Opinion:

Ever sit in you car just staring at the thoughts in your head trying make sense of them?

Ten years ago, after reports of yet another school shooting tragedy, I found myself doing just that during an icy rain in Conneaut Lake, Pennsylvania, just dumbfounded and helpless as I listened to the news on the radio. I shut it off and continued to sit there.

I didn't cry. And I didn't pray. The "what's the point" feeling we all get from time to time was on the tip of my saddened tongue..

​ In front of me was a school bus parked.

That was close to 10 years ago and I don't even want to try to guess how many school shootings we have had since.
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Today a friend and long-time teacher Dee Henry posted these words " If you've been out of school for even ten years or more, throw out what you think you know about what goes on in schools or how kids learn."
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This is the exact thing that we need to look at most. This times we live in now are not the times any of the parents or grand-parents of kids in school today. In my generation we were not a 24/7 information paradigm and we did not have that information at our fingertips every second of everyday.

We didn't have connectivity with people we never met unless we had a pen pal, and even if we did we didn't then connect to 100 others in their friends list.

Our connectivity today in so many ways is great and there is no real turning back from it. But it comes with new problems that need to be addressed.

Like all things... in my humblest of opinions, the best way to deal with this ever changing world that technology gives us, isn't from stepping back, it isn't from praying, it isn't from arguing the same argument over and over again, but assessing the positive, identifying the problems and moving forward through concentrated and supported education.

"Ignore the politicians and listen to those who face and attempt to support the at-risk students everyday - your community teachers and admins need your help," Henry concluded.

Prayers groups are fine. But they are not solutions.

Debates on gun control are fine, but they are, and will continue to be a dead end.(Hell, part of me believes it might be important to defend freedom with guns, after all, we created freedom with guns. And wits."

So lets not concentrate so much on the guns for a moment and focus in on the use of our wits.

A few years back I engaged in a conversation that I'd like to bring back to the forefront again. At the time I was accused of wanted to implement martial law. And perhaps I was at the time. It was a quick thought that seemed like an easy solution to one problem, but perhaps creating another.

Time and multiple shootings again keep me thinking about the idea.

 I'm not a military guy. There is no way I would've stayed out of the brig. I was taught to question everything and as a result I questioned authority. Still do.

That said, I remember an ROTC program at my school that some kids took advantage of and they learned some discipline that they didn't possess from their home life. This made me think of what could be a solution.

The branches of the service have recruiters. Police and sheriff's offices have school resource officers. The national guard has centers in nearly, if not every county in the country. Human services have offices, child welfare is a part of every county.

So why can't we move some offices, with trained personnel from all of these branches of established government into the schools? Make them satellites for trained personnel to be hands on, eyes and ears and, in many ways on the frontlines of mental health and safety in the schools?

I can see, say four to eight,  trained military officers who could be headquartered  at the school, being available to help if needed in many situations beyond just added security. The could hold morn calisthenics for students and teachers to get the day started, they could run ROTC classes and training. They could even act as emergency substitutes, or fill ins, while we figure out the teacher shortage.

And Human services could staff two to three councilors, therapists or child advocates who work at the school and also are available to students and faculty.This way they are onsite to potentially address issues of harassment and perhaps neglect head on where teachers hands may be tied?

I obviously do not know the depths of what could be needed, but I am tired of listening to the same arguments from one side that says more gun control and the other side that says that it is not the guns and even worse the folks who just ask us to pray. Iif there is A God that created us, I'm pretty sure the brain they gave us was to be used to solve our own problems.
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​Discuss.