The school safety and security experts at Safe Havens International developed a free web seminar for the Illinois Principal’s Association as a pro bono effort. The association has been kind enough to allow people to access this course at no cost even though they are not members of their Education Leaders Network.
The course – Permission to Live – Effective School Emergency Preparedness through Empowerment, Planning and Practice covers research-based concepts to help prepare school employees to make more effective decisions when faced with life and death situations.
Another free resource that may be of help is our recently published topical paper on the pros and cons of teaching staff and students to attack an active shooter as a last resort. The paper is the culmination of an 18-month research effort by myself and school security director Steve Satterly and points out that while some school shootings have been stopped by this approach, people have been wounded and killed while attempting to make physical contact with armed individuals in schools.
As we are getting numerous requests for information on this topic from the media, school officials and public safety personnel from across the nation and abroad in the wake of the tragic attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut yesterday, we felt this information may be helpful. This course covers many of the concepts I discussed last night on 20/20, Hannity, and other media programs and is less than 20 minutes long.