From the District Training:
Assess & Progress: Spotting & Stopping The School Shooter

Imagine you need something really important in Maine.
And it has to be picked up in one day or you’ll suffer lots of consequences.

A friend volunteers to go.

They ask you how to get to Maine. 

You tell them, “Drive north on 95 for about 15 or 16 hours.” 

Instead, they jump on Route 66 and head west.
Fifteen or sixteen hours later—they’re in New Mexico. 

They call and say, “I’m sorry. I went the wrong way. Will you forgive me?” 

It’s caused you a lot of pain, misery, and heartache but you say yes.
You’re forgiven. We’re good. 

The problem is that even though you forgave them—they’re still in New Mexico. They still have to turn around and come all the way back.

This is the reality of threats of violence.

It causes real division—separation—even when there’s forgiveness.

A student makes a threat, writes something dangerous, posts something alarming, or says something that scares people. Even though you do a threat assessment, create intervention and management plans, and stabilize the situation—they are still in New Mexico.

A threat assessment is not a magic eraser.

It’s simply the moment we pinpoint where they are on the map. Now that we know where they are, we have to get them home.

Getting them home is harder than the assessment, especially if they’ve been feeding anger for months, isolating, rehearsing grievance, and constructing harmful narratives in their head (real or perceived).

We can’t walk that kind of separation back in a single interaction. 

They went a certain distance.
They have to come back that same distance—or farther. 

Here’s the moral of the story. 

Do yourself and everyone else a favor and keep your student relationships strong and the separation short. Work hard today, on the front end, because the trip home is even longer and more painful than whatever today will cost you in time, energy, and resources. 

And it will cost you.
It just doesn’t cost as much as the back end. 

The less they travel, the less ground there is to recover.