Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File

Parents often try to juggle their own work schedules, texts, and social media, while overseeing their children's online activity, homework, and extracurricular activities.

It’s the little things that get to Shirley Herbas: watching the minutes tick by in the morning while her 7-year-old son fights about what to wear to school, or worrying about what her 2-year-old daughter puts in her mouth. When it gets to be too much, she talks it out with a family friend.

“It’s not that she has all the answers,” says the recent Bolivian immigrant, searching for the correct English to explain. “But she listens, and comprende ... she understands.”

Ms. Herbas, who’s been in the United States just two years, relies on her husband’s extended family for social support. 

That extra family support is crucial to ameliorating parental stress, which U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has declared an urgent public health issue. An advisory released last week calls for a cultural shift that recognizes that raising a child is key to the health of society as a whole.   

“The more we put the whole picture together, it makes it more complicated, but it’s real life,” says Ellen Galinsky, president of Families and Work Institute, a nonprofit that researches changing work, family, and community dynamics. “Paying attention to parents’ well-being is really important if we care about kids’ well-being.”

Tech strains, expectations, and comparisons

Parenting has always had its challenges – budgets, scheduling, health, and safety.  But today, the job is made tougher by the increasing use of technology, financial strains, isolation, and what Dr. Murthy calls a “culture of comparison ... that promotes unrealistic expectations of what parents must do.”  

While he calls on communities, governments, and employers to recognize the importance of parenting through funding and programs aimed at mental health, he said in an Aug. 28 New York Times essay, “Individuals – family members, friends, neighbors and co-workers – can play a critical role.” 

Like Ms. Herbas’ supportive friend, this is often the first line of defense against parenting stress. And Dr. Murthy says asking for help should be seen as a strength, not a weakness; offering help should not wait for an invitation.

Rebecca Blackwell/AP

Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy (left) and his mother, Myetraie Murthy, serve food as friends and family gather at his parents' home near Miami this past July. He says extended family and friends are the first responders when it comes to parental stress.

Feeling it

Parents don’t need to be told they’re stressed out – they’re feeling it.

Dropping off her son at an art class at the Woodland Hills Recreation Center in Los Angeles, Leonora chuckles when asked about stresses she faces as a mom.

She says that she put her son in this art class to counter the time he spent on his electronic tablet over the summer. His online activity fuels one of her biggest worries.

Leonora, who for privacy reasons asked not to use her last name, says she tries to limit the amount of time her 6-year-old spends with electronics but sees other parents being more lenient. It leaves her wondering, “How much is too much, and how much is enough?”

Then there’s the stacked schedule: school, followed by art, then soccer practice, and homework. She keeps her son busy, she says, to manage his anxiety – and her own – with activities to channel his energy. But it leaves no downtime.

Her support network is small – a few friends, whom she says she leans on. And her husband? “Not everyone is born to be a father or mother,” she says. “The one I got, he’s a provider.” 

Leonora mentions school violence, and releases a quiet spring of tears: “I try not to watch news. I try not to put that information into his head because he’s too young. ... I think they have enough to deal with.” Her son’s school, she explains, has a significant Jewish population, and with nationwide clashes over the war in Gaza, she’s terrified the school could be a target.   

Ask for help

Parents everywhere are unnerved by the 24/7 news cycle of gun violence and war, says Susan Newman, a social psychologist who specializes in parenting. Isolation and loneliness compound it, plus there’s the constant barrage of curated images on Instagram that ramp up parenting as a competitive sport. 

In the swirl, many parents overlook a simple aid: ask for help. 

“[Parents] don’t want to be viewed as incompetent,” says Dr. Newman, adding that they “feel they can do it all. Well, in this society, women in particular can’t do it all. You need help, and there are people who can help.” 

Neighbors, friends, or partners are probably willing to run an errand or pick up a child from school, she says, echoing Dr. Murthy’s call to recognize the critical role of individuals. But, she adds, “People don’t know what you need unless you verbalize it.” 

Just those little moments can provide big relief. So can online support groups, which offer targeted advice and communities of support like babysitting cooperatives and church-organized parent groups. 

Experts also recognize a helpful shift in parenting norms, to empower children by giving them a role in family tasks and decisions. This engagement, they say, strengthens the parent-child bond and can buffer against input from peers or the internet.

