Dr. Sciarretta shares his review of Chris Joffe's new book, "All Clear: Lessons from a Decade Managing School Crisis." The book ventures beyond typical safety protocols, uncovering the layers of complexity in crisis management and the power of community unity in fortifying our educational institutions. This includes multifaceted strategies that Chris illustrates through his Swiss cheese model of school safety, emphasizing the need for comprehensive methods that connect security technology, training, and community engagement. This episode will give you a sneak peak to the books insights that promise to arm you with knowledge and inspire a collective commitment to safer schools.
Order Chris Joffe's book: "All Clear: Lessons from a Decade Managing School Crises"
Dr. Sciarretta shares his review of Chris Joffe's new book, "All Clear: Lessons from a Decade Managing School Crisis." The book ventures beyond typical safety protocols, uncovering the layers of complexity in crisis management and the power of community unity in fortifying our educational institutions. This includes multifaceted strategies that Chris illustrates through his Swiss cheese model of school safety, emphasizing the need for comprehensive methods that connect security technology, training, and community engagement. This episode will give you a sneak peak to the books insights that promise to arm you with knowledge and inspire a collective commitment to safer schools.
Order Chris Joffe's book: "All Clear: Lessons from a Decade Managing School Crises"
Welcome to the superintendent's hangout where we discuss topics in education, charter schools, life in general, and not necessarily in that order. I'm your host, dr Sharetta. Come on in and hang out. For today's episode I'm taking a little bit of a different approach. You can think of this as an informal book review, a book club of one, a book chat, a book conversation, but I am going to be doing a discussion with myself and a review of a book that I just finished reading over the Thanksgiving break. It's called All Clear Lessons from a Decade Managing School Crisis by Chris Jaffee.
Speaker 1:If you listen to season one, about halfway through season one there is an episode where I have a conversation with Chris. He is founder and CEO of Jaffee Emergency Services, located in the LA area, and they serve schools and organizations around the country, helping to keep people safe and help organizations prepare for emergencies and the unthinkable, and I really loved sitting down with Chris virtually for our conversation, and then I immediately purchased his book or put in an order and it hadn't even been published yet and it just came out. It's a Jossi Bass publication. You can find it on Amazon or anywhere that you purchase your books. It's not yet out, as of this recording in audible format or audio book format? I know when I talked to Chris on the episode, he talked about the fact that he was going in for an audition to see if he would be the one to read the book and record it for an audio book format or whether someone else would be doing that. So not sure where that conversation ended up. But, starting off from the inside of the book cover quote educational leaders, from principals and superintendents to heads of school and youth organizers need to know what effective crisis response looks like, with engaging anecdotes and real world examples all clear lessons from a decade. Managing school crisis delivers that knowledge in an accessible and, most importantly, practical way, and I would agree with that snapshot of the book.
Speaker 1:I've read a lot of books about school safety, crisis management, crisis communication, preparing for crises within the school environment, and very often books tend to gravitate towards the active shooter scenario and discussions about guns and about hardening campuses. And while that is important and Chris devotes part of his book to that and talks about statistics on gun deaths and also why some statistics are still not available to us on gun deaths the book is much deeper and broader than just that, and that's something that I gleaned from my conversation with Chris in the springtime when we sat down and also comes through in his book. The book is peppered throughout with anecdotes from Chris's life, whether drawing on lessons from a childhood of trauma as an adopted child and then experiences growing up and some experiences as an adult. He has a pretty poignant experience that he relates in the book of going for a run and coming across someone who may or may not have tried to take their own life and how he responded to that and how members of the public reacted when he called for help, etc. So this is really kind of a guiding piece in the book. It's not just statistics and dry plans although there are some plans and references that I'll get into in a couple minutes but it's really woven into. This is Chris's own story.
Speaker 1:I want to start out with just a quote from the preface. He writes I grimace at the question what's the one thing that would make schools safer? There is no panacea, as we'll discuss in great detail. My fundamental belief is that everything in life is a calculated risk. Therefore, I cannot guarantee you will be safe. Instead, I work to educate you on the risks and the sensible mitigation tools with which you can improve your own chances of being safe. I know it's a burden and a great responsibility you, those around you, your community, in that order. That's the flow and that's how we'll prioritize safety. End quote you, those around you, your community. That theme repeats throughout the book and it makes me reflect on a question that I received from a parent in a parent forum a number of years ago when we were doing our annual parent university on safety preparedness, and at that time, as many times, much of that was focused on active shooter mitigation and response and the parent raised a hand and said I will only keep my kid in your school if you can guarantee absolutely beyond the shadow of a doubt that nothing will happen to them. And of course that's impossible, and Chris talks about it in the book that you know. There are risks everywhere. There are risks coming to school that have nothing to do with school, that have to do with just being a human on this earth. But there are things that we can do to mitigate and then plan for things that we believe are likely or semi likely to befall, and even those things that aren't very likely but would be catastrophic.
Speaker 1:One of the things in here before we get into some of the practical pieces, is that I liked is. You know, chris in his writing is always pulling on research and studies. He's very well read in this area of disaster preparedness and he talks about the disk personality assessment, disc, which was created by the psychologist William Moulton and it's basically a rating scale to assess which of our personality traits come out the most and which of them come out the least in situations of emergency or crisis. Disc stands for dominance, so that's the D influence, steadiness or conscientiousness. And so we take this assessment and there's a link in the book to take the assessment. I took it and I, like the author, happened to be dominant in the D high D, as the results indicate, and that's not surprising. Folks in formal leadership roles tend to fall into that category.
Speaker 1:But, as Chris notes in the book, you know, that doesn't necessarily mean that Chris Jaffee or I should be the ones always managing in crisis, depending on what the situation is, and we also have to look at what the other members of our team, what their DISC analysis results are, so that we can weave together an effective team rather than just be stuck in our own areas and not working well together. One of the things, on a side note, that's cool about this book is that in every chapter there are action items. So, for example, for this chapter where the mention of the disk analysis is Chris, his action item is go to the accompanying website and take the disk assessment and focus on your stress reactions. Come back to the site to look at how you might Dressed differently than others in your community, how you might stress differently than others, because our reaction to stress and Emergency and crisis is not uniform. It's different depending on the person. We can have a, you know, fight or flight Response, which chris talks about in the book on page 10, or we can have an analysis paralysis response, for example, which he says Commonly occurs during creeping crises that emerge over their days or weeks.
Speaker 1:It is the psychological or social emotional response that often plagues leaders at the beginning of the crisis. It's also known as freeze. In a more acute situation, it's the inability or unwillingness to move forward for fear that there might be another option and or because One is too consumed by choices, too overwhelmed to even consider progress. So there's fight or flight or there could be analysis paralysis. You think about something like maybe, wildfires that seem to be developing over a number of days, for example, I mean kind of can watch him progressing and we can fall into that or denial.
Speaker 1:Denial is another response. Denial is frequently experienced along with the stimulus of the Initial event and sometimes is replaced by one of the responses above, anecdotally. This is chris speaking. I can share that denial is the place that most people start out in a school based emergency. It's refusing to believe that something happening is true or refusing to believe that the magnitude of that very event is a significant as it is. I pause it. This is chris speaking that denial poses the greatest risk to our communities because denial costs us time. If you don't know, acknowledge the emergency, you won't be responding to it. Therefore, much of this book is designed around managing denial, and that's then the chapter, the subject of the next chapter, chapter two in the book. That reminds me of, you know, a situation.
