School of Errors

David Perrodin, PhD, promotes a safety initiative of taking action before a disaster strikes. He is an author, educator, researcher, professor, expert witness, consultant, host of The Safety Doc Podcast, and bicyclist. David received his Doctorate of Philosophy in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at University of Wisconsin-Madison where he researched high stakes safety decisions in education, health care and military. He has presented on PBS and wrote and directed a film about school safety with Pulitzer Prize winner David Obst. Dr. Perrodin has a passion for helping schools and companies design and implement safety instruction and threat reporting tools that are accessible to students with special needs. Visit his website at: http://safetyphd.com/.

• Foreword by Danny WoodburnPrefaceAcknowledgementsIntroductionPart One: The TorusChapter One: How Thinking About a Bagel Can Get You Through the Worst Day of Your LifeChapter Two: Exploration Is a Kind of Safety DrillChapter Three: Situational Awareness via Sensemaking, Your Sword and ShieldChapter Four: Legacy KnowledgePart Two: The Foolishness of BenchmarkingChapter Five: Disasters Are the Real SnowflakesChapter Six: Another New Latin Word: Psychological TransferenceChapter Seven: So, What’s Wrong with Benchmarking? Critical Decision-Making in a Nonlinear WorldChapter Eight: Why Comparing Disasters Feels Too Good to Be TrueChapter Nine: One Variable, One Very Big Difference: the InternetChapter Ten: A Final Word on Schools and BenchmarkingPart Three: Drill FidelityChapter Eleven: Fancy Drills Are Worse Than UselessChapter Twelve: The Right Way to Conduct a Drill: Critical Decision Making in a Nonlinear WorldChapter Thirteen: Other Options: Tabletop Exercises and Focus GroupsChapter Fourteen: What is a Tabletop Exercise?Chapter Fifteen: Video BoondoggleChapter Sixteen: One More Don't: Professional Standards for Educational Leaders (PSEL)Part Four: Systems Will Develop, So Let ThemChapter Seventeen: The Zen of SafetyChapter Eighteen: Incident Command StructureChapter Nineteen: Tornadoes, Hurricanes, and the Fabulous Cajun Navy ReliefChapter Twenty: Seeing Faces on the Moon: How Pareidolia Helped the Rescue System on 9/11 DevelopChapter Twenty-One: Transitioning into Chaos – How Increasing the “Noise” Increases Options… Up to a PointChapter Twenty-Two: Hobbes’s Leviathan Meets the Twin TowersPart Five: How We Know What We Know. So Why Do These Systems Develop?Chapter Twenty-Three: Simulated Annealing, or SA: How the Human Brain is Specialized for ImprovisationChapter Twenty-Four: Leadership Theories AH (After Hobbes)Chapter Twenty-Five: Legacy Knowledge, Distributed Leadership, and Rookie Teachers vs. Admiral LoyChapter Twenty-Six: Summary of What We KnowPart Six: The FutureChapter Twenty-Seven: How Will Decisions Made in the Moment Be Studied? And How Will Future Decisions Be Directed?Chapter Twenty-Eight: Bollards and Planters: The Terrible Ideas That Are Coming to a School Near YouChapter Twenty-Nine: A Mile Wide and an Inch DeepChapter Thirty: Final Implications for School LeadersEpilogue: Nothing Means Anything To Anyone Until It Means Everything To YouReferencesIndex Meet the Author

School safety is a primary concern for any parent, teacher, or school administrator today. Perrodin (Viterbo Univ.) has extensive experience with and background in safety training, and he provides a realistic view of the topic, including practical ideas and solutions for school systems to implement. He cautions of "safety experts" who are more interested in making a profit than protecting schools, noting that administrators should be wary of proposed solutions that only advocate for more safety cameras, metal detectors, or other flashy technology. Instead the author asks for schools to consider "the torus," a way of visualizing familiar places, events, and daily routines and their interruptions as a possible solution, along with situational awareness. Perrodin cleverly uses a bagel to illustrate this point. He believes that schools must be ready to let go of the familiar and improvise, emphasizing a student-centered approach, particularly in the section on drill fidelity, stating that drills should be conducted less frequently but with more urgency to teach students skills to use in a particular situation rather than just to show them what could happen. This accessible book will appeal to multiple audiences and would be a valuable addition to any library. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels.