It Got Hotter

Anyone that works with the public will likely develop theories about why attitudes and emotions change in groups of people from time to time. Many blame full moons or changes in barometric pressure on emotional acts or erratic behavior. One of the changes that I believe in is the relationship between temperature and behavior. Many psychological studies show a direct correlation between increased temperatures (especially humid heat) and increases in violent behavior. While most people report preferring warmer weather, statistics show increases in violent crime during the warmer months. The explanation is that heat increases our body temperatures, raising testosterone and increasing our likelihood for being agitated or aggressive. Perhaps that's why the warm front that changed our otherwise seasonable weather early in the week to near 80 degree temperatures also brought a couple of fights and a lot of students that needed to talk some heated situations out. Adults were also impacted this week. I heard from several of you that were highly frustrated and I sat with several parents that genuinely did not know how to deal with a problem and had had enough. 

By comparison, all of this pales to the violence that occurred this week in Parkland, Florida at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was a mental health problem, maybe we should blame gun laws, the government, his parents, students that perhaps bullied him...the list could go on and on. But what can you do? Just like the arrival of summer weather is inevitable, we tend to shrug our shoulders at school violence with a somewhat helpless attitude. We have come to accept this as the new normal. It catches headlines in our media like word of a fight quickly spreads through a school, but also like gossip on a fight, we tend to lose interest quickly and life goes on. What can we do?

It turns out that there is a lot we can do. In the same way we can prevent school fights through good management and supervision, keen observation of students showing signs of being agitated and responsiveness to those signs, we can also take action to lessen the opportunity for school violence of all kinds. None of this is a silver bullet that will prevent all bad things from happening, but it certainly can make a large impact. We can help, even if we cannot change gun laws or eliminate broken homes, we can be the first line of defense while we are here. As the adults that are on that front line of battling school violence of all types, please take time to think about how your practices can impact your students. Your attitude and energy can impact theirs. Your patience can be what deescalates an adolescent temper. Your relationships can make students take a second thought on their actions. Your eyes and ears can be what prevents everything from students that are depressed enough to harm themselves to a fist fight and perhaps even something much worse. We cannot choose helplessness.