Speaker 1:Years ago I remember receiving an email from a staff member. Actually was a Email that went around to the entire staff and it went something along the lines of hey, does someone here something that sounds like gunshot? Then someone else responded yeah, I think I heard something. Then another person said no, that's actually something else. It's a Firing range that the police use a few miles away and sometimes you can hear it. And then another person said are you sure? And I'm looking at this Chain of emails going around and it's people wrestling with whether this could actually be what we maybe think. It is now, thankfully it really was the firing range, but there are a lot of examples of that. In San Diego a number of years back, the veterans hospital went on a complete lockdown Because at the time they thought there was an active shooter in the hospital. Turns out that it was either and they're not entirely sure, but it was either someone dropping weights in a weight room that sounded metallic might have sounded like a gunshot to someone or A staple gun, like a construction industrial staple gun or nail gun that was being used on a project there. Whatever the cause of that, someone made the decision to To lock the place down and in the end it didn't know, no one was at risk. But that's kind of the opposite of denial that someone taking action in the moment.
Speaker 1:Another thing that I really resonates about this book and is really a correction for me is this whole concept of practice makes permanent. So when Chris and I spoke, I admitted to him that as a type A I think high D dominant Person, I'm always pushing to have Practice be as realistic as possible, to the point where you know. I've suggested that at times we should just pull, you know, an evacuation drill, without explaining anything about what it is, and see what happens. Or should we have false intruders try to get on the campus and try to just kind of talk their way past the front desk and then see how good are our Exterior checks and balances and barriers are? But Chris said he views practice as making permanent. So, for example, one of the things he told me and it's in videos, youtube videos and presentations of his online is that, rather than when he's doing a training at a school or whatever the organization is, rather than talking about the scenario very, very unlikely but terrifying and traumatizing scenario of an active shooter On campus which, by the way, he says, as soon as he brings that up he sees people, shoulders go up and people hunch over and the looks on their face, faces change and it's really hard for them to even be thoughtful in those moments of even talking about the scenario. Instead of that, he suggests the scenario of a swarm of bees, which is Far more likely, much less damaging, although you have to think it through because there may be people who are allergic. Certainly terrifying, and but it's also pretty instinctive about what we do if we see a swarm of bees we want to get away and get inside and lock the door and so Practice making permanent rather than traumatizing and sometimes re traumatizing people by making a drill to realistic, certainly in the beginning of of this whole process.
Speaker 1:And he talks about, on pages 20 and 21, the importance of emergency drills. He says a goal is to practice enough through emergency drills that we reach what we often think of as muscle memory, where our response is automatic and we don't have to try to remember the steps to take when in the crisis moment. This allows us to continue to progress, even when faced with the psychological and physiological symptoms of stress. It allows us to make the choice today to default to progress, such that when we're faced with a crisis, we don't have to wonder what steps to take, vasylated, and whether it's real or perceived, or take any other actions that might delay a response. So the action for this is, he says, at least once a month conducted drill to practice the knowledge, and he also recommends checking local, the local news to ensure you're doing drills At the right cadence for sorry, not the local news the local laws to ensure you're doing drills at the right cadence for the age group serve. So obviously that's a common sense piece for schools.
Speaker 1:But then he talks about the difference between a good drill and a bad drill. So not every drill is good and not every drill is even effective. So he says a good drill is successful because people were challenged, but to a level at which they could still succeed. Yes, we already reached Him and we did that. But we're good. We're not taking the risk. We're doing it in practice in a meeting. We're taking the risk in concert surround the campus. Thank you, sticks tempor. Why I'm still OK. I'm still OK. So it builds muscle memory and confidence. So if people are too challenged and you're asking people to repel down walls, people who've never even held onto a rope and held up their body weight or something, then that's just going to be way too challenging and there's not much confidence that's built out of there and probably no muscle memory Clearly identifies that it's a drill.
Speaker 1:Later on he talks about the rationale for that Involves all the people who might normally be on campus. So that's really important too right to kind of choose the time of day and just got to apply equally to substitute teachers as well as administrators etc. Leverages multiple wrinkles or injects to not just do the same thing repeatedly. So leveraging wrinkles or injects so that there's some variability that is as realistic as possible. Goes on and on. Has a recap at the end Our trauma-informed practices teach us that we need to reflect in order to remain psychologically safe. And there's more recommendations on page 21.
