Governor gave Minnesota schools two weeks to plan for what distance learning is going to look like.  For our school, our spring break happened to be the first week of the two week planning period, so our school pulled everything together in just five days.

We modified our behavior level system and the goals that we score the students on.  We also still had them earning school dollars (not real money) for each point they scored on the level system to keep them bought in. Then, we began distance learning with our students on Monday, March 30th.  Throughout the whole planning process, I just continued to do instead of stopping and thinking about everything because I didn't want to get overwhelmed.  If I just focused on one task at a time, I only had to think about things in pieces instead of the whole situation that was going on and changing so often.

So, like I mentioned, we are in our sixth week of distance learning.  I think it is safe to say that it is way more difficult and way more stressful than I could have initially thought.  As a Behavior Interventionist, controlling the environment is important.  With distance learning, the only environment is what you can see on the screen.  While in person, I can be there on the scene, process with the student and encourage them to make a safe and positive choice to get more support in my Refocus Room.  Now, I have to rely on the fact that they will log into my Zoom Room at their designated time.  If the student isn't in a positive place, then it is easy for them to push the support away or not log in and get the support, and that has been mentally draining.  Our school really goes above and beyond when it comes to distance learning, because the more school they have, the more safe and structured their day is.  So, some of our students have six 20 minute Zoom sessions a day and some of our students have eight 20 minute sessions per day.  Our students also participate in a Restorative Practices Talking Circle once a week, and the have additional times where they can visit my room, the Refocus Room, during a 30 minute block every day.  Each teacher is paired with a paraprofessional and they also offer two 30 minute blocks of Zoom office time for assignment assistance with students daily.  It is a lot, but necessary with being in residential treatment.

I feel bad for the 2020 seniors of all schools who will probably have a virtual graduation.  They also missed out on prom and will be missing out on an all night grad party at the end of the year.  However, it is necessary.  Just a couple of weeks ago, the federal government was anticipating the Coronavirus killing 60,000 people in the United States throughout the course of the virus.  We are currently over 65,000 deaths nationwide, and things don't seem to be slowing down yet as testing is continuing to increase to a level that is still catching up to where it should be.  The talk of our summer school session, or ESY, being offered through distance learning seems to be almost certain.  Now there are a lot of talks about things in the fall being different, altered, changed, or postponed.  That is the other tough part of all this.  What started out to be a mindset of adjusting for a couple of weeks has now turned into months, and now there are some reports that social distancing may be necessary for up to two years.  When you combine that on top of the stress that distance learning has already provided, it feels scary.

I am blessed that I am working at a school that has great leadership in the building I work in.  I work with a team of staff who supports each other and focuses on problem solving when things get tough instead of turning on each other.  They also know how to laugh, and that is extremely important these days. I have recently participated in some webinars with other school officials and have heard the horror stories of the intense conflicts that have taken place at other schools between staff members just because of distance learning and that just doubles or triples the mental exhaustion.  Distance Learning is not the way I want to be working with students, but it is the way that it has to be right now.  I have to remember how important self care is when going through this process, and that would be my words of wisdom or advice to everyone right now.  Part of my self care is writing and doing this blog.  So, take care of each other and most importantly take care of you.  This will get better.  Maybe not as quickly as we want, but it will get better.

Be Kind To Everyone.

COVID-19... It's Major Contribution To A Tough Year

Back in the middle of February of 2020, life was normal.  I had a four day weekend from work, went out of town for a night with my wife, and everything carried on as it should have.  It's crazy to think that in a month's time from that point, I would've worked in person at work for possibly the last time of the school year.  That wasn't even comprehendible just 50 days ago.

Three and half weeks ago, when the NBA shut down the NBA season, the next 24 hours was crazy.  It didn't feel real.  Even just three weeks ago, I didn't really realize what kind of impact the world shutting down from COVID-19 would have on me.  For starters, the last three weeks has already felt like three months of time.  Minnesota has a 'Stay In Place' order currently in effect that we are in our second week of.  It appears that it will be extended until the end of April.  One of the hardest things for me is that I am someone that likes to go out and do things.  I like to live life, see and experience new things, and be active.  I am not really a homebody that likes to hang out.  Don't get me wrong, sometimes that sounds wonderful and fantastic, and it is something that I do on occasion, but I like to be busy and doing something.  With no movie theaters, no eating out, no bingo, nothing... this is hard.

