Be the Shield

Today was a busy day.

I woke up to a couple of inches of snow on the ground that I wasn't expecting.  Apparently I wasn't the only one.

My thirty-minute drive to work turned into a 45-minute one, but I arrived safely as the school bus drivers came in, grumbling about the snow, and the cold.  But, they got their buses warmed up and got out on their routes a bit early.  After all the routes were done, I only had one complaint.  When we are transporting 2,000 kids to five schools in crappy weather, I will take one complaint and call it a good day.  The complaint?  The bus was a couple of minutes early.  Yeah, I'll take that.

I was working on arranging a meeting of all the district's school safety specialists.  We haven't met in a while, and we need to.  We need to work on assessing each school's emergency plans, and to plan a tabletop exercise to test our readiness.

I scheduled a Critical Incident Stress Management Team meeting for the first week in March, talked with Officer Steve Fisher of the New Palestine Police Department about trying to find funding to send two Hancock County Sheriff's Deputies to School Resource Officer Basic Training.  I also documented a couple of drivers who completed the TSA's First Observer training that taught them how to recognize terrorist planning and how to report it.

All in all a good day.

I did want to follow up on the Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdog analogy I shared yesterday.  There are Sheep who, when danger threatens, break the mold.  They do not become Sheepdogs, but they don't leave the innocent to the wolves either.  Their nature doesn't allow them to do violence, but they try to protect others in their own way.  I call them Shields. 

At Sandy Hook Elementary, Anne Marie Murphy, a teacher, was reportedly found dead with her arms around a dead student.  She could not engage the shooter, but attempted to shield one of her students from the evil that had entered their room.

There are many educators like that.  They may not be Sheepdogs, and that's OK.  But that doesn't mean that they care any less for their students, or wouldn't do anything to save them.  It's easy to be a Shield.

You decide that you love someone more than yourself, at the moment of truth.