Speaker 1:And then he contrasts that with on page 23, a bad drill, it says. Fundamentally, a bad drill is the opposite of everything we just talked about. So a bad drill generates no learning, challenges people beyond the point that they can be successful and leaves them feeling like they've failed. Has sensorial items like simulated gunshots, injuries or other similar simulations which the community isn't ready for. And then he has a really important note for that. He says if the community is ready for these, there can be a time or place for such sensorial items. But if you watch the news, you've seen at least a few of these played out terribly often with good intention, but terrible and painfully traumatic outcomes. Please consult with a child psychologist, an adult psychologist and multiple external experts before conducting a sensorial drill. Then he says bad drills don't have a beginning, middle and end. That's clearly defined. There's no debrief, no data reflection or collection. And he has a really interesting thing. That's a good way to end a reflection on this chapter. It says my favorite saying is that an imperfect drill is a perfect opportunity to learn. So we know they're not going to be perfect, life's not perfect and the goal is not to have a perfect drill, the goal is to learn and grow so that we're better prepared for what may happen.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of interesting pieces in the book where Chris draws from the work that the government agencies have done for years and years on preparing for emergencies, for example FEMA, fema's four concentric circles of emergency response that include preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation, kind of in a circle, and it was actually interesting. It reminded me somewhat of the work that we do in the International Baccalaureate, which is a design cycle and it's not only IB that does this where you plan for something, you test it out, you learn from that and then you plan again, and so thinking that through in the context of emergency response can be useful as well, one of the pieces that I was most drawn to in this book and it connected somewhat to the conversation. Pardon my sticky note noise here, but this is a real live boots on the ground book review study. So if you could see, I've got Chris's book all marked up and I've got post-it notes everywhere.
Speaker 1:Chris has chapter five devoted to analyzing risk and, as he said previously, it's impossible to eliminate all risk. So he says everything in life is a calculated risk driving, flying, walking, learning, loving. Living fundamentally means choosing the risks you're willing to take. I wholeheartedly believe that life is fundamentally weighing the pros against the cons, thinking through the causes and effects and the consequences that come along with the risks we take. And it's interesting, I learned that Chris is a licensed pilot and so he very much understands that whole calculation. But he has a formula in the book, on page 54. And I'm not sure if it's his formula or he derived it from somewhere else, but in any event the basic formula for risk assessment, as Chris Jaffe delineates it, is likelihood times severity equals risk. So the likelihood of an event happening multiplied by how severe the impact could be equals the risk. And it's interesting he talks about the way to interpret this formula is concrete and universal. An actuary somewhere at your insurance company could tell you the statistical value of risk. You could tell you the statistical likelihood of a lightning strike on your playground, a car accident in your drop off line or an active shooter on your campus. But for the purposes of this book, I don't want or need you to become an actuary, I need you to become an approximate Terry. And then he says please forgive that dad joke, I actually like that.
Speaker 1:Importantly, you have to be vulnerable in the risk identification process. Vulnerability, in this case, may be the antidote to denial. Vulnerability may be the antidote to denial Only when you acknowledge that there are risks that you don't. Only when you acknowledge that there are risks you don't want to contemplate Can you prepare for them. Only when you acknowledge that there are risks that you don't want to contemplate can you prepare for them. So that's the opposite of a denial that preparedness will ultimately protect lives.