My last blog post on this blog, was a post about this being my 25th year of working with youth.  Check out that blog post here if you haven't read it yet, Blogging Rookie: 25 Years Of Working With Youth.  This has been the strangest year of working with youth that I didn't see coming.  The interesting thing about late last summer is that I was struggling with the upcoming school year starting.  The funny thing is that I didn't even know why.  It just wasn't sitting right with me.  Fast forward to now, April 4th, after seven months of the 2019-2020 school year, no wonder why I had a funny feeling last late August.

The school year started off pretty wild.  I had an experience with two students at work where they turned on me and I thought I maybe was going to be jumped.  I had never experienced that on the job and that experience really affected me.  As someone who is in his 12th year of working in the environment that I do, I really didn't think that an experience with students like that would've had such an effect on me, but it did.  I have gained confidence over the years of doing the job that I do, and I have really learned things along the way that have helped me really focus on how I want to support students in a positive manner, along with bringing appropriate accountability when necessary.  I really try to bring a healthy and balanced approach to the students I work with, so they can learn and use the necessary life skills that we try to teach and practice in the work that we do at our school.  So when that approach went the other direction on me and led to be me being threatened, I needed some help myself.  The day after all that happened, my work partner of over three years moved onto another position.  I was happy for her as she has a family of her own to support and I totally understood, but that was a great team that I wasn't ready to have split up.  I am a person that doesn't like change, and I think a lot of people can relate to that.   This had all happened by September 12th, and it was like buckle up, what else could happen this year?  What a stupid question to ask.

The next few weeks left me to being the only one assigned to supporting the students out of the classroom for a while, those were the students that were having personal or school struggles.  Thank goodness I work with a great team of people as many often helped me when the demand from the students became too high.  They never let me sink, and I will never forget that.  We did find a great new addition to the room I work in a month later, and that has worked out good.

After that, there was a period of five weeks where our principal had to be out of work for medical reasons, and then came the COVID-19 effect.  All this and there is still 10 weeks left of the school year, which appears to be more and more likely to finish with distance learning for the rest of the school year.  So, now everything is shut down except for the essential necessities.  I am no longer allowed to go into the building where my school is located as the last day of working with students in-person was Friday, March 13th.  That actually wasn't that long ago, but it feels like a hell of a long time ago.  The day after that last day with students in person, I came down with Influenza A.  I don't think I had ever had Influenza in my life prior to this diagnosis.  Influenza A knocked me down for almost a week, and it didn't allow me to really wrap my head around all the changes that were happening all during that time where I couldn't stay awake for more than about three hours.  However, I was grateful in saying that I was diagnosed with Influenza A, instead of COVID-19.  Once I got over Influenza and was able to grasp everything that was changing by the hour, I just would do and not think.  I always take an approach of thinking and having a plan before doing, but in this case, I couldn't do that.  I had to keep moving forward and doing, instead of stopping and thinking about everything because it would be overwhelming.  Then as things continued to shut down and close, it started leaving me more and more time to think, and that is what is spooking me right now.

When all the restrictions and closures were starting to be put in place because of COVID-19, it was initially to be for a couple of weeks.  As time has moved on, it now appears that things are going to be restricted for months potentially, and again, that is overwhelming.  I never have had a great support system, and with being a person that usually tries to problem solve on his own, it feels lonely.  I am grateful though, I still have my job and I haven't lost my income and livelihood.  That would've complicated everything times 10.  I never thought I would be video conferencing with my students to support them, but that is the way it has to be.  It is tough.  Some of my coworkers are my friends and my supports, and I feel like I have lost that because I can't be around them and laugh.  This is really stressful and I have hardly any escapes from this COVID-19 lifestyle.  One of the things that has snuck up on me is the feeling of FOMO.  Fear of missing out.  Not being able to be on site at the school has really ramped up that feeling.  I always do my job with an approach of being an employee that is irreplaceable, and I have battled myself this year with trying to be relevant.  Sometimes I feel like helping others is my purpose and with that, I want to be part of the solution.  I don't have to be the best one on the squad, but I want to be someone on the squad that is a necessity to the squad.  It is hard to grasp right now and I just hope that now that I can't be at the school helping kids doesn't mean that I am not a necessity to the team.  That is how this sudden, new normal affects my thought process.

I will try to stay positive going through this.  I mean I have to right?  I think it is appropriate at this point to say that this is not going to be a race, but instead a marathon.  I am going to have to pace myself.  One of the things I have done to adjust to that mindset is to not over consume the news.  When I get up and I am getting ready, I will have the morning news on for a bit to see what is going on.  Then, I will have on the Minnesota Governor briefing on to hear the facts about COVID-19 and the executive orders in place for Minnesota.  That's it.  The rest of the time is obviously work, which is a good distraction, and then for me, comedy television or movies.  I have never been a dramatic person, in fact I hate drama, and that is why this is kind of hard to write because it feels dramatic.  For that I apologize.

I just wanted to check in and update what a crazy school year, my 25th year of working with youth, has been.  It feels really good to get this off my shoulders.  I will continue to work as hard as I always do with the mindset of being an employee that is irreplaceable.  Most importantly, I will try to continue to identify ways to self care.  This is something that I have been having conversations on lately, and I will have to figure out what that looks like in our new normal without having so many options that we had before.  I will get there.  I hope everyone is healthy, and please reach out to someone that is a support for you if you are struggling like many of us are right now.  Be kind to everyone.

25 Years Of Working With Youth

It's been a long time.  I was looking today and my last writing on this blog was back in April of 2018 and the subject was the Parkland, Florida shooting and my thoughts on school safety.  Earlier this summer, I made a quick post on Facebook with a hint that this blog was coming.  I have thought and thought about how I am going to take 25 years of experiences and put it into one blog post.  I can't promise that this is going to turn out like I want it to, but the simple fact is that 25 years is a little more broad than the specific topic that I usually write about.  So here we go...

When someone says that they are 25 years into a mission, or a career, or an objective, they tend to be nearing the end of their professional journey.  That is not my case as I started this direction of my career when I was just 17 years old, I was still in high school.  It started with my choice to join a group of other students who were working on getting a youth center built in the small community that I grew up in.  The group was working in collaboration with another organization that had the same mission, or at the beginning, that was the belief.  The other students and I wanted a safe place for other students to go to and that is what the other organization was saying at our meetings.  As the next few months went on, the other students and I became a youth service organization called "Youth Action Force" and we were the board of directors.  Over this time, we as an organization, felt that jumping right into getting a youth center built in the community was getting the cart before the horse.  We scaled back and rethought our position and came to the determination that getting youth involved in the community was a necessary first step before getting the youth center built.  The other organization we collaborated with was not a fan at all about our change in thinking and it became quite clear that their goal with having a youth center was to push a religion practice, in addition to the money it could make for their organization.  It was at this point, that we decided to move on to our own path and get youth involved in the community.  As we went on, Youth Action Force had over 60 other students become members of our youth service organization, in a community that had a school that had a total of about 500-600 students in grades 7-12.  Many of them participated in different youth service projects that were opportunities for our organization to get youth involved in.  The really cool thing about our organization was that we had a real balanced mix of students which included students who were looking for their "place" socially as a teenager and high school student, student athletes, fine arts students, students who were just making the transition from middle school to high school, students who were struggling to find an identity, and some that just wanted to be involved in everything to boost a college resume.  When Youth Action Force hit their stride, we organized a Youth Speaks Out day at the high school and worked with the Rockford School District to change the schedule of the afternoon of a school day and have our over 60 members pair up and go into every classroom and have a conversation with the class or students about how the youth view the community and how they want to be involved. It was so cool to see different mixes of students pair up and lead these discussions.  We also were the featured program shortly after that at a community town hall meeting.  It all happened so fast.  I don't think at the time, that I realized how big this was becoming and what was being accomplished.  Other than a few peers, I didn't have really a lot of support with all of this.  I could chalk it up to being young and stupid and not knowing what I really was doing, which was probably partially true, but it was probably the most courage that I ever had in my life and it did continue to lead to more opportunities.

