Several years ago, when I worked for a Florida school district, I was asked to demonstrate a new learning-management system during evening sessions at our local teachers’ union. The teachers weren’t looking for another software tutorial. They wanted to know whether the system would make their work more manageable, strengthen their current practices, and help them better serve their students.
Once they saw how it could simplify lesson planning, streamline documentation, and improve communication, skepticism became ownership. Less than a year later, when COVID-19 forced schools into remote learning almost overnight, that early teacher adoption helped my then-district make a smoother transition.
The lesson I learned then had little to do with technology. Successful implementation begins when teachers understand the purpose behind a system and believe their experience helped shape it.
I think about that lesson as districts adopt behavioral-threat and suicide-risk assessment platforms and explore how artificial intelligence might improve school safety. These systems can influence how schools recognize students in crisis, coordinate interventions, and respond when the stakes are highest. It is tempting to view organizational processes and digital tools as doing the work. Yet, the work starts elsewhere.
Many assessments of a behavioral threat or potential danger begin when someone notices that something isn’t right. Often, that person is a teacher. Before a multidisciplinary team meets, before a case is entered into a database, and before technology identifies a pattern, a teacher may recognize an important change in a student’s behavior.
For example, a teacher may notice that a student who usually greets classmates has become withdrawn, that a normally engaged learner has begun submitting concerning writing, or that a quiet student is responding with unexpected anger. Most behavioral changes do not signal a threat, but they may indicate that a student needs support. When a broader response is warranted, the teacher’s observation offers an early opportunity to understand the context and help change the student’s trajectory.
Teachers are uniquely positioned to recognize those changes because they spend hours each day building relationships, observing behavior, and understanding what is typical for the students in their classrooms. A strong warning system does not ask teachers to diagnose students or assess risk; it asks them to recognize and report meaningful changes.
As artificial intelligence becomes more common in education, earning teachers’ trust and including their perspectives become even more important.
During more than 25 years as a special education teacher, behavior specialist, district administrator, and now someone who supports schools implementing behavioral threat assessment across the country, I have learned that the information most likely to put up the first red flag begins with someone saying to the school’s leadership or the student’s counselor, “There’s something else you should know.”
As the threat team gathers information about a student, a teacher may explain that the student’s behavior changed after the death of a family member. A counselor may share concerns about a recent family crisis, while a school psychologist may recognize behaviors associated with trauma or a disability that others initially interpreted differently. Each observation alone may provide only part of the picture. Considered together, they give a multidisciplinary, whole-child-focused team the context needed to determine whether the student needs additional support, is experiencing a temporary crisis, or the situation requires immediate intervention.
That is how behavioral threat assessment was designed to work. The U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center has consistently emphasized that targeted school violence is prevented not by identifying a single profile or warning sign but by gathering information from multiple sources, understanding context, and intervening before violence occurs.
Teachers are an essential source of information, yet their perspectives may not be incorporated early enough in district conversations or decisions about selecting the systems intended to support threat- and suicide-risk assessments. Their trust in those systems should not be assumed; leaders can earn it through transparency, meaningful engagement, and follow-through.
As artificial intelligence becomes more common in education, earning teachers’ trust and including their perspectives become even more important. Depending on how a tool is designed, governed, and used, AI may help organize documentation, support administrative staff, surface trends, and connect information for review by staff. But AI cannot recognize that a student’s smile disappeared three weeks ago. It cannot sense that a classroom dynamic suddenly feels different. It cannot build the relationships that allow an experienced educator to observe, “This behavior isn’t typical for this child.” AI should be positioned as assistance to humans.
This is not an argument that teachers should conduct threat assessments on their own. Effective assessment depends on trained multidisciplinary teams that should include administrators, counselors, psychologists, social workers, educators, and, when appropriate and consistent with local protocols, law enforcement. But if teachers are expected to recognize concerning behavior, document observations, participate in intervention planning, and help restore safety after a crisis, they deserve meaningful involvement in the systems they are expected to use every day.
For district leaders, meaningful partnership requires more than inviting teachers to the table. Teachers need clear guidance on when and how to report concerns, how their observations will be used, and what role they play after a concern is referred. Leaders must also provide time, accessible reporting channels, and consistent procedures so a teacher’s concern receives the same careful response in every school in the district.
To ensure that the system is trusted as a means for supporting student and school safety, leaders should:
- Include teachers in the decisionmaking before districts purchase threat-assessment platforms.
- Design systems and processes to capture what teachers notice.
- Train educators not only on how a system works but why its use matters. Most importantly, teacher observations need to be seen as essential alongside other evidence of danger or threat, not just another box to complete.
Every day, teachers make hundreds of small decisions that help keep students safe. Most are never recognized because they resolve problems. But others are the key to getting students the help they need and preventing crises.
Strong school systems and leaders keep sight of that truth.