Speaker 1:It talks about the list of variables that could impact the likelihood portion of this equation, like geographic risks what natural disasters could happen in your area that might not happen somewhere else? Are you in tornado country? Earthquake country, flood, fire could be more universal, et cetera. Neighborhood risks what's the makeup of our more immediate surroundings? How do those affect us? Banks in the area increase the likelihood, for example, of a bank robbery, creating an on-campus concern. I've experienced that. What's the general risk level of our neighborhood? There's a people component right Crime statistics, sex offenders. There's a property component type of structures versus wild land access, how many streets get to and from our school or organization? Mitigation, closest fire, police stations, community risks what age students do we serve? And playground, how does that look? What's the equipment look like? So obviously the list is much, much longer than we could include here.
Speaker 1:And then he goes on to talk about severity. How severe are the consequences if that something actually happens? So how severe are the consequences if it happens? And so in order to think about the severity, we have to talk about the people impact right. Might hurt or kill people, property impact, right. So if you're thinking about a gas explosion, for example, you can talk about the likelihood of that, and there's all those geographic and neighborhood and infrastructure factors that go into the likelihood. But then you start to talk about the severity piece, right, what's the impact of that potentially on people? What's the impact on property? What's the impact on the physical environment, what's the impact on the digital environment, what's the impact on nature, what's the impact on our social environment, our community, what's the impact on reputation? So all of these things that go into this metric of likelihood, time, severity and then determining the risk. And on page 58, there's a really cool. It's figure 5.1. There's a cool model for a spreadsheet where an organization can go through their risk analysis and plug in after discussions on a scale of zero to five, the likelihood that something is gonna happen and then the potential severity of its impact.
Speaker 1:So we actually at Albert Einstein Academy is we've been engaged in this process and it's very helpful because you can think about the way we did. It is. We just started with brainstorming, what are the risks that we think we have now? And people put the things that you would think they would put up on the post-it notes. You put them up on the wall and then it extends all the way up to acts of war and zombie apocalypse. Then you start to look at that and say, okay, severity of a zombie apocalypse is probably very, very high in all of those areas environmental and social and physical and human and financial and reputational, et cetera. It's not a good recruiting strategy to have people know that zombies have taken over your organization, but likelihood of it occurring is either zero or, well, historically zero. So I don't wanna debate whether where zombies fall into the realm of reality or not, but I think listeners get the point. Then you look at something like a conflict with parents fighting over a custodial issue, one parent trying to pick up their child, and they're not on the manifesting. They are allowed to, but they're the child and the kid's calling them mom or dad. And so we're in the middle of that, so much more likely to happen than a zombie apocalypse. I've seen it happen dozens of times in my career and I have yet to see the zombie apocalypse. Destruction to the physical environment and probably not so much most of the time. Right, reputational probably not. It's not really gonna take down your whole tech infrastructure, but there are some risks to maybe some physical risks to staff and et cetera. So we have to kind of go through those as we think about how we then put our plans together.
Speaker 1:One of the things that Chris mentioned and he mentioned it on my podcast in the context of COVID, but he talked about the Swiss cheese approach and this was adapted from a book called the Swiss Cheese Respiratory Virus Defense by Ian McKay, published in 2020. And this is on page 66 of the book, and the basic concept is that when you, if you're trying to handle something like pandemic defense and you think of the pandemic defense defenses that you put up as pieces of cheese, pieces of Swiss cheese you put up one piece of Swiss cheese, it's gonna block some of the impacts, but there's holes in the Swiss cheese, so the other impacts get through. And then if you take a different piece of Swiss cheese with different configuration and placement of the holes and put it next to that first piece of cheese, then it blocks some of those holes in the original one, but it also creates some additional holes, et cetera, et cetera, and by the end you have a pretty successful multiple layers of success. And so the statement is each intervention or layer has imperfections or holes. Multiple layers improve success.
Speaker 1:So Chris then applied that to school safety. He calls it the Swiss cheese model of school safety, and his metric, or his drawing rather, on figure 6.2, is really interesting. It talks about all of the different pieces of cheese. Right, security strategy is one Emergency response practice the drills that we talked about is another one. Emergency response training, which can be part of drills, but it goes on beyond that. Threat assessment team and their work, that's another piece of cheese. Visor management system right, we haven't even talked about that, but that's a significant piece. Incident command with succession plans that's another one. Reunification training another one. And so, part of this figure, chris talks about the factors that favor protection. So, when you layer all of these Swiss cheese pieces together, the factors that favor protection are education, right, teaching and learning about what these different steps are and what they mean.