I became the official "youth" representative at many community organizations.  There was a community collaborative group called Riverside Community Forum where collaborative projects were discussed and executed.  This was a group that consisted of school officials, local business owners, religious leaders in the community, city officials, and county participants.  It lead to me being a creator of a youth mentoring program called Rocket Buddies, where high school students were paired with elementary students and they met weekly after school once a week to build leadership, relationships, and to give the younger students a potential role model to look up to.  Then, the Community Education Director with the Rockford School District approached me to come work with their School Age Child Care program called Creative Corners.  It was nice, because I could finally make some money doing this work instead of just volunteering.  Creative Corners was a great job.  I got along with everyone, as everyone that worked with the program was on the same page and that made an enjoyable climate for the youth that were in the program.  It was a team of people that clicked so well, that we offered the parents and students camping opportunities, Minnesota Twins baseball game outings, and even an overnight sleepover in the school.  Those were above and beyond the normal service offerings with the program.  Again, it was something that took a lot of courage, and was something bigger than I realized at the time when I was doing it.

Over my 25 years of working with youth, I have worked for five different school districts.  They are all in Minnesota.  They are the Rockford School District, Brainerd School District, Bemidji School District, Crosby-Ironton School District and my current employer, the Onamia School District.  My positions in these school districts have included School Age Child Care, Youth Development Coordinator twice, Facility Use Coordinator, Summer Child Care Transportation, Energy Efficiency Coordinator, Paraprofessional, Residential Treatment Counselor, and Behavior Interventionist.  In addition to working with the five school districts, I have also worked with two different private child care companies, one called KidNation and the other one called Step and Go.  I was also involved with the Wright County Collaborative, which had a focus on asset building and developing asset building in youth.  The belief at that time, was the higher number of assets that students had, the higher the chance of success.

I think the most eye opening part of the last 25 years of working with youth is how youth have changed.  Society has changed.  I think as these changes have occurred, the needs of youth have skyrocketed.  It can be kind of scary when you look at it as a big picture model.  It is more realistic to look at the task in front of you and take it one day at a time, and that is hard for me.  I am one to always look ahead and look at the possible outcomes.  My time as a youth had many different challenges.  In some ways I was lucky to have what I had, but I had a lot of challenges and that is what made me decide at 17 years old to want to help other youth.  Some of my challenges were what would be classified as typical challenges for a child or youth, and some were not.  With those challenges, I didn't necessarily have a place where I truly felt I belonged and that was hard.  I never resorted to drugs or alcohol and never smoked cigarettes.  I was someone with a good heart that wanted to help others.  I am still helping youth today, and I work tirelessly at it.  There are days and weeks that completely kick my ass, but seeing a student succeed has made it worth it.

