Sharing Good Practice
APPROACHING SCHOOL MANAGEMENT THROUGH THE LENS OF THREAT ASSESSMENT BY: DR. LORI BROWN
cannot afford to exhibit random, illogical, or capricious managerial approaches. Our people – our students – our staff – need us to manage with clarity, logic, compassion, and direction. Anything short of that may put them (or us) at risk, establish unnecessary chaotic confusion, and ultimately complicate the identification of solutions to everyday concerns.
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chool administrators assume two significant callings when they first step into new roles: to lead and manage effectively. They are repeatedly called to lead and manage their people, processes, protocols, programs, and priorities well. Leadership involves setting the vision for success, while management addresses the daily practices and strategies needed to make the vision a reality. At risk of stating the obvious, how we manage our schools impacts the academic, social-emotional, and behavioral outcomes we hope to evidence among students, staff, and other stakeholders. Without strong managerial skills, we will never reach our overarching mission to foster engaged, proficient, inquisitive, and well-adjusted learners who are empowered to advocate for their continuous learning needs. But, what is “good” school management? What does it look and feel like? We might even go one step further and ask whether good school mangers need things like: Advanced degrees? Pretty calendars? LongRange walkie-talkies? Oversized key chains? Large committees? Or School
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Term 1 Sep - Dec 2020
newsletters? The answer to these questions: “yes” and “no.” Management is about more than the merchandize. What is Management? Good management mandates we remain abreast of the general happenings inside and outside our building (influences that could disrupt or impact the learning community), while simultaneously communicating effectively with internal and external stakeholders to keep them in the loop of decisions about changing pathways, protocols, practices, and policies. From buses to varsity basketball schedules, and from grading policies to graduation ceremonies, there is much to manage and communicate to our stakeholders on a daily basis, and we may opt to use many “tools” to complete these tasks (e.g. walkietalkies, newsletters, tablets, calendars, and more). Because school management involves so many “things” to manage, it can be either messy and mundane or meaningful and memorable. But the one thing it is NOT is easy, largely because it is time-consuming and overwhelming. For this reason, we
Class Time
To remove illogical or capricious approaches, I embrace both messy and meaningful managerial tasks through the lens of threat and risk assessment; a field of expertise that thrives on the practice of using explicit and logical analysis and application strategies to prevent the problematic and diffuse the dangerous. What is Threat Assessment? Threat assessment works well, if done correctly, because of the field’s commitment to synthesized inputs (aka…data) leading to clear outputs and outcomes (decisions and solutions). A good threat assessor can take multiple data points, analyze them well, and rapidly determine whether someone or something may present a threat to self or others. The International handbook of Threat Assessment defines the process as follows: Threat assessment is a method used by mental health and law enforcement professionals to assess the risk of intended violence toward a specific target,…. Note inclusion of the phrase “assess the risk of…” Isn’t that what we do every day as school leaders? Aren’t we constantly synthesizing diverse inputs from a unique and ever-changing group of stakeholders, structures, and systems to make solid decisions, while scanning the horizon to identify potential threats to our best laid plans?