“It makes the family unit feel more like a unit and a force – that they can tackle ... whatever mountain they’re climbing at the moment,” says Dr. Newman.

“Mom guilt”

Adriane Orje is running after her little girl, who just escaped from a fenced-in playground at the same recreation center. Ms. Orje recently found out she’s losing her interior design job, exacerbating her biggest worry as a parent: money. 

Ali Martin/The Christian Science Monitor

Adriane Orje visits a Los Angeles playground with her toddler. She says she manages the stress of parenting by exercising and getting out to play with her daughter. That makes her daughter happy, which Ms. Orje adds is "helpful to me."

She works from home, where boundaries are hypothetical to a child who only knows her mom is in the next room paying attention to something else. She also participates in some online parent groups, and her mother helps with child care. But in-person meetups can be difficult. Either the timing isn’t right – most of the groups seem to be run by stay-at-home moms who can get together during the day – or she just doesn’t feel like it when the time comes.

She copes by exercising, and leaning into her role as a parent. “Take her to the playground, make her happy,” she says, adding that it helps quiet her “mom guilt” – the relentless feeling of falling short of expectations, whether they’re society’s or one’s own. 

Tied together 

By all accounts, poverty makes parenting harder. “Poverty is quite bad,” says Ms. Galinsky, who recently wrote a book about raising teenagers called “The Breakthrough Years.” “There’s nothing good about worrying about whether you’re going to be able to eat.” 

For parents with few resources, Los Angeles County offers a range of support services and programs, from parenting classes to support groups and family fun nights. To encourage people to seek help, the county’s Department of Mental Health enlists community members to share information about assistance – in 13 languages – with their neighbors.   

“They speak the language; they know the culture. They’re able to get in areas where maybe some of our staff cannot,” says Mary Barraza, senior deputy director for prevention and child well-being for the county’s Department of Mental Health. “We’re getting people who are now reaching out for help that probably never would have before, because the services and the outreach is culturally sensitive.”

The department also works with local schools, because a parent’s mental health is so closely tied to their children’s. 

“It’s just like being on an airplane and you put your oxygen mask on first,” says Ms. Barraza. “As a parent, you have to make sure that your mental health is OK, that you have the supports that you need to then support your child.”

Fall term usually signals a fresh start on college campuses. But continued protests over the Israel-Hamas war, and the related resignation of another president in the past month, are reminders of how tough the spring semester was. Add enrollment and financial aid processing concerns, and you get a sense of the issues that some schools – and students and families – may contend with in the coming year.

In New York, Columbia University started classes Tuesday with dozens of pro-Palestinian student picketers blocking a campus gate, and a campus statue, Alma Mater, being doused with red paint. None of that so far has been on the order of what the school faced in the spring, when it was the site of mass arrests. Demonstrations have happened elsewhere in the United States recently, too, including at the University of Michigan and Cornell University. Protesters continue to want schools to divest from companies with connections to Israel.  

“I think that students will find a way to express themselves, but ... many institutions changed their policies and security protocols during the summer,” says Joe Sallustio, a former administrator, and host and co-founder of the “EdUp Experience” podcast. 

Changes to campus security are one way collegiate life will be different this year. Here’s more on that and other campus topics to keep an eye on this year.

How are Israel-Hamas war protests affecting campus life?

A few weeks before students returned to school, Columbia’s president resigned. Minouche Shafik is one of a trio of women leaders –the others from Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania – who left their positions in 2024, a year that included scrutiny of their handling of antisemitism and protests. Backlash ignited after the heads of Harvard, Penn, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faced intense questioning from a congressional committee in December. Dr. Shafik appeared before the committee separately in April.

Columbia is among a plethora of schools that updated student codes of conduct and tightened security measures in anticipation of more protests and campus disruptions. The school now requires an official university ID to get onto campus or inside any building. Those not affiliated with Columbia must fill out guest registrations. The University of Southern California instituted the same policy and limited vehicle traffic onto the campus to two entrances at certain points of the day. Other campuses, such as the University of Pennsylvania, won’t allow amplification devices, chalking, and light projections.