Speaker 1:Community trust. I trust within the community that the actions that are being taken are for the good and greater good of the community and its members. Financial support, harm reduction, effective risk communication those are factors that strengthen the Swiss cheese model. As Chris says. Factors undermining it are misinformation, conspiracy, inequities, crisis fatigue and hesitancy. Misinformation, conspiracy, inequities, crisis fatigue and hesitancy and I would pause it that, for my experience, because we live in such an instantly connected and interconnected world with social media and everyone with a smartphone, the imperative of regular, clear, consistent communication is a non-negotiable in all of this.
Speaker 1:Chris writes in the book that when something happens, crisis or an emergency happens. If we don't, as an organization, communicated, people our constituents, families will create their own versions of it Spoken, written, posted online. If we communicate openly and honestly and directly, they will still create their own versions and stories about it, but they may be just a little bit more hewed back towards the version that we communicate. So just some interesting points that Chris brings up. What I also liked is that he talks about something that he and I discussed in the podcast, which is, instead of only doing a threat assessment or risk assessment, we also consider doing a connection assessment and look at connection between members of our community, between adults and students, between teachers and the students we serve, et cetera. He cites a statistic on page 65. And again, this is only in the context of violent attacks in schools, but I think it could be extrapolated out in terms of trying to mitigate other types of less severe but also destructive actions that could take place. He says in 2019, the US Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center, or N-TAC, delivered a report that concluded 83% of attackers shared verbal, written, visual or video communications that indicated their intent to carry out an attack, threatened the target and or threatened others 83%. Now he does note that this specific dataset has an N of 29, so it's a pretty small set of incidents, but, as Chris says, we've seen this hold true across multiple studies and multiple datasets. People don't just snap with time. Thorough and proper investigation and assessment and a realistic network of folks that these assailant interacted with, police and investigators have always been able to find a person, or, in many cases, a few people, who knew that the assailant was potentially dangerous. How many times have we heard that in the news? Right, that there's, something will happen, and then someone will come out afterwards and say, oh yeah, well, he had talked about this or he'd posted this, or multiple people say that. And so it's that connection assessment and then knowing as an organization what to do early on, as by means of a threat assessment, to then try to head that off way before and provide support for people.
Speaker 1:The book is filled with just chock full of really good resources. There's actually a QR code in the back that if you purchase the book, you get access to a number of resources for free and templates online. There's also a list of let's see here these sticky pages. There's a list of all the surveys that Chris talks about in the book and the links to them and suggested reading. I always like to see that in a book. Haven't read all of them, but Dare to Lead by Brene Brown, I just recently finished.
Speaker 1:Stop the Killing by Kate Schwate, who is a retired FBI agent. The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecca Also recommend that. That was part of an Alice Active Shooter protocol training that I was engaged in a number of years ago. The Unthinkable by Amanda Ripley talks about natural disasters around the world and terrorist attacks and how some people respond proactively and other people in denial. It's Lockdown Drills by Schildkraut, again a useful book for thinking about what lockdown drills are, could be, should be, shouldn't be. So that's an interesting piece in the book and useful at the end.
Speaker 1:And then I wanted to kind of wrap up with the, something I found really useful. It starts on page 106 and Chris has put together this kind of framework called the rule of sevens, and he acknowledges that I'm often asked why seven? And there are a few pieces of elegance that I'll share with you throughout part three, which starts at this point. But, importantly, if you prefer threes, fives or nines, you could use those two, I suppose, but stick with sevens for at least the remainder of this book and I hope you'll find there's some real power in the framework. So the seven, the rules of seven, goes like this seven seconds, seven minutes, seven hours, seven days, seven weeks, seven months, seven years. So from seconds all the way up to years and units of time measurement.
