Education Week - March 7, 2018 - 1

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Education Week
VOL. 37, NO. 23 * MARCH 7, 2018

edweek.org:

BRE AKING NEWS DAILY

School Districts
Weigh Security
After Shooting

Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via TNS

By Evie Blad
Since the mass shooting at Marjory
Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., educational leaders around
the country have reassessed their safety
plans, sought to reassure anxious parents
amid an uptick in copycat threats, and
heard calls from policymakers to "harden
schools" with more armed staff and physical security measures.
It's sadly familiar turf for district and
school leaders, who faced the same concerns after a gunman killed 20 children
and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary
School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, stirring calls for beefed up school security and
debates over gun laws. They instituted
more lockdown drills, rebuilt entrances to
limit access, and reviewed safety procedures with law enforcement.
Five years later, widespread calls for
quick-fix actions in response to Parkland

Police and community members greet students returning to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School for the first time since the mass shooting.

Is It Time for a Focus on Civics Education?
Powerful
Examples Set
By Shooting
Survivors

By Stephen Sawchuk
The Marjory Stoneman Douglas students-turned-activists are fast becoming
a powerful model of civic engagement for
educators across the country.
Survivors of the deadly school shooting in
Parkland, Fla., have taken to social media
and TV, arguing eloquently for gun-control
policies-and citing skills garnered from
their Advanced Placement U.S. Government
courses. They have successfully pressured
major companies to drop their affiliations
with the National Rifle Association and
spurred thousands of students nationwide
to draft petitions, plan walkouts, and start
grassroots groups of their own.
Now the example of their activism, coupled with an increasingly divisive period

of policymaking following-and preceding-the 2016 presidential election, has
advocates for civics education asking: Is it
finally time for civics to get a bit more attention?
"I think there is a resurgence and a
significant amount of interest from many
people who are concerned about the declining strength of our democracy," said
Jonathan Kahne, a professor of education
at the University of California, Riverside. "But by no means is civics education
a central priority for reformers at this
point, and I think that's part of the case
we have to make."
Whether the Parkland tragedy will galvanize more widespread attention to a
topic in America's schools that some say

STATES
SCRAMBLE:
School safety
debates renew
in states.
PAGE 8 >

ARMED
TEACHERS:
What are the
implications?
PAGE 9 >

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PAGE 8 >

Immigrants Thrive
In Canadian Schools
By Kavitha Cardoza
Toronto

When 13-year-old André Cordeiro moved from Portugal to Toronto, the only English words he knew
were, "hi," "bye," and "hot dog." Four years later, he
speaks English "way better" and credits his Englishlearner class at Islington Junior Middle School.
With just six other students in that class, the
teacher can answer André's questions right away.
He's at ease in the class because no one speaks English fluently. "I feel kind of equal," said André, now in
8th grade. "There's not as much pressure if I make
a mistake."
Three-fourths of the roughly 500 students at Islington, a K-8 school in Toronto, speak a language
other than English at home, including Somali, Arabic, Korean, Bengali, and Russian. This diverse
school mirrors Canada's largest city, where almost

Emotional Needs of Students, Educators
Crucial to Puerto Rico's School Recovery
By Andrew Ujifusa
Arecibo, Puerto Rico

Hurricane Maria has taken people away
from Yzmar Roman.
The 16-year-old Puerto Rican high
school student's two best friends moved to
the U.S. mainland in the wake of last September's devastating storm, one to Florida
and the other to Tennessee. Her father, a

policeman, has been working long hours
since Hurricane Maria and doesn't have
much time to learn about her day when
he's home. And her mother's job as a bank
teller also means she's busy. Yzmar tries to
lean on the friends she has, but she hears
about their daily struggles since the storm
and knows they have their own burdens.
So when a teacher at Dr. Maria Cadilla
High School in Arecibo, about an hour

west of San Juan, noticed a change in
Yzmar and sent her to a social worker,
Yzmar was grateful.
"I needed help because I couldn't go
and ask for help. I didn't feel like I could,"
Yzmar said. "I started talking. It just
helped me a lot."
The Puerto Rican government's efforts
to rebuild and remake its educational
system will take years. But so will a
complex and in some ways more fraught
battle for the U.S. territory's children
and educators: helping them cope with
trauma and meeting their emotional
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Ian Willms/Boreal Collective for Education Week

PAGE 14 >

Sham, 9, left, and Barin, 10, both from Syria, work together
at Islington Junior Middle School, in Toronto.

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