“One of the issues we’re seeing in education is retention rates for teachers,” said George-Puskar. “Enrollment numbers for schools of education are down because of the already challenging demands of being a teacher, coupling that with concerns about safety.”

“I find future teachers to be extremely brave,” she added. “The world we live in today can be really scary, and there are fears about safety in schools. Instead of shying away from that, they are running straight to it, so many of them. It’s because of wanting to make a change within our schools and within our world.”

James Smythe, a student teacher in the Fordham five-year accelerated program, said, “Being a teacher is hard enough. I’ve got a lot on my plate, and I’m only a student teacher. There’s real, actual teachers out there that I work with, and I see them put in everything they have every single day, and there’s still more they have to do. And now they’ve got to learn how to fight a gunman?”

“I would hope that teachers and schools would get the attention they deserve,” Smythe added. “They need support. They are not going to walk away from this, because they love it. … We’re going to have to do well on behalf of these teachers. And I would hope that lawmakers would see that, and there would be an American cultural shift that would see that, to a point where we would see that [being]an educator is one of the most noble things you can do, and to be honored as such.”

Mary Olivette Bookman, another Fordham student teacher, said, “We learned that the best way to prevent a potential school shooting is to create that positive classroom environment where students feel supported and loved. If they know that there are other ways to express themselves … so the alternative never comes to their mind, all they think of is, ‘I have support. I have love. I am important, and my classmates are important.'”

“If anything, it strengthens my resolve on the importance of teachers and the role we can have in students’ lives to be a source of positive guidance and support,” she added. “Regardless of what happens, I at least know that I did what I could to try to make a difference in a student’s life. … That makes me feel that … what I do as a teacher matters.”

Then a catastrophic surfing accident on the New Jersey shore in September 2013 shattered his life in an instant. A wave slammed him headfirst into the ocean floor, fracturing his neck in five places. His heart stopped. Emergency workers resuscitated him on the ambulance ride to the hospital.

When Keenan awoke, he was paralyzed from the mid-chest down. His prognosis was bleak. Doctors weren’t sure he’d ever be able to breathe on his own.

‘I Cried to God for Mercy’

Five years later, Keenan visited Fordham’s Westchester campus in West Harrison to speak about his recovery, and how he clawed his way back to once more live a fulfilling life. It was a steep climb for the Fordham ROTC grad, who served as a U.S. Army platoon leader in Honduras in 1992.

“My grief was so profound I couldn’t sleep,” recalled Keenan. “I lay there, listening to the sound of the ventilator. I cried to God for mercy, and mercy meant a peaceful passing. I felt I could be of no good, of no service, only a burden to my children, my family, and my friends.”

What changed Keenan’s attitude was a conversation he had eight weeks after his surfing calamity with former New York City police detective Steven McDonald, who’d been living with quadriplegia since 1986, when he was shot three times in the line of duty. McDonald told Keenan that God had a role for him, that life would return.

Gone were many of Keenan’s joys: playing guitar and tin whistle with the band, Summer Wind; competing in sports; and teaching history to teens in the high school classroom.

“I had a huge decision to make: Do I allow the darkness to consume me and beat me down and defeat me?” he said.

Keenan chose life.

Four months after he broke his neck, Keenan was off the ventilator. He learned to maneuver a motorized wheelchair with the “sip and puff” technology that lets him steer it with inhalation or exhalation.

Among Keenan’s friends is James J. Houlihan, managing partner of Houlihan-Parnes Realtors, who knew Keenan’s father.

“I can’t imagine going through a small piece of what Billy has gone through and still remain positive,” said Houlihan, GABELLI ’74, a Fordham trustee who helped bring Keenan to campus to share his story. “He did not choose to go to the dark side. He did not give up.”

‘A Message of Hope’

By 2015, Keenan was teaching again at North Rockland High. Almost two years later, however, he was hospitalized for two weeks and almost died from an infection that ended his teaching career.

