A tragic day in Ohio

look back.

the victims of the Chardon,
Ohio, shooting
you earn your angel wings.

Everyone is asking themselves, How can we know?

I know that educators all over the country are now huddling

The answer is that we can’t. But what we might consider
into the hearts of children, we will, of course, find their angels. But we will also
find their demons and must help the child to banish them. That can happen only
if we spend time with them. Not long before the terrible tragedy in Chardon I was discussing discipline and classroom management with a
teacher in Dayton and she told me, “We don’t have discipline problems, we have
feedback problems.” She meant that our first duty to children is to pay
attention to them.

Just yesterday, at a meeting of our local school board’s curriculum
committee, a special education teacher was trying to explain to a social studies
teacher that the road to student motivation runs through the ear.  “Listen to them,” she exhorted. “It is
so important to make these individual connections to children. Then they will
open up and then you can reach them.”

Our sincere condolences to the children of Chardon.