Moving forward, as my professional life continues on, I am not sure where it goes.  My current role includes working with a high number of special education and mental health students.  I have always loved to be innovative and creative and I feel it makes me a valuable part of the team.  Over the last 12 years with my current employer, I have been a part of developing a behavior level system, helping push the idea of developing an academic resource room in our school, and coming up with reward systems in classrooms, which my wife will never admit to with her classroom.  They say that the average life of a special education teacher is five years.  That is crazy with all the commitment it takes to become a special education teacher.  I am not a special education teacher, but I work with mental health special education students and when you combine my time as a paraprofessional and behavior interventionist with the Onamia School district, 12 years is pretty good.  I have always, and to this day, been an employee that comes to work and works hard.  I will tell people that I don't want to be replaceable.  We know that every position is replaceable, but I work with the belief that I don't want to be a body, I want to be a person that is valuable.  Maybe some of that is because that is what I need, but it was I practice.  Moving forward, I want to continue to grow.  I want continue to increase my leadership opportunities and I want to continue to grow in the area of coaching people who work with youth.  I don't say challenging youth, because all youth have different challenges.  When I started this work, I was drinking the Kool-Aid in believing that all students had a healthy home, healthy families, everyone attended school, and everyone's needs were the same.   After 25 years, it is nothing like that. There have been experiences in this work that I never could have imagined happening and it continues to this day.  When I was 17 and doing a public presentation at a town hall meeting about youth involvement in the community, I didn't realize that I was an effective public speaker.  I am not going to say a good public speaker, because that is up to everyone's own opinion.  I got away from public speaking for quite a while, but over the past few years I have had some opportunities to do presentations in front of my co-workers at my school site.  In 2016, I became a certified instructor for the ALICE Training Institute and that has created the opportunity to do some more larger scale public speaking again and that has been good for me.  When I started speaking again in front of people and to larger groups, I learned that my skills in public speaking had become very rusty and that I was very nervous, which never existed before.  Now that I am getting rid of the rust, the nerves are tending to go away as well and I am looking forward to more potential opportunities to speak publicly.  I want to continue to push myself and grow.

Finally, I have worked with some amazing people over my 25 years in this work.  We all have had negative experiences of working with people, but it is the special and talented ones that I chose to remember and will always remember. These people have made a positive impact.  Lynn Englund, Anna Varner, Eric Lloyd, Lori Bromley, Ann Mavis, Dale Sova, Curt Hiltbrunner, Midge Robinson, Larry Ronglien, Jason Donahue, Mary Stephens, Lisa Stawarski, and Holly Booth.  These individuals are the ones who pushed me and helped me grow professionally.  These individuals gave me guidance in the work I do.  It has been an interesting path, but it has made me who I am now.  I look forward to where the path goes from here.

Parkland, Florida

For those of you who know, I am somebody that will relay the advice to not make a decision based on impulsive feelings.  When something impacts you, it is not the time to make a big decision.  I am never a fan of overreacting, and I think that is why I took some time before making my feelings truly known about the horrific tragedy in Florida on Valentine's Day.  I take school safety very seriously.  It is a big part of my job, but also something that I am passionate about.  It is this passion that led me to becoming a certified instructor with the ALICE Training Institute.

Whenever such a tragedy happens, I tend to give it a lot of my personal attention because I really try to examine the thinking behind such a poor choice, what the motivations are, and what were the warning signs.  It really breaks my heart to see a school in 2018 having to be emptied like Columbine was 19 years ago today.  When you put those video clips side-by-side, they look identical and they happened almost two decades apart.  This tells me that not enough has been done. I am not going political in this discussion, because this isn't a political issue.  It is, instead, a safety issue.  There is no reason to make it more complex than it needs to be.  In Minnesota, we have carry and conceal laws for guns, which I have no problem with.  I know many hunters that use hunting rifles, and I am good with it.  In the last two months after the tragedy in Parkland, Florida, I have been looking for anyone to answer a question I had.  Whether that question be answered by law enforcement, private citizens, specialty groups or organizations, or most importantly, the politicians themselves, I have not had my question about the purpose or need of assault weapons in society.  I am in the belief, that those high powered weapons, that are designed to kill, should only be legal for the military and law enforcement.  I don't care what political affiliation anybody supports, I just want someone to answer my question, what is a good reason for a person not in law enforcement or the military to have access to assault weapons?

If the tragedy in Florida wasn't heartbreaking enough, the discussions and actions that were taking place afterwards were encouraging and motivating, but then the favored suggestion as an action to combat these tragedies was to arm teachers.  I absolutely do not understand this thinking.  In fact, the only conclusion that I came to was that the leaders we have, that have the most power and in many cases the loudest voices, have not worked one day with students or in a school.  I work in a high needs school where many of the students I have worked with have experienced extensive trauma.  When I work with a student that is triggered from an event that reminds them of past trauma, it sometimes becomes a very dicey and intense situation in an attempt to de-escalate them.  Now, my leaders expect me to carry a gun on my hip?  Come on, they can't be serious.

