Beyond the Badge: What Does a School Resource Officer Really Do?

0:04 What happens when the adults responsible for school safety are trained not only to respond but to connect, de-escalate, and understand? Welcome to the Road to an Effective Classroom Environment. I am your host, Dr. Lashanta, known as that Classy Sassy Consultant. Today we're beginning a special five-part series that is meaningful to me because it takes us back to the research I conducted as part of my doctoral journey. The title of my dissertation was The Impact of School Resource Officers Trained in Social Emotional Competencies on School Incidents of Violence.

0:46 But this series isn't going to sound like a dissertation defense. No, it's not. I have put that one behind me. But it's still present in me as I work in a school setting. And so this was near and dear to my heart because of the relationship that I have seen that effective SROs have with students. So we're going to take the research out of the university and bring it directly into our schools. So we're going to be talking about safety, relationships, conflict, de-escalation, and we're going to talk about the adults who may be called when a situation has already reached a critical point.

1:29 Our school resource officers. So let's begin this entire series with one question. What does a school resource officer really do? Because if your immediate answer is they keep the school safe, we're going to dig a lot deeper than that because it goes beyond just school safety. What does keeping a school safe actually look like anyway? Think about the role of the SRO. So unlike the officer who is who responds to a call in the community, or an officer who may work at the police headquarters, an SRO enters an environment where he or she is seeing the same individuals every day, the same students, the same staff members.

2:24 The SRO sees students who pass them in the hallway, teachers interact with them, administrators call upon them, and then parents, they may even encounter them during school events, basketball, football, PTO, parent orientation. So sometimes the SRO meets a student on a student's absolutely worth day. This is important because schools are not simply buildings, schools are communities, and those communities are filled with young people who are still developing emotionally, socially, cognitively, and behaviorally.

3:09 Many times we forget that as adults. We forget that our students, no matter whether they are pre-K, elementary, middle, or high school, they are still developing in so many areas, emotionally, socially, cognitively, and behaviorally. They're still developing. So you have students that may get angry, they may be embarrassed, they may be afraid, they may feel disrespected. Students may be experiencing something at home that no one at school knows anything about, or very few or one does. Sometimes adults see what adults may see as defiance, it really is an outward expression of something much deeper.

3:59 So it may still be defiance. We're not getting away from that. It may still be defiance, but behind that defiance, there's another face. There's something else going on. And none of that means unsafe behavior, that none of that means that unsafe behavior should be ignored. It means that the adult responding to the behavior needs the skills necessary to determine what I am actually dealing with here. That's where this conversation becomes much bigger than just security. So let's think about this.

4:41 I want school leaders to consider this statement. Authority can make someone comply, influence can make someone listen. And so authority and influence are not always the same thing. An SRO has a positional authority, the uniform communicates authority, the badge communicates authority. But imagine an SRO who has a relational influence. Students know the officer, the officer knows the students' names. Students have spoken with the officer when they're when they weren't just in trouble. You see the officer visible during positive moments and not just moments of conflict.

5:31 Now think about what happens when the officer says, Come talk to me. That interaction may feel completely different. And why? Because the relationship existed before the incident.

5:53 Because effective school safety isn't only about what happens once something goes wrong, it is also about what adults intentionally build before anything happens. So we're going to walk through a situation. Let's walk through a scenario. A student walks out of class after an argument with a teacher. The student is angry. You can visibly see the student angry. Chest is puffed up.

6:23 The student may even be crying. Sometimes they cry when they're angry, but the student is visibly angry. The teacher tells the student to stop. The student keeps walking. Now an administrator gets involved. The student raises his or her voice. Other students begin watching. Phones come out. And now the SRO approaches. So we're going to stop the scene right there for a second, but just keep that scene in your head. At the moment, there are several possible outcomes. The officer could immediately approach the situation with a compliance perspective and say, stop, turn around, do what you're told.

7:06 And depending upon the situation, clear directives may absolutely be necessary. But here's another question: What does this moment require? Does it require enforcement? Does it require distance, de-escalation? Does it require the officer to lower his or her voice instead of raising it? Does it require moving the student away from the audience? Does it require saying, come over here, tell me what's going on? The ability to make that determination requires more than just authority. It requires judgment, emotional regulation, awareness, communication, and it requires the ability to read people.

7:57 Those are social emotional competencies. That self-management, that social awareness, relationship skills, responsible decision making. But here's the question that influenced my thinking and ultimately my research. What happens when we intentionally develop these competencies in the adults interacting with students, particularly adults responsible for maintaining safety? Because we have to keep in mind, adults, you know, we have emotions too. We get frustrated, we get frustrated with students, we get frustrated in our personal lives, we can misinterpret behavior.