“The election and war in the Middle East are divisive topics that will continue to stir emotions, and many will protest. However, I expect colleges and universities to run much tighter and have less tolerance for open, elongated engagement with protesters,” says Dr. Sallustio.

Caitlin Ochs/Reuters

A woman refuses a flyer as protesters gather in front of Columbia University in New York City, Aug. 25, 2024.

The American Association of University Professors has said that new policies, some of which require students to inform when they plan to protest, severely limit speech and freedom of expression.

Many universities have lifted suspensions for students who participated in encampments and protests last spring, while others have left those decisions up to local law enforcement agencies.  

Will the FAFSA form work in 2024?

Perhaps the biggest problem facing colleges and universities are the continued hiccups from the failed rollout of a revamped Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) last year. The application was delayed in its release for months, and also had technical glitches. All of that delayed families and colleges from making decisions, and left students without knowing if they could afford to go to schools of their choice. Some students are still waiting to get award letters and have not matriculated. Some students with non-U.S. parents, or parents who didn’t have Social Security numbers, had trouble filling out the form.

The U.S. Department of Education has overhauled the system again for the 2025-2026 school year. It will conduct beta tests in October and November with real students, affecting thousands of families in total. It plans to have the new application ready no later than Dec. 1. Senior officials from the Education Department have said that by doing this phase testing, they are more likely to uncover issues that they can have fixed by the deadline for rolling it out.

Dr. Sallustio says that the FAFSA situation has caused major problems in budgets for midsize schools, and will result in program and technology cuts.

“A lot of schools are waiting to see how many students show up. Typically you would know already, so they’re still waiting to see that class solidify,” he says. “The revenue line for a lot of midsize to smaller institutions is going to be a lot less than they thought it would be. So now you’ve got to figure out what you’re going to do with your expense line.”

He predicts the FAFSA problems will affect next school year also, and that there will be cuts, possibly to administrators, faculty, and staff. Student-to-staff ratios will be affected, because fewer students means fewer employees.

“It’s a good time to look at program cuts, because you have the value of a college degree that’s in question,” Dr. Sallustio says.

Some schools are also seeing the rollback of gains they had made in diverse student enrollment as a result of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision ending affirmative action. The highly selective Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced that it experienced sharp declines in racial diversity in its incoming class, and that they are directly tied to the recent high-court decision. The number of Black students, for example, fell from 13% to 5%. At Yale University, the percentage of Black/African American students held steady. The flip side is that historically Black colleges and universities have experienced enrollment increases, and in some cases, record applications.

Colleges brace for the coming enrollment cliff 

Enrollment issues from FAFSA forms or affirmative action’s end have nothing to do with the enrollment cliff that is predicted for 2025. Fewer young Americans are attending college, with the number of high school grads expected to decline in the coming years. Fewer students believe the expensive price tag of a college education is worth it. And fewer international students are studying in the U.S. American colleges first saw enrollment declines during the pandemic, but 2023 brought a boost. Those gains are expected to be lost. 

In the first part of 2024, about one college or university per week on average announced that it was closing or merging, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. In a report with data from 2004 to 2020, SHEEO said that more than 100,000 students experienced school closures without adequate notice or a teach-out plan. The result was that 71.3% of those students were less likely to reenroll at another school within a month, and 50.1% less likely to earn a credential than students who didn’t experience a closure. Schools that closed abruptly recently have included University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Notre Dame College in Cleveland, and the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York.

Many students and parents are left trying to recover tuition paid to schools and get records, such as transcripts, released. Occasionally, a school finds its way back to solvency.

What role will artificial intelligence play on campus?

As artificial intelligence takes root, faculty members at colleges across the U.S. have been concerned (think cheating) and cautious about its use. Students are embracing it faster than faculty; administrators are using it as a tool for admissions. And at least one English professor argues that AI’s arrival could make the first-year writing course obsolete. 

As the technology becomes more a part of the conversation, some at universities are seeing how they can benefit from it. AI needs guardrails, and educators should be involved in creating parameters for acceptable use, says Kyle Jensen, English professor at Arizona State University and director of its writing programs.

Dr. Jensen says it’s time to accept the fact that AI will affect the way people write in the future.

“If you accept that as a premise, then you can start to ask yourself the question, ‘OK, how do we teach students to use it responsibly in a way that is consistent with all the research that we’ve conducted to this point?’” he says. 