I completely agree that there is a mental health crisis in this nation and our youth may be the age bracket in the most dire need of help.  I am not exactly sure how our society got to this point.  I do know that there are not enough mental health facilities and professionals to address all the needs.  Our leaders, those ones with the most power and loudest voices, need to be responsible and make this a top priority.  It is the right thing to do.  It is easy to be critical about what you would do in a safety crisis, until you have experienced it.  When I went through my active shooter training, I had a bad headache from the stress after my first scenario, and that was a just a simulation.  When our leader states that he would've went in there after the shooter in Parkland, it just showed me his complete lack of knowledge on the topic.

I also want to address the topic about the bucket of rocks I think a Pennsylvania school mentioned about having in the classrooms.  This idea was completely written off right away as many people thought or took it as a joke as they laughed it off.  I think the point they were making was the fact that if an active shooter were to enter your classroom, the idea is to throw items at the shooter to decrease the possibility of the shooter getting accurate shots.  If you can throw the shooter off, it usually results in lives being saved and I think this bucket of rocks idea really didn't get a fair listen.  If it were me, I don't think I would have a bucket of rocks.  In my ALICE training, they did suggest keeping expired canned goods maybe in a cabinet to use in case a school shooter enters a room.  People also give these shooters too much credit with the accuracy of their shooting.  I believe trained law enforcement officers usually hit their target in a situation about 30 percent of the time.  We assume these school shooters are 100 percent accurate all the time.  I will tell you that the shooter's accuracy does improve when traditional lockdowns, sometimes called Code Reds, are used.  The reason for this is because using a traditional lockdown makes you a "sitting duck."  All the thought is put into what we can do to try to keep a shooter out.  With ALICE, the focus is on what choices I have if someone does get in.

I want to close this by saying that I am disappointed that we have not problem solved this crisis and it has been nine weeks since the tragedy in Parkland.  17 students and staff lost their lives and were disconnected from their families forever for a choice that was not their own.  The one thing that is overlooked, in my opinion, is that there were approximately 3,000 students that attended the high school in Parkland and that is 3,000 people that probably experienced different levels of trauma from this incident.  How many of those that experienced that incident followed up with talking to someone to make sure that they are processing these feelings appropriately?  Many people think they are fine, when really they are not.  So look at the ripple effects of this tragedy.  You have 17 people killed, which has now impacted all of their families.  You also have all of the other students, who survived, who have now experienced a traumatic event.  Then, you have family members of those students who are trying to cope.  That is a lot of affected people and that is only one incident.  I hope I have convinced you of importance of the need to make school safety and mental health top priorities.  The active shootings also don't just happen in schools.  The schools are the ones you hear the most about, but 40% of all active shootings take place in private businesses.  29% take place in schools.  My training with ALICE has prepared me to be aware of my surroundings in any situation.

To students of Parkland, Florida and their families, please talk to people about your feelings regarding this horrible tragedy that you had no choice to be a part of.  You are human and it is okay to be affected by this.  If you keep those feelings inside that you are struggling with, they will come out when you don't want them to, or not in a way that you want them expressed.  I feel with our technological advances in the past decade, our society has gotten away from just talking to each other and supporting one another.  Maybe that is a contributing factor to the issues that need to be a top priority in our country.  Don't be hurtful when instead you can be helpful.

An Attempted Reunion, Unfortunately Failed.

