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Upon completion of my Principal Certification Program, my goal is to work as an administrator with my current school district, Edgewood ISD, particularly in its Disciplinary Educational Alternative Program. I am currently a guidance counselor at my district's DAEP school and hold a Guidance and Counseling Master's Degree from Angelo State University.

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The topic of gun control in school settings is not a recent topic of debate; however, according to Education Week (2018), it has sparked recent concern due to Betsy DeVos, United States Secretary of Education's recent consideration. The issue in question is whether school districts should use federal funds to pay for guns and armed training for school educators(Education Week Staff, 2018).

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The idea of arming teachers-or loosening state restrictions to allow concealed-carry permit holders to bring guns into schools-is often circulated after school attacks. It gained attention after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012 and was revived in the wake of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

But putting guns in the hands of school staff is often met with resistance from educators, who say they don't want the responsibility of carrying and securing a firearm on top of their already demanding jobs. Many teachers believe that arming themselves-and their peers-would make schools less safe.

Here's what you need to know about the divisive issue:

Who Supports the Idea?

President Trump, for one. At a speech just after the Parkland shooting, he argued that armed teachers with training and experience who "love their students" might be better able to protect them in an active shooting scenario than an armed police officer.

"A teacher would have shot the hell out of him before he knew what happened," Trump said, referring to the former student who is accused of the slayings.

Not surprisingly, gun-rights advocates have long pushed for laws that allow educators to carry weapons.

There Are Already Teachers Carrying Guns at School

Many schools are "gun-free zones," but the federal Gun-Free School Zones Act allows states to authorize certain individuals to carry firearms on school grounds.

In addition to Texas, the states of Utah, Wyoming, and South Dakota allow staff members-with certain caveats-to carry guns on school grounds.

According to Everytown for Gun Safety-a gun-control advocacy group-15 states allow concealed carry of some sort in schools, and this year two dozen states considered similar policies:

Adopting a Policy for Arming Teachers Could Be a Minefield

Among the questions schools who want to arm staff members have to answer:

who-exactly-is authorized to carry a firearm,

where should guns be stored, and

should armed employees get some sort of bonus.

There's also the thorny question of liability: Who would be responsible if something went wrong? Many things could go wrong, experts say-a student could find or steal a teacher's firearm, the weapon could accidentally discharge, or a teacher could shoot an innocent bystander during an active-shooter situation.

Arming staff could get expensive. A high-quality, name-brand, semi-automatic pistol or other type of handgun could run anywhere from $500 to $1,200. And the idea of diverting already stretched resources to these and other costs such as firearms training could be a very tough sell. (Perhaps that's why Texas is asking if its districts can tap into those federal dollars.)

Who Opposes the Idea?

All the major teacher, principal, school employee, and school security organizations oppose guns in schools, except when carried by a police or security officer.

And so do most teachers and Americans.

Teach Plus, a national advocacy group for teacher leadership, polled 1,233 teachers and found nearly 80 percent said they strongly oppose arming teachers in school.

The National Education Association surveyed 1,000 of its members and 82 percent of respondents said they would not carry a gun to school even if they had firearms training and were allowed to do so.

And a Gallup poll found less than 30 percent of teachers think that arming teachers would be very or somewhat effective in limiting the number of victims in a school shooting.

Education Week has spoken to many educators who think carrying a concealed weapon is , including school shooting survivors themselves.

Jim Moffatt, a retired principal who was shot by a student at Fergus High School in Lewistown, Mont., in 1986, actively campaigns against legislative efforts to arm teachers:

While their numbers may be smaller than those who oppose carrying guns, there are teachers, principals, and superintendents who favor it.

"I do think it's reasonable for someone like me, but if you look at the landscape of American educators at large, I don't think it's realistic," he said. "I don't represent the majority of teachers."

Jeffrey Woofter, a former sheriff and the superintendent of West Virginia's Barbour County school district, does not think that all school personnel should be armed either. But he believes that trained staff should be allowed to carry concealed weapons or have access to concealed weapons on campus.

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Should Teachers Carry Guns? The Debate, Explained

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The idea of arming teachers-or loosening state restrictions to allow concealed-carry permit holders to bring guns into schools-is often circulated after school attacks. It gained attention after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012 and was revived in the wake of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

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Texas University of Texas Education Magazine

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Texas University of Texas Education Magazine

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According to Melissa Wetzel (2018), the "literacy crisis" is not a true reflection of student measures of literacy based on recent research. As a result, students are assessed inaccurately while disregarding diverse literacies.

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Texas Education Magazine | University of Texas at Austin

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Melissa Wetzel, associate professor of language and literacy, shares research-based ideas about the literacy "crisis" and how understanding diverse literacies is a stronger educational approach.
Children come into the world with a set of language and literacy practices. Young children are always learning to name their world and discovering how language works. As they grow, they learn the words that are important to their worlds, what Paulo Freire called their "word worlds."

When they enter school, they are often assessed in terms of their letter and word recognition, their phonemic awareness, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and letter and word writing. These are measures of literacy.

However, there are other aspects of literacy that are not measured because test developers cannot have a window into the world of words that surrounds each child. What we know, for example, is that there is not a word gap, as many researchers have found, between students who speak English as their first language and second language learners.

In fact, the number of words that bilingual and multilingual students know might far exceed the number of words that an English monolingual student knows. In addition, multilingual students have the additional knowledge of how to navigate their social worlds using more than one language!

One thing we are pretty sure of in the field of literacy is that teachers who know how to find out what a student knows and how they are literate-rather than gaps in their literacy-will be much better equipped to build on what the students know and help them to be successful.

Illiteracy is an unscientific concept and very political. Literacy rates were used to document literacy during a politically constructed "crisis of illiteracy" in the latter part of the 20 th century. For example, under the Reagan Administration, many organizations began receiving funding from the federal government for programs designed to provide basic literacy education for those people who were identified as illiterate.

