How a Principal Who Stopped a School Shooting Learned to Be Vulnerable

Jan. 20, 2017, was a normal morning for Greg Johnson, the principal of West Liberty-Salem High School, an hour outside of Columbus, Ohio, when he heard the news no school leader ever wants to hear: There had been a shooting on campus.

Flanked by assistant principal Andy McGill, Johnson rushed toward the restroom, where he saw a backpack and a few shell casings on the floor. They heard two students talking—one of them was trying to convince the other not to shoot again because he hadn’t killed anybody yet. When they entered the restroom, they saw that Logan Cole, a junior, had been shot twice at close range and already sustained serious injuries.

“I knew then that everything had changed,” Johnson said in an interview with Education Week. (Watch the interview above.)

Together, Johnson, McGill, and Cole were able to convince the shooter to put down his weapon. A more tragic outcome had been averted, but over the course of the next few months, Johnson said he had to contend with the “what ifs.”

“I didn’t regret going in there [to face the shooter],” he said. “But I had to grapple with, what if that situation had ended differently for my school, and for my family?”

Johnson spoke with Education Week about how his leadership journey changed after the shooting. It made him reflect on how his vulnerability could have a positive, trickle-down effect: If teachers and students saw that he, too, was struggling, they’d be more open about their own challenges dealing with the shooting’s aftermath.

Other things changed, too—two years ago, his eldest daughter Addie married Cole, the student survivor. This links Johnson inextricably with that day in 2017, but for him, it also reinforces the positives that came out of a tragic situation.

This is Johnson’s story about repair and forgiveness, in his own words. The account has been edited for clarity and length.

Recognizing trauma

I completely underestimated the traumatic effect that the shooting had on our students and community. Part of the reason was the way the day started and ended. It could have ended a lot worse. Parents were really grateful about the way the school intervened.

Logan and his family, in the aftermath, modeled for our whole community how important forgiveness is. When someone from our community started a GoFundMe page for the Cole family, [the family] wanted to make sure that a third of what was raised went to supporting a college fund for the shooter’s younger sister.

We experienced what I would call a “honeymoon period” afterwards. The first day that our kids came back, other schools had sent pictures and banners that lined the halls so our students were surrounded by love and support. For the first several months what you saw at school was very positive.

Gradually, I started to find that a lot of kids were putting on that positive face because that’s what they were seeing at school, and they wanted to reflect what everybody else was showing them. At home, they were having nightmares. The kids were struggling but thought it was just them that wasn’t doing well.

I was guilty of exacerbating this. You praise their grit, you praise that toughness, you praise the students for being able to come back into the building. You unintentionally tell students that if you are struggling, that’s a sign of weakness.

A month after the incident, more and more students started coming into the counselor’s office to talk. As a school, we then became more intentional about finding out who needed help. We screened students who’d experienced trauma to see how they’re dealing with it. Everybody is going to experience trauma in their own way. But if somebody is experiencing the effects of a traumatic event, and they’re not talking about it, they’re not getting the attention they need.

When I spoke to my daughter Addie, who was a student at school when the shooting happened, I understood that what the kids went through was different. For me, I was told there was a shooting. I saw an injured student, and almost immediately, the shooter put the gun on the floor and pushed it across to us. In that sense, the event was over.

But our students, some of whom had evacuated through windows, spent 30 to 40 minutes running across muddy fields in the middle of January, and hid in nearby farmhouses because they didn’t know where the shooter was. In their minds, their friends, their teachers, their principal were dead. It was good news that no one died, but it doesn’t undo what you went through, what your brain experienced. It impacts you forever.

When I spoke to students after they came back from the summer, the new school year seemed even harder. Some of that positive stuff that we saw after the incident, people making a big deal to show how much they care, rightfully disappeared. So when they came back in the fall, they thought, “Things have gone back to normal, but I don’t feel normal inside.” They couldn’t understand why it was hard for them.

As administrators, we were intentional about bringing fun back to the building. We didn’t want our identity to be that school where a shooting happened. There is a lot of caring and compassion, but we wanted to make school fun, and make students remember what life was like before the shooting.

Going to therapy

It was just past the one-year anniversary when I realized something had changed in me, too. We were in a staff meeting and somebody asked how I was doing. I told them, “I don’t think I’m quite back to where I was, but I