Well I'm back, and it has been awhile.  According to my records, this is my first writing since the middle of November, so it has been about three months since my last posting.  As I have written before, my relationship with my biological father has not been a successful relationship.  A handful of months ago, my cousin Debbie sent me a message stating that my dad may possible be facing a serious health situation involving his heart, and that it may require open heart surgery.  I was really glad that she reached out to me and alerted me of this situation, so I picked up the phone and called my dad.  It had been quite a while since we had spoken, and I think the best way to explain it is that it is two different personalities that couldn't manage to be on the same page when it needed to be.  Unfortunately, my dad is a person that had a lot of friends, had his own business, felt a need to have the best material things to sometimes impress others, and had his priorities be himself first.  That isn't an insult to my dad, it is just a description of him.  We go through this life often times wishing that everyone was alike, so everyone could just agree, go with the flow, and have everyone get along.  While that sounds great, the reality is life would be boring if that was the case.  Those things that I described about my dad is a mere description, and I apparently am not cut from the same cloth, because that doesn't describe me.  I am a guy who will help anyone anyway I can if there is something I can give in that situation.  I obviously don't own my own business, I work in education so I can help guide students to get on the right track sooner than what maybe I had experienced.  Material things really don't mean jack crap to me because I don't want a bunch of debt over things that you can't take with you when the ride is over.  I prefer to be simple, and I like to laugh to enjoy life.  Those are two very different personalities that I just explained and it might be an explanation as to why my dad and I can't connect and be on the same page.

So, a couple of months ago, I reached out.  I picked up the phone and called him.  He did answer, which I do give him credit for, and I asked him how he was.  His response, "I'm good.  I am with my brother Joe at a car show."  I chose to immediately ask about his potential health crisis.  He then explained what was going on.  I then put myself out there and asked if he would like to me to be there during the procedure for support.  He answered by saying that he wasn't sure when the procedure was yet and he was to have more tests in a week or so, and that he would call me back and let me know.  I said okay, but please call me back and let me know.   I did not a call back.

So, I let a little time go by and once I knew that he had gone to that doctor appointment and had those tests, I decided again to reach out to him.  I sent him a text message, which should've been a phone call on my part, and I asked him if he had his doctor appointment yet?  He said, "No, it's next Monday."  I responded by saying, "Alright.  I hope it goes well.  Let me know the results when you get them."   I received no response after that.  Nine days later, I sent him a text again asking if he had gotten any test results yet?  He told me that he did and he was not going to have to have surgery, which was good news.  He stated that it was a big relief.  I responded with, "I bet.  I was waiting to hear."  Once I knew he was in clear, I then asked him another question.

I was tired of the back and forth, the disagreements, the blame game going all around.  If anyone knows me, I am not fan of drama at all.  I am a comedy guy, not a drama guy.  Laughter is my coping skill.  So, I cut through the crap so to say and I asked my dad, "Do you want to have a connection with me?"  He responded, "I don't know that's too big of a question now."  I was pretty upset with the response since I had done the reaching out and put myself out there as I had attempted to do before.  My response was that I explained that if anything brings people together and brings some clarity to a situation, it is a health scare.  I went on to say that the ball was now in his court.  "Whether it is in a few weeks, years, or ever...The next attempt will have to be from you", I stated.  I went on to say, "If there is never an attempt, that will be sad, but it will ultimately be your choice. Later." He responded with, "K", and that was it.

The big thing that has been clearly evident to me in all my life environments the past few months is accountability and the importance of it.  Accountability is healthy, and so many people see it as a negative.  Sometimes accountability involves things that may be really difficult to hear, but it is so critical to problem solving.  This situation with my dad... I was hoping to have a conversation, which would've included me taking responsibility for my part of the falling out that we had almost 20 years ago, and I was hoping that he would've done the same as sometimes time helps or heals differences.  Unfortunately, that was not the outcome.  I have come to terms with the situation, and am now comfortable with sharing this experience.  My goal here is not to disrespect or blame.  My dad has chosen to handle his side of our relationship the way he has and that is his choice, no matter whether I agree with it or not.  The time now is to focus on myself, which will include getting healthier, because I want to feel better about things in general.  The past few months has included many requests for me to be censored and not say anything about certain things, and I need to learn to speak up more once again.  It is something that I have always struggled with, especially in confrontational situations.  All my coworkers would probably disagree with that last statement and probably say, "That guy never shuts the hell up."  My intention is always good, my goal is not to be destructive, but instead be productive and proactive.  I will get there.  Thanks for reading.  Feel free to comment on any of my postings.  Be helpful, not hurtful.

