Coping creatively: Aspen Community School’s way of dealing with recent threats

After a string of school shooting threats, many students, teachers and families in the Roaring Fork Valley have been on edge.

Recent false threats happened on Wednesday mornings — most notably, on Feb. 22 and March 1 — and schools have been bracing themselves for the possibility of others.

A threat hasn’t materialized in the last two weeks. But after the last one at the beginning of March, instead of waiting to find out whether they’d have to secure their buildings yet again, teachers and administrators at the Aspen Community School decided to do something different.

The morning of March 8, over 100 K-8 students gathered for a day of cross-country skiing at the Snowmass Nordic Center.

After students and teachers took a few laps on the trails, ACS principal Casey White called a brief all-school meeting.

“So last Wednesday, you guys probably remember we had an all-school meeting and then shortly after you got the message that we were going to secure the building again,” she said to students and staff. “And you know what I noticed? The kindergarteners were already out cross-country skiing. And all of a sudden an idea hit: ‘Maybe we should all do that.’”

White ran the idea by her staff first, and then alerted families and local law enforcement that they would be doing a school ski day.

“So one week later here we are, we are all out cross-country skiing because you have been so powerful in being able to stay calm and to help us through times that we don’t really know what’s coming next,” she said. “So thank you for coming out here.”

Out on the trails, fourth-grade student Kai Waanders was skiing with a few of his classmates.

“It’s amazing that we get to be out here instead of being inside a school all locked up like the last few Wednesdays,” he said. “It was kind of surprising and a little scary to have such a surprise — it hasn’t happened once last year or the year before.”

While some schools in the valley received direct threats and had to go into full lockdowns, Aspen Community School went into “secure” mode as a safety precaution. Under a “secure” protocol, all doors are locked and no one is allowed in or out of the main school building, though classes continue.

Waanders said even though he was worried, thinking about all the “what ifs,” he also felt safe.

“I knew that we had a community and people that could help us if something were to ever happen and I knew that we’ve been preparing for it since kindergarten,” he said.

School lockdown drills aren’t the only way that Waanders and his classmates have been preparing for emergency situations.

Social-emotional learning

For years, the small school has been offering what it calls “social-emotional learning.”

“It was a group of us on a very grassroots level, sitting around in our old building,” White said. “The question was, ‘What do we want for our ACS graduates? What character traits do we want our students to embody?’”

They eventually landed on five traits that are now the core of the school’s social-emotional program: kindness, compassion, empathy, tolerance and patience.

White said teachers and staff shape their curriculum to help kids learn those skills.

“We feel like when you can embed the tools to be able to self-calm and to navigate social problems and to apologize when needed — when you can do that in a setting that’s not super stressful — like cross-country skiing or a normal day in the classroom — then when something tough comes up, you've got the muscle,” she said.

ACS also works with Lily Larkin, a licensed clinical social worker and wellness teacher from the nonprofit Aspen Hope Center.

Larkin is one of the center’s 12 school-based clinicians in the valley and she spends four days a week at ACS.

“One of the things we work on is knowing that when our brains go into a fight, flight or freeze response, we’re not necessarily going to learn effectively in that state of mind,” she said.

When the school went into “secure” mode, Larkin said teachers created a sense of safety by tailoring classroom activities to how the students were feeling and coming up with projects that weren’t necessarily part of the regular school day.

“So they were doing art projects in the classroom, they were knitting, they were doing a lot of really wonderful hands-on activities to support them in that moment,” she said.

Larkin also is a parent at ACS and she appreciated that teachers went around to each class and told students in an age-appropriate way what was happening, while it was happening.

“So when my first-grader came home after having the experience, she just looked at me and she said, ‘Mom, somebody was trying to scare our school today,’” Larkin said. “And that's how she described it.”

Some of the social-emotional skills the school teaches, such as the “breathing tool” and the “listening tool,” also are helpful for parents.

“When my daughter comes home and she is visibly upset about something, but she tells me that she’s fine, I can look at her and I can say, ‘Sweetheart, if I’m listening with my eyes, ears, and heart, I can tell that there is something wrong — and you don't have to tell me right now, but I’m here for you and I wanna hear about it,’” she said. “And that’s the ‘listening tool.’”

As a parent, Larkin is especially grateful to teachers who’ve supported families and kids through everything from the pandemic to school threats.

“Teachers are absolutely heroes and they have become, in the last decade or so, first responders,” she said. “It really feels like that has amped up a lot.”

More appreciation for teachers

Back at the nordic center, a group of middle-school students who regularly meet with Larkin were taking a ski break.

“Once a week we go down to her classroom and we sit in a circle and she asks us questions and we answer them altogether,” said sixth-grade student Annalise Ingram. “Also if you need some more time, you can just go down and see her anytime.”

Fellow sixth-grader Anderson Tippet said he appreciated the questions that Larkin asked after the recent threats.

“One of them was like, ‘How are you dealing with this?’ ‘What makes you feel better or helps you not be as nervous about it?’” he recalled.

Tippet said he’s realized that having friends close by helps.

“Most of us have been together since kindergarten, so we’re all really good friends,” he said.

For her part, Larkin said she’s impressed by her students.

“They have moved through all of the feelings related to the last few Wednesdays and it’s so fun to see everybody together smiling, falling over, laughing, picking each other up,” she said.

The group of students agreed that they’re also proud of each other and grateful for their teachers and the whole community.

“Even when we were stuck inside, we still got through it really nicely by working together,” said fourth-grade student Cora Chimerakis. “The teachers just made it all happen and I'm really thankful for them — and thank you for the community, always being there for us.”

Eleanor Bennett is the Morning Edition anchor and reporter for Aspen Public Radio. This story has been reprinted with permission. Visit aspenpublicradio.org to view the original story post.

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