For the last seven weeks of the school year, Theo had the opportunity to step into the role of school resource officer at our small private school. I say “our” because I teach there and the kids all attend there and we moved south to be close to this place- it very much feels like another member of our family.
After so many school shootings and the most recent one being at a private Christian school in Nashville, our school community felt the need to have security in place in the form of an armed person on campus. Obviously, this is a really hard decision to arrive at, and I think that we all hate that there is a need to protect children with an armed police officer. By their very innocence, it seems that evil should stay away from them. But, unfortunately, it does not. This topic can become very heated and very political and there are so many very strong opinions on the matter that I am not here to debate.
After the atrocity that was committed in Nashville, our school director asked Theo if he would meet with her to discuss ways that we could possibly implement some more safety measures at school. Theo went into this meeting with a long list of suggestions and ideas for her….and came out of the meeting hired as the school resource officer! It was a little bit unexpected, but it was SO incredibly obvious that Theo was the perfect person for this job. It felt like the Lord literally opened a door and kinda shoved us through it 🙂
Theo started work at the school the very next week. It worked out fairly well for us because Theo was still on paternity leave from his full-time job, so this was a nice little step towards going back to work. The first three weeks, Theo worked two days a week and since this is the same school schedule as the kids, it meant that baby Orion and I had lots of time at home to snuggle and also catch up on lots of errands and chores that needed to be done. This was the first time in my parenting life that I got to be at home with just one of my kids!
After three weeks of this nice and gentle schedule with Theo working two days a week, he went back to his full time job. For four weeks, he was working both his full time job (40-50 hours a week) and two days at school (16-18 hours a week). Phew! That was an adjustment!!!
Stepping into this role was such a gift to our family, and I think that it worked the other way as well- it was a gift to the school! Theo spent the first two weeks canvasing the school and tightening security measures. He met with local officers and made sure that his position was legal and approved of from all directions. He did a ton of research on school threats and school shootings and spent a lot of time developing policy and plans for the school should anything like that ever occur. He identified several areas that were not secure and started to work on ways to solve those problems. He also spent as much time as he could with students, getting to know their names and making sure that everyone was where they should be at all times. He LOVED this work. He is so good at problem solving and also enjoys being in mentoring positions, so this was just the perfect role for him.
It was only seven weeks, but it was seven weeks that the entire family and school community loved. The kids LOVED being able to see Dad at school, and we heard from so many families and students that they thoroughly enjoyed having an officer on campus.
So many want to know if he will continue this position in the upcoming school year. Right now we are not sure of what the details will look like, but Theo would love to continue on at our school in this position in some capacity. What that looks like, we are not entirely sure at this point!