Commentary: Do we blame the teachers?

Dear Selena,

I was excited to see that you posted an article about our school systems and quality of education. As a future potential parent my concern for the best quality of education is a pressing concern. Both the article and you highlight the suggested solution as being more training for the superintendents within the schools that have lower performance or dropouts. This however doesn't seem to be the solution to the root of the problem. As you have mentioned the root of the problem and understanding needs to come from the teachers first. Although the suggestion that these select schools get more training for the superintendents is a start with better informing the schools, it still needs to be addressed at a lower level to make a true impact. While this article and subject matter was fairly brief I enjoyed reading your comments on the issue apart from what was written and suggested in the original article.

Policing and De-escalation Training

An article written by Grits for Breakfast Tuesday Nov 1; speaks out about police officers and de-escalation training.

After the Sandra Bland traffic stop and the fatality following her death in 2015, the police department is being faced with the utter importance of de-escalating confronting situations. After the DPS trooper Brian Encinia was indicted and later fired from the department there has been talk of how to better train and inform members of the department. The current solutions are courses taught by Mark Warren a former assistant commander of Texas Department and Public Safety. He has spoke out and taught courses about police communication for over 12 years.

As he states “Everything a police officer does involves communication, and Warren is a die-hard believer that good policing requires good communication skills”.

“Repeatedly throughout the day, Warren reiterated that the course material wasn’t applicable in violent encounters - "You know how to deal with those," he said. Instead, the methods apply to the 90 percent of contacts who aren't violent”.

“We learned how to better communicate with people who are compliant but might "fail the attitude test," which Warren said legally does not justify escalation. We also learned how different types of people react to stressful situations, and what might work best in interactions with each personality”.

This helps put in perspective how critical and crucial it is for our police officers to understand how to react when they are encountered. As the media sets forth the pressing concern of police training on this issue Warren hopes there will soon be a requirement of all academies to train on de-escalation. On the contrary there is talk about weather the academy is the correct time at which the officers should be trained on this information, arguing the information overload of information they will actually be tested on and have to pass in order to become an officer. Thus not grasping the attention it needs for vast improvement.