The purpose of this course is to address head-on a crisis facing our 21st century schools: gun violence. Issues to be explored include (but are not limited to) historical perspectives on school safety, theories of sources of violence in schools (social media, film, music, mental illness, access to guns) and their merit, relationship building as an antecedent intervention, the intersection of social justice and the second amendment, and action steps to be taken to help prevent further school tragedies.

The overall objective of this course is for you to develop a well-informed, research-based disposition toward the issue of school shootings. You are to then take that disposition and develop an action plan (for yourself or others) to help spark a change in the status quo.

This is an online class being taught in the shortened summer format, which means we will cover a lot of ground in a short period. Material is available to engage with in a self-paced manner. I trust that as adult learners you will partake in all of the “suggested” readings and viewings, but I will not utilize pop quizzes to track adherence to my suggestions. Later in the syllabus I provide a recommend schedule for tackling the material. Students answer prompts on FlipGrid, response to questions about a novel, and create a website as a final product in the course.