The focus needs to be on best practices and being creative about responding to the challenges that the technology presents, he adds. 

Eraldo Peres/AP

An ad by Valor media shows a photo of Elon Musk at a shopping center in Brasília, Brazil, Sept. 2, 2024. The sign reads in Portuguese, "Musk creates profile on X against Moraes to leak confidential decisions of the Supreme Court," referring to Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who ordered X blocked for having failed to name a local legal representative as required by law.

The gloves are off. And this time, recent dramatic legal rulings suggest, Western governments are boxing clever.

They have been engaged in a long and largely fruitless effort to combat the use of social media networks to promote hate speech, incite violence, or spread politically incendiary lies and conspiracy theories.

That effort continues. But major obstacles stand in the way of the tighter oversight and regulation that governments would like to get from the owners of the most impactful sites such as X and the messaging and networking site Telegram.

A key challenge, however, is how to make such regulation compatible with the core democratic principle of free expression.

And that concern is being amplified by voices on the political right – including X’s owner, Elon Musk – who accuse would-be regulators of trying to squelch dissent on important political issues such as the war in Ukraine, climate change, and immigration.

That’s where the recent court rulings – in Britain, in France, and last week in Brazil – could signal a new approach.

Their target has been more narrowly drawn. The judges have simply ruled on specific violations of their own nations’ criminal legislation.

They have, in effect, served notice to tech titans like Mr. Musk and Telegram’s expatriate Russian owner Pavel Durov: You may be enormously wealthy, and your media networks may have hundreds of millions of users worldwide, but inside our own borders, our laws still apply.

Albert Gea/Reuters/File

Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of Telegram, delivers a keynote speech to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Feb. 23, 2016. A French citizen, Mr. Durov was arrested and faces charges in France over alleged illegal activity on Telegram.

In Britain, judges were responding to the worst bout of race rioting for years, which began after a brutal knife attack on a children’s dance class in the seaside town of Southport.

The catalyst for the violence was a claim, originating on X, that the attacker was a Muslim asylum-seeker who had entered Britain illegally from France – none of which was true.

Attacks on mosques and asylum-seekers’ accommodation were soon being organized on other networks, including Telegram.

When Prime Minister Keir Starmer ordered a police crackdown, in which hundreds of people were arrested and prosecuted, Mr. Musk himself weighed in, declaring that “civil war is inevitable” and accusing Mr. Starmer of Soviet-style tactics.

Brushing off that allegation, the prime minister told colleagues to steer clear of engaging with the X boss and focus instead on ensuring swift judgment in the courts for everyone involved in the violence.

And that, it soon became clear, would include more than those who actually rioted.

Others have been arrested, tried, and jailed for their social media posts encouraging violent attacks.

The woman suspected of posting the first false description of the Southport attacker has also been questioned, and released on bail.

France’s legal action two weeks later was even more dramatic.

The authorities arrested Telegram’s owner, Mr. Durov, on his arrival in France, where he is a citizen, and last week an investigating magistrate brought charges against him.

The French, too, have steered clear of the broader principles surrounding content regulation.

K.M. Chaudary/AP

Plainclothes police officers escort Farhan Asif (center) a freelance web developer, after his court appearance, in Lahore, Pakistan, Aug. 22, 2024. He was arrested and charged with cyberterrorism for his alleged role in spreading misinformation that led to widespread rioting in the U.K. earlier in August.

The legal charges focused on alleged activity that clearly contravened French criminal law: being complicit in the distribution of images of child sexual abuse, facilitating the operations of organized crime groups, and refusing to share relevant information with law enforcement authorities.

More dramatic yet was the action taken over the weekend in Brazil.

There, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the shutdown of X countrywide – making Brazil the first democratic state to do so.

He, too, emphasized he was merely applying the law, enforcing a court order that X should suspend a number of accounts after Mr. Musk had refused to do so.

Still, the Brazilian case was different in one key respect from the more targeted actions in Britain and France.

That’s because it was about political content. Justice Moraes has been leading a Supreme Court campaign to root out what he describes as online “disinformation, hate speech and attacks on the democratic rule of law”– especially since the refusal of former President Jair Bolsonaro to concede defeat in the country’s 2022 election.