Keenan said he faced that recurring question: “Do I sit in a room feeling sorry for myself, getting lost in self-pity? That didn’t happen. I realized I wasn’t strong enough to teach five days a week, but I was strong enough to speak one or two times a week, to share a message of hope to people who feel beaten down.”

Keenan’s mind remains sharp, his voice strong, his will unwavering.

“I want you to remember the man in the wheelchair,” he said at the Fordham event.  “You are able-bodied and able-minded. There is absolutely nothing you cannot do. Imagine what you can achieve, the adversity you can fight through and withstand. In the end, the decision is yours.”

After the speech, several attendees gathered around Keenan to thank him for his inspiring words. One woman was so touched that tears streamed down her face from the realization that she’d be happier if she appreciated what was good in her own life.

“Don’t be sad,” Keenan instructed her. “I’m not.”

—David McKay Wilson

“Teachers are not just thinking about math, reading, and writing,” said Marilyn Bisberg, a clinical instructor, adviser, and professor for Early Childhood/Early Childhood Special Education programs. “They’re thinking about vulnerability. How do I protect the children in my classroom, and how do I protect myself? And where do I stand on all of this, in the political climate?”

Last March, a former student sent Bisberg an email. The young woman, an assistant teacher, wrote that her head teacher had announced they were going to prepare for a potential school shooting through practice drills. The head teacher’s nephew had been at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School during the February massacre.

“She [the assistant teacher] was totally distraught by it. That angst can break down her ability to feel empowered to help in some way,” said Bisberg. “She said, ‘We need to talk about this in higher ed—preparing teachers to be aware of this new part of their teaching.’”

“How can we prepare teachers better in relation to their role as teachers in the social and emotional area?” Bisberg said.

Encouraging Emotional Education in University Curriculum

For years, colleges and universities have overlooked social and emotional education in the curriculum for teacher training, said Bisberg. Instead of making it a critical component in course content, many schools make it optional. Most teachers across the nation gain these skills through workshops after they graduate. But while in their teaching programs, said Bisberg, they should learn more about the relationship between teachers’ emotions, motivation, regulation, and stamina and how that interplay affects children’s learning and behavior.

The importance of social and emotional education is gaining traction across New York state. Last summer, New York became one of the first U.S. states to mandate mental health as part of health education in schools. And now, Bisberg is part of a team that’s trying to bring social and emotional teaching and learning—a critical aspect of mental health—to teacher education in colleges and graduate schools.

In 2016, Bisberg was introduced to Craig Bailey, Ph.D., Director of RULER for Early Childhood and an associate research scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. The center has a novel evidence-based approach called RULER (recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing, and regulating emotion), a method that develops emotional intelligence not only in students, but also the adults involved in their education—teachers.

“There may be many different curriculum ideas in terms of teaching kids how to handle their emotions, but RULER is unique in that it includes the adult in the process,” Bisberg said.

Now, Fordham’s Graduate School of Education and the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence are working together to bring RULER-inspired ideas to higher education and pre-service teacher preparation.

In spring 2017, the Graduate School of Education piloted a series of workshops as a semester-long course on social and emotional teaching and learning. Bailey came to Fordham and taught a cohort of students about the importance of authentic listening and empathy. He also engaged students in role-play and self-reflective activities to help them become more in tune with their own emotions.

In spring 2018, Bailey came back to present his workshop. This time, he didn’t just present to GSE students—faculty also participated.

Promoting Strategies for Teachers and Children

Going forward, Bisberg hopes to bring this social and emotional education to more students at GSE, offering them strategies they can use to understand their own emotions as they prepare to support the children in their future classrooms. This school year, she’s bringing Bailey’s lessons to a new group of GSE students in the early childhood program to further research the effect that Bailey’s strategies have had on teacher preparation. After analyzing GSE student anecdotes and short- and long-term data, she will determine how to best integrate social and emotional education in GSE classes and create additional curriculum that supports it.

Ultimately, she hopes this will become a bigger discussion in higher ed circles and that this type of education is no longer relegated to only professional development.

“It’s not just about pre-math, pre-writing, pre-reading for new teachers,” she said. “This is about us as people—as teachers.”