I felt honored to be allowed to serve as the closing keynote for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction at their awesome Building the Heart of successful Schools Conference in Wisconsin Dells last Friday. The department had an amazing line up of amazing speakers including Dr. William Steele and Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade. This was my second keynote in Wisconsin in the past four weeks and I feel blessed to have been able to present there on a regular basis over the past decade.
Wisconsin has been a very progressive state in terms of school safety and has licensed our school crisis planning templates for every K12 school in the state through the Wisconsin Homeland Security Council. I had a well-attended breakout session on Pattern Matching and Recognition followed by an energized and passionate group for the closing keynote session.
It has been a very busy week and a half with a school security assessment for an independent school, the first day of a school security assessment for a public school system in North Carolina, several interviews with the Today Show and last Friday’s conference in Wisconsin. I am tired, but it is that good type of tired that comes from meaningful hard work. If you truly love what you do, you will never work a day in your life. I must say that I have been fortunate to love what I do throughout my adult life.
As I have said many times, I feel truly blessed to be allowed to interact with so many dedicated educators, mental health professionals, public safety officials, architects and other advocates for the children each month.