8:44 Sometimes we feel challenged, sometimes we get defensive. And adults, we can also escalate situations unintentionally. Adults bring their own experiences, assumptions, perspectives into every interaction. So social emotional competence isn't simply about being nice, and it certainly doesn't mean ignoring dangerous behavior. But what it does mean, and what it is about, is being able to regulate yourself well enough to accurately assess and respond to someone else. That is professional competency.

9:30 And when you're dealing with young people during emotionally charged situations, it may also become a safety competency.

9:40 So here's another question for you when we say a school is safe, what do we mean? Do we mean that there weren't any fights today, there were no weapons found, there were no arrests, and all of those things matter. But safety can also include whether students feel comfortable approaching adults, whether students report concerns before they escalate, whether conflicts are interrupted before they become physical, whether students trust the adults responsible for protecting them, and whether the adults in the building know how to respond when emotions are high, that shifts our thinking from simply how do we respond to violence to what conditions might help us prevent situations from becoming violent in the first place.

10:41 That's a very, very different conversation that we're having. So if you are a principal, an assistant principal, district leader, teacher, counselor, SRO, law enforcement leader, and if you're listening to this today, I want you to consider something. Don't just ask, do we have an SRO? But do but how have we prepared our SRO to work specifically with young people? And then take the question even further. How have we prepared all of our adults? Because it's not just up to one individual or two individuals.

11:26 Some schools may have more than one SRO. It's more school safety is not just about the SRO and how the SRO responds. It's about how every adult in that building responds. De-escalation should not begin when the SRO arrives. Teachers, teachers, you influence escalation. Administrators, we influence escalation. Counselors influence escalation. Support staff influence escalation. Every adult, every adult interaction can either add to the emotional temperature of a situation or take something away from it.

12:17 That's why school safety cannot exist in a silo. If you've been in education long enough, you've heard the term silo and how teachers shouldn't teach in a silo and be off to themselves, never engaging and interacting with other teachers, whether it's teachers that have this that teach the same content or different content. We hear that. If you've been in education long enough, you've heard don't teach in a silo. Well, guess what? School safety cannot be in a silo.

12:50 School safety is connected to leadership, it's connected to culture, it's connected to relationships, and it's connected to how adults respond when students are at their most dregulated.

13:07 So before we close, I want you to reflect on this question for this episode. Does your school SRO have more opportunities to interact with students when something is wrong or when things are going right? Think about that. When do students see your SRO? Is it during fights? Is it during searches? Is it during disciplinary situations? Or do they also see that officer greeting students, participating in activities, having conversations, playing ball with them in the gym, attending events, mentoring, educating, conducting a class, not just during drug-free week, red ribbon week, but educating, going in and doing lessons, becoming a part of the school community.

14:12 The first time a student meaningfully interacts with an SRO should not necessarily be during a crisis. Now, keep in mind that sometimes there are some beautiful relationships that come out of a crisis because that officer has either been trained in these social emotional competencies, or they have developed over time because of who they are.

14:42 Relationships built before an incident may influence what happens during the incident. So this is only the beginning. This is only the beginning of this five-part series. Throughout beyond the badge, we're going to go deeper into the connection between school, safety, relationships, social emotional competence, de-escalation, and violence prevention. And eventually I'm going to take you directly into my doctoral research and I'll tell you exactly what I studied and why I studied it and what the data reveal.

15:25 I'll also go into what I believe those findings really mean for our schools today. And my dissertation I defended in 2021. So still, still very recent. And I'm always looking at different articles and different things that are still going on in the schools as it relates to SROs and school violence and social emotional competencies. So even though the dissertation was defended five years ago, I'm still, it's still ever-present in my life as far as looking at different events as they're happening and questioning was an officer trained in those different competencies.

16:14 But before we get to the findings, I want you to understand the competencies themselves. So in the next episode, when we go into episode two, we're going to be asking the question: what happens before the incident? So we're going to examine why social emotional competence matters for the adults responsible for school safety. And dive, just dive right into that. So we'll talk a little bit more about and go deeper into what those competencies are and why they matter and the importance for adults who are responsible for school safety to have those and to be well versed in them.

16:59 So I want to leave you with this. A badge may give an officer authority in a school, but relationships, emotional intelligence, communication, and trust may determine how effectively that authority can be used. I am Dr. Lashanta, and this is the road to an effective classroom environment. Until next time, keep building environments where students can learn, adults can leave, and everyone can be safe.