Among the accounts he ordered closed are those of prominent right-wing commentators and legislators – proof, Mr. Musk declared after the shutdown, that “an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil” was “destroying free speech for political purposes.”

The ongoing tug-of-war in Brazil is a reminder of the political issues Western governments will have to navigate if they’re to regulate content on the giant social media sites.

It has also refocused attention on the one major international effort that is underway: the Digital Services Act, enacted by the 27-nation European Union in 2022.

How effective that will be remains to be seen. But it requires the largest online operators to show how they are limiting disinformation, material endangering women and children, and attempts to manipulate elections – with potential fines in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

For now, however, even the EU seems to view the strict, well-targeted use of national law, on display in Britain and France, as likely to have a more immediate and impactful effect.

Asked to comment on Mr. Durov’s arrest, an EU spokesman hastened to say that the case had nothing to do with the still untested Europe-wide legislation.

“It’s a criminal investigation,” he declared, “based on French criminal law.”

As Jordi Martin steps out of his apartment building on a sunny Barcelona morning, he finds it hard to remember what his neighborhood looked like ten years ago.

His apartment used to overlook six asphalted lanes of noisy traffic leading to and from the city center. Today, he looks around with pride at a quiet pedestrian street shaded by trees, where children kick a ball around.

A three-block-square chunk of this postindustrial neighborhood, where combustion engines once ruled, has become home to picnic tables, benches, planter boxes, playgrounds, and in one corner, a community garden. 

“It felt like a revolution,” says Mr. Martin, a former adviser to the local councillor who got involved in neighborhood politics in the early 2010s. “Suddenly, the street became alive again.”

Mr. Martin lives on the edge of the city’s first superilla, or superblock, an urban planning innovation that made international waves when the city began implementing the idea here in Poblenou in 2016.

To create a superblock, the authorities take nine normal city blocks and turn them into a haven, banning through traffic, resurfacing or decorating the newly pedestrianized streets, and planting greenery.

The original plan for Barcelona envisioned 503 superblocks revolutionizing the city’s urban landscape, part of a growing global movement to reduce the presence of cars in cities. The project attracted attention worldwide: The city of Los Angeles announced plans to implement its own superblock pilot last year. 

At home, a newly-elected city government has scaled back the superblock scheme, opting instead to pedestrianize individual streets around Barcelona that it calls “green axes.” But proponents of the original, more ambitious, project say that it has raised important questions about the purpose of public space in the city.

Erika Page/The Christian Science Monitor

Jordi Martin sits outside his apartment in the Poblenou superblock, in Barcelona, Spain, July 7, 2024.

“We have to remember that these are projects that affect the cultural habits of the city’s people, daily habits of how they move and act,” says Xavier Matilla, chief architect of Barcelona until 2023. 

“It is normal for there to be reticence and reactions and controversies,” he adds. “What has characterized the city throughout history is daring to do things that are not easy a priori, but which are understood to be necessary.” 

Back to green for Barcelona 

This is not the first time a plan for the 2,000-year-old city has struggled to meet its ideals.

The Eixample district of Barcelona owes its characteristic grid of long blocks and wide streets to an urban expansion plan crafted in the mid-19th century.

That scheme left ample room for green public space within and around each block. But commercial pressures gradually overrode that priority, and most blocks were built up and filled in. Today, Barcelona has only 75 square feet of green space per inhabitant, about half that of New York City. 

The superblock concept, spearheaded by urban ecologist Salvador Rueda, was intended to restore the original vision of a city able to nurture its public health. The goal was to green one in every three streets of the original grid, which would have converted nearly 11 million square feet of roadway to community use.

The city’s second superblock remodeled the Sant Antoni neighborhood in the Eixample. It has become a daily refuge for resident Ana Castillo, who on a recent Sunday was reading a book in the sun. On that day she was alone, but often her daughter joins her to roller-skate nearby. 

“For me it’s crucial,” says Ms. Castillo, who moved from the island of Tenerife to Barcelona for work, but who misses the tranquility of island life. “This is where I can feel relaxed and at ease. We should be building more.”

Erika Page/The Christian Science Monitor

The streets of Poblenou's superblock have been pedestrianized and greened, in Barcelona, Spain, July 7, 2024.