Speaker 1:So the framework on page 106, the first seven seconds requires situational awareness and train protocols. Look, thinking back to the example of the VA hospital, you hear something that sounds like a gunshot situational awareness protocols. What other protocols that particular organization has? When they hear something like that, do they make a call? Do they call 911? Do they lock down? Do they lock down, et cetera. Seven minutes, activation of the incident command team and emergency response directions. That's really still physical safety. The first seven seconds, yeah, that's all about physical safety, as are the next seven minutes, right, then seven hours. Usually by then you're still on physical safety, but you're moving into, like a parent-student, reunification and the incident command system is still activated At that point and I like that.
Speaker 1:Chris points out that most organizations, schools et cetera, especially schools, because you're talking about reunifying children with their parents Most schools don't do a good job of drilling in reunification, right, they're much better at fire drills or maybe a lockdown drill, but telling 100 or 500 or 1,000 or 10 or 20,000 sets of parents that on such and such a day there's going to be reunification drills and we're going to pretend that something has happened. There's a huge communication piece there. This is just me roughing and putting on my own professional hat, because every time you send out a note someone's going to mistake the fact that it's a drill and think it's actually real. Then going through the logistics of having parents come and quote unquote pick up their kid after an emergency end quote. That's that seven hours piece. Then there's the seven day window, which then segues over into psychological safety. Right, the physical safety of the immediacy has passed, but now it's incumbent upon the organization and the community to debrief the incident. That's really where counseling services, mental health professionals come in. Then the seven weeks plus, which goes all the way up then to months and years, really is resume normal activities. This is the psychological safety and resume normal activities long term resilience, reflect on the progress and ongoing mental health support. I think it's a useful framework to think about.
Speaker 1:I just want to finish with reading something from the back of the book that I think will tie this up in a bow. By the way, again, I've been reviewing all clear lessons from a decade managing school crises by Chris Jaffe. Highly recommend it. Pick it up on Amazon or wherever you get your books, and hopefully Chris will be recording the audible version soon. I know the other day I was leading a safety committee meeting and I had purchased a copy of the book for all the members and handed them out and a couple of people said, oh, I'm going to listen on audible, listen to the audio book, and it's not yet out. I know, especially for busy professionals or some people are auditory learners I digest a lot of books that way and working out or running or driving or whatever the case may be, and so hopefully that comes out soon.
Speaker 1:The back of the book says true learning comes from a foundation of safety, security and preparedness. Safety, security and preparedness when crisis hits, how you respond in the first five minutes is crucial to limiting the damage and determining the outcome. Do you have the knowledge, skills and the confidence you need to respond to school emergencies? In all clear, chris Jaffe, one of the nation's leading experts on school safety, equips you with those skills, so I think that's a good place to end this one person conversation. Thank you for tolerating my somewhat rambling thoughts and my post-it note sounds, but I highly recommend this book and it's been a useful addition to my professional library.
Speaker 1:Pretty quick read. You can also jump around in it. If you perhaps know and understand some of the content, you can jump right into. The whole chapter is on concrete plans. I didn't want to go into too much depth on that on the review, because it's really more visual, but there are templates for that and there's a lot of really, really good work in this book.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that Chris said to me is as soon as I finished the book, all I could think about was version 2.0, because we never stopped learning, we never stopped growing, and I think Chris Jaffe really represents that as a leader in his community and in his work and in his company, and that's something that I think we should all aspire to. So I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I did and I'd love to hear feedback from folks. Thank you for listening to the Superintendent's Hangout. You can follow me on Twitter at DVS1970. Please be sure to share this show with friends and family on social media and in the real world I'm going to bring, to Brad Bacchial for editing and production assistance and to Tina Royster for scheduling and logistics. Thanks for hanging out and have a great day.