Another Day, Another Shooting... And It Needs To Stop!

You know, I just don't know.  As my work day was winding down today, I saw the notification on my phone that yet another shooting has happened in Northern California, and again it involved innocent children.  That is the part that gets me every time.  I just can't make any sense out of how killing innocent people, and especially children, brings closure to a person.  I don't understand how someone is supposed to hear an individual and what they are trying to say when they make the CHOICE to commit such horrible acts.  That's right, it is a choice.  How does one make a choice to take away a child's opportunity to fulfill their dreams, to take away their families, and for them to not be able to bring their talents to the world where that talent could've been the most positive change for humankind.  The elementary children were doing what they were supposed to be doing, going to school and going through the process of learning skills and learning about themselves.  I work with students everyday with one goal.  That goal is to help give them the skills to be a better person, to express feelings appropriately, and hopefully that allows them to be better set up to take advantage of those opportunities that come along to help them become more successful.  I don't know if I have the words to truly express how I am feeling, but I just struggle with these situations.  One of the reports that came out hours after the initial report, is that there would have been more victims at the school, but they had options with their lockdown procedures.  They had the information and they locked down the school appropriately, which authorities have already stated that those choices had saved a number of lives.  The sad thing is that when I was in school, we didn't have to perform lockdown drills.  Not only do we have lockdown drills now, but there have been enough of these incidents to be able to learn from them.  Schools are now changing how they do their lockdown procedures in schools and it is making a difference.  I don't know if the school or schools that successfully locked down used a more traditional style of lockdown, or if they used the newer style that is more effective, but lives were saved.  I will be curious to learn more about that.  What baffles me the most is that nothing changes.  I am not here to be political, because it is not my right to state how anyone else views things in the world.  I will say that this is not a political issue.  This is a matter of people's lives.  We have children that get killed in these acts of pure stupidity before they even have a chance to chose a political side in life, so it is not about politics here.  We watch 49 people get killed in Orlando, we watch 58 get killed with over 500 injured in Las Vegas, and still nothing.  I am a problem solver when there is an issue.  To solve a problem it starts with a conversation.  What concerns me is that it doesn't appear that a conversation has even started.  It shouldn't matter which party you favor, how much money one has, whether your male or female, or transgender, gay, lesbian, white, black, or any other nationality, it is time to sit down and start talking and problem solving.  Disagree in those conversations, that's fine, but at least be respectful enough to have the conversation.  I don't have the answers and it is not my place to say what we should do, because I am just one opinion, and it will take more than one person to problem solve this situation.  Fortunately, I have been trained to know my options in a situation of an active shooter and I am grateful for that.  I hope that I am able to teach those options to the people I care about and I hope to do it soon.  The schools get the media attention because the innocent children being killed should get the attention, of everybody.  The reality is that these active shooter situations can happen anywhere.  They happen more in private businesses than they do in schools.  In fact, at last check, 40% of all active shooter situations are in private businesses.  I already mentioned a nightclub in Orlando and a concert in Las Vegas, but they have also happened in restaurants, at a political event in Arizona, at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, and I am not even done processing the one that happened just nine days ago in a church in Texas that killed 26 more people, and a high number of children.  That is just a few mass shootings that don't involve schools. Today's shooting involved a guy that went to seven different locations before being fatally shot. It blows my mind how someone got to seven different places before being caught, but it tells you that each situation is different and it can happen anywhere.  I end this with the message that I am not going to give up.  I am not going to change my plans because of the what ifs.  I hope that I never have to be in a real situation to use the skills I was trained in.  I don't wish that on anybody, especially innocent children that deserve to live a long and full life.  As after every active shooter situation is learned about, I hope the conversation can begin. Be Kind To Everyone.

A.L.I.C.E

ALERT     LOCKDOWN     INFORM     COUNTER     EVACUATE

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