The benefits of greening cities are numerous, from reducing noise and air pollution and fostering community life to improving biodiversity and climate resilience, says Isabelle Anguelovski, an urbanism expert at the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology in Barcelona. 

In the Sant Antoni superblock, pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and particles called PM10 – both commonly found in vehicle exhaust – fell by 25% and 17% respectively, according to a 2021 report by the Barcelona Public Health Agency. And while newly planted trees have yet to reach their full height, summer temperatures are several degrees cooler on these greener streets. 

A retired couple sits on a bench outside the Sant Antoni Market, relaxing at what used to be a busy intersection. They like how the square has turned out, but they note the challenge of making sure public spaces are respected, especially given the city’s party scene. 

“Sometimes when I walk by in the morning, the tables are covered in cups and trash,” says Gloria Lavedan. “Why don’t people clean up after themselves?”

Greener is cleaner, but not cheaper …

Others have criticized the move toward making vehicle transport more difficult in a growing city, though Barcelona is simply following an international trend in this respect.

Cities around the world are prioritizing biking, walking, and public transport. Oslo, Norway, has largely removed cars from its downtown, while cities from Brussels to Paris and Montreal are restricting car use and pedestrianizing more streets. 

One thing everyone agrees on is that superblocks and green axes are becoming more expensive to live in, in a process that has been dubbed green gentrification, as wealthier residents, digital nomads, and tourists are drawn to the transformed areas. 

On the newly pedestrianized green axis of Consell de Cent, rental prices surged nearly 80% between 2022 and 2023, while they rose just 12% on a nearby parallel street, according to data from the real estate agency CBRE.

Locals knew that greener streets would “benefit them over the very short term,” says professor Anguelovski. “But in the medium term, real estate speculation … is going to push people away,” and risks creating “enclaves of privilege,” unless the city encourages the creation of more affordable housing, she worries.

Still, the higher prices point to demand for more people-centered spaces. If at the beginning, residents were skeptical of the idea, now more and more neighborhoods are asking for a superblock of their own, says Mr. Matilla, the architect. 

“We can’t stop improving the city, just as we can’t stop building libraries or schools,” he says. “The goal is to bring about systemic improvement, not just on one or two isolated streets, but throughout the city.”

AP

A woman in Winder, Ga., holds a Bible as she mourns the students and teachers slain at Apalachee High School, Sept. 5.

After the school shooting in Winder, Georgia, on Wednesday, much of the attention has been on what failed. Most of all, federal and local officials acknowledge they knew about the troubled teen, who is accused of killing four people, and had questioned him a year earlier. At the time, they said, they could not definitively connect him to threats posted online.

Yet this focus on how to better predict violence may mask a simpler approach to preventing it. A growing body of evidence shows that teaching empathy toward people who are troubled is more effective in curbing gun violence than trying to profile would-be assailants. And it taps into resources already at hand – neighbors, community leaders, and students.

“We don’t have to leave it up to the police to make sure our people are all right,” said Jahsani Peters, a high school senior in New York City who has worked at a community-based program countering violence. “We just try to help people see the good in life. That there are other ways to handle problems without violence or having to raise your voice and get crazy with somebody,” he told Chalkbeat, an education journal.

While still rare, school shootings have risen sharply in recent years, but so have two other trends. Forty-one U.S. states now fund violence intervention programs. They rely on people within communities – often former perpetrators of gun violence and those directly affected by it – to defuse conflict through presence and listening. Such intervention has reduced gun violence by as much as 60%, according to the Center for American Progress.

A similar emphasis is finding its way into classrooms. A curriculum developed by the Harvard Graduate School of Education, for example, includes teaching caring and compassion starting in elementary school. Two recent international studies measured the social benefits of such learning.

One, a University of Galway study published in June, concluded that teaching empathy “enables individuals to relate to one another in ways that promote trust, care, and cooperation.” The other, in China, found that early lessons in empathy result in “mindfulness and caring for others.” One lasting effect from that, it noted, was a greater sensitivity toward people who appear to be isolated or outcast.

Predicting the next school shooting or identifying the next potential shooter may never be completely possible. But one strong defense is already plain. It involves seeing students, not as targets or vulnerable, but as able to help create a welcoming and safe environment in schools.