Overview:
School cultures are structurally blind to internal, student-posed threats—prioritizing de-escalation and non-stigmatization over risk assessment
After the dismissal of the trial following the shooting of teacher Abby Zwerner by a six-year-old student, the impulse to focus our attention on our outrage at Assistant Principal Ebony Parker is understandable. I share that sentiment as I read through this case. Yet after two decades teaching in public and private schools, I suspect an uncomfortable number of administrators might have made a similar decision. That possibility is far more disturbing than the failure of any one individual because it suggests a deeper problem within school culture itself.
On Jan. 6, 2023, a first-grade student entered his Virginia classroom with his mother’s 9 mm pistol smuggled in his backpack. At around 11 a.m., Abby Zwerner, his teacher told Ebony Parker, the Assistant Principal that the student had threatened his classmates. Ms. Parker allegedly forbade any teacher from searching the child, as only administrators had the authority to do so.
Parker is quoted as telling staff to “wait it out” as the “school day was almost over and his mother’s going to pick him up,” per Zwerner’s lawyer. Within the hour, the student pulled the trigger and shot Zwerner twice.
Some professions, such as the pharmaceutical industry and law enforcement, routinely study catastrophic failures and near misses in order to build institutional memory around rare but dangerous situations. Schools rarely conduct similarly candid discussions when necessary.
We can use a technique known as Root Cause Analysis, asking a series of questions until we get past the individual proximate causes and discover the deeper systemic issue that can be acted upon. This technique was used after the explosion of the Challenger shuttle in 1986. The similarities between these events is worth noting in that the experts on the ground warned NASA administrators of a danger before launch but they were ignored.
First, we would ask: Why was Abby Zwerner shot on January 6th, 2023? She was shot because a six-year-old child brought a gun into school and shot her twice.
Next, we would inquire: Why was a child able to bring a gun into a school?
Allegedly, people knew that the child had a gun but when the Assistant Principal was told that the child had brought a gun to the school she said, “The school day is almost done, let’s wait it out,” because the situation seemed manageable from the administration’s perspective.
Analysis typically stops once we have identified an individual to blame. I understand the impulse. I am personally outraged by what happened and also want those responsible to face harsh accountability. But we need to examine the story deeper in order to extract the systemic issues that made this possible. With that in mind, let’s continue our analysis to the third question.
Why did the situation seem manageable?
Schools routinely deal with behavioral escalation using de-escalation techniques designed to calm situations without immediately resorting to punishment or emergency intervention. Over time, repeated exposure to severe behavior can make situations seem more manageable than they actually are.
And the fourth question: Why has school culture developed this way? Elementary schools are institutionally optimized for managing ordinary childhood behavioral disruption, not ambiguous lethal threats from very young children. The threats an elementary school encounters tend to revolve around misbehavior, bullying, and chronic behavior issues, not lethal violence.
And finally, our fifth question: Why might this training create blind spots? Schools rarely explicitly explore the possibility that serious danger can come from within the building. “Waiting it out” until a parent can resolve the issue might be appropriate for dealing with a temperamental child, but it was a horrendous solution in the face of a deadly threat.
If my analysis is correct, then it is likely that this could have happened even if a different administrator had been in charge.
Risk Assessment is not moral condemnation. After twenty years teaching in public and private schools I have repeatedly observed that school culture actively discourages the act of openly discussing worst-case threat scenarios involving known students.
Discussions about difficult students emphasize extenuating circumstances that explain why this student is a challenge. There is an unspoken taboo against placing too much blame on the student for his or her actions.
Home life, learning challenges, socio-economic status, race or ethnicity, and other circumstances are frequently discussed when we discuss particularly difficult students. Any discussion that ventures into the idea that the kid is a threat or is to blame for his or her behavior is diverted or tamped down.
Even when we train for emergencies we emphasize the idea of an external threat. Our lockdown drills operate with the implicit assumption that the imagined shooter is coming into the school building from outside. We do not explore the idea that the threat might be coming from inside the house, so to speak.
There are good reasons to be wary of discussions that approach the topic of the student being the threat. We do not want to stigmatize or create biases within the school around kids. But we should be able to discuss kids within the context of repeated red flags and make some kind of conscious plan around how to handle those particular students should their behavior escalate. The goal of the school as an inclusive community cannot preclude discussing worst-case scenarios if we want to avoid a future incident like this.