Like other "crises," a crisis of illiteracy is dangerous for many reasons, primarily because it positions some people's languages and literacies as deficit and narrowly defines what it means to be literate. It positions students who leave school as illiterate, which is often untrue, and shifts responsibility and blame onto the young person who may have been miseducated in many ways.

In a binary of literacy/illiteracy, we have to ask, "what counts/doesn't count as literacy" and "who benefits from literacy programs and initiatives," among other important critical questions. In a dynamic society in which what it means to be literate is always changing, it is hard to see how narrow measures of literacy (reading and writing assessments) might be meaningful to public conversations or policymakers in productive ways.

Organizations that are focused on literacy often rely on discourse from the literacy crisis to make claims about literacy rates and why they are a problem. This discourse appeals to those who want to help-through volunteering and monetary support. That can be a good thing. The danger, however, is that each time a literacy crisis discourse is evoked, dominant and narrow views about what counts are reproduced. That means we may move further and further away from understanding diverse literacies, what and how students know, and what literacies will support them most for participation in a changing world.
Wetzel is Judy Spence Fellow for Excellence and Associate Chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Her research and teaching focus on how pre-service teachers integrate critical literacy and culturally relevant practices into their field-based literacy teaching experiences. -Feature photo of books by Patrick Fore (@patrickian4) on Unsplash

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Melissa Wetzel, associate professor of language and literacy, shares research-based ideas about the literacy "crisis" and how understanding diverse literacies is a stronger educational approach. Children come into the world with a set of language and literacy practices. Young children are always learning to name their world and discovering how language works.

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Special Education and the Law : A Guide for Practitioners (Osborne & Russo, 2014)

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Special Education and the Law : A Guide for Practitioners (Osborne & Russo, 2014)

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This book had several topics of interest to me, particularly the topic of Parent & Student Rights. This section discussed how IDEA partnered with parents by providing them with due process rights in effort to allow them additional access regarding their child's educational decisions. In addition, it defined FAPE, proper parental notification for educational participation, described the purpose of FERPA and court decisions that relate to parent and student rights in regards to IDEA.

Student Discipline was another topic that I found intriguing. This section of the book discussed how discipline was handled pre-IDEA and the current policies that all stakeholders must adhere to when dealing with special education students. It outlined the responsibilities and protocols of school authorities and guardians, importance of IEPs and BIPs, as well as plans and interventions students require in order to provide them with their needs in any educational setting.

Reference
Osborne, A. G., & Russo, C. J. (2014). Special Education and the Law : A Guide for Practitioners. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin.

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Most interesting legal and ethical topic:

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Most interesting legal and ethical topic:

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The topic of student discipline that require special education services was most interesting during my exploration. I currently serve students as a counselor in an alternative setting and I would like to delve deeper in order to understand why and how administrators handle these case by case scenarios without infringing student rights.

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One ASU Library Document: The Effects of Educational Policy and  Local Context on Special  Education Students’  Experiences of School  Removal and Transition

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One ASU Library Document: The Effects of Educational Policy and  Local Context on Special  Education Students’  Experiences of School  Removal and Transition

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By Tara M. Brown

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Angelo State University - Library Online Resources

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Unauthorized use is prohibited; Usage may be subject to security testing and monitoring; Misuse is subject to criminal prosecution; No expectation of privacy except as otherwise provided by applicable privacy laws.

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One credible electronic document: Disciplinary Alternative Education Programs in Texas – A 2009 Update

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One credible electronic document: Disciplinary Alternative Education Programs in Texas – A 2009 Update

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by Albert Cortez, Ph.D., and Josie Danini Cortez, M.A.

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Summary of Student Discipline in Texas, particularly with Special Education Students and DAEP's Role

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Summary of Student Discipline in Texas, particularly with Special Education Students and DAEP's Role

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After reading about the rights of special education students regarding disciplinary actions against them and the initial intentions in the creation of a Disciplinary Alternative Education Program in Texas, I found this topic and a few unaddressed issues regarding this to be particularly interesting to me.  This topic is critical for me mostly because I have just recently decided to transition from a traditional high school as a guidance counselor to my district's DAEP as their first full time guidance counselor.  Although this topic is not often spoken about or on top of the priority list for teacher professional development/training, it is certainly a huge problem that has not improved within my school district.  As a home school high school counselor, I was exposed to the frustrations and experienced the lack of communication between the students, teachers and counselors when our students would transfer to the district's DAEP due to discipline issues. Awareness regarding this topic is important for educators and all stakeholders because it constantly resulted in loss of student credits upon their home campus arrival.  According to Cortez & Cortez (2009), in 1995 The Texas Legislature created the DAEP in Texas as option B for only criminal offenses and only when JJAEPs are not within local distance; however, DAEPs have not been used as intended and has posed some legal and ethical issues.  Students as young as 6 years old, low-performing minorities and students in need of special education services serve most of the student population in Texas DAEPs (Cortez & Cortez, 2009).
It is evident that the Texas Legislature must take immediate action in reforming what warrants a student to be placed in DAEP along with home campus and DAEP accountability.  Since I am now a part of the DAEP system in need of reform, I am currently working alongside my administrators in addressing the main issues I encountered from a home campus/student point of view.  I look forward to learning more about the legal and ethical implications in my future professional work as an administrator with personal teacher and counselor perspectives to initiate change immediately.

Reference
Cortez, A., Dr., & Cortez, J. (2009, March). Disciplinary Alternative Education Programs in Texas – A 2009 Update. Retrieved August 25, 2018, from https://www.idra.org/publications/disciplinary-alternative-education-programs-texas-2009-update/