Conceal and Carry in Schools? An Opportunity for Service Learning

by Mary Ellen Daneels, Lead Teacher Mentor

One of my most fundamental responsibilities as a teacher is to keep my students safe. This blog has, on numerous occasions, discussed how to create a classroom that is safe, equitable, and inclusive for all learners. We have also processed how to create safe civic spaces to help students process current events in troubling times. We have yet to address how to keep our students safe from school violence?

Barbara Laimins, the #CivicsIsBack Mentor Liaison, recently attended a local school board meeting where the membership was deliberating whether they would endorse a resolution being presented at the upcoming IASB Joint Annual Conference to allow individual districts to choose whether they want to arm faculty members as part of a student safety and protection plan.

The exact language of the Student Safety and Protection Resolution from Mercer County CUSD 404 that will be voted on at the upcoming conference, November 16-18, 2018, is as follows:

BE IT RESOLVED THAT the Illinois Association of School Boards shall support and advocate for legislation which provides local school boards the option of developing Student Safety and Protection Plans which may include administrators, faculty, and/or other staff who have completed a state approved training course above and beyond concealed carry training, who have passed the multiple background checks and qualifications required for a concealed carry license, or have a current concealed carry license issued under the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act. Only staff who fulfill all requirements listed would be eligible as an active and armed part of the Student Safety and Protection Plan, upon being granted board approval.

This proposed resolution is the perfect opportunity for students to engage in service learning through researching and advocating how they would like their school board to vote on this issue. Classrooms can engage in an inquiry of this current and controversial issue topic and have their own simulation of a democratic process to deliberate their perspectives to take informed action.

Informed Action can take many forms, including writing letters to their school board or the editor of the local newspaper, testifying in person at a school board meeting, presenting petitions signed by a variety of constituents, hosting an informed conversation or panel discussion with a variety of stakeholders, creating political cartoons, engaging in social media...the opportunities are plentiful!


To help support inquiry on this topic, here are a few resources to use in your classroom:

• illinoiscivics.org has a created a lesson plan using the method of Structured Academic Controversy to equip students with information on both sides of this issue to support civil discourse.
• Our civic mentor, Austin Alexander from Lawrenceville High School, has shared an article and video clip from TIME magazine that details how a downstate superintendent became a police officer so that she could carry a weapon to school to protect students.
• Our #CivicsIsBack friend Dan Fouts shared a lesson plan idea on the issue of conceal and carry in his Socrates Questions blog earlier in the year.
• This article from USA Today gives a survey of how other states are looking at the question of arming teachers.

Do you have any ideas of current and controversial issue topics that lend themselves to informed action? Please comment below. Together, we can prepare students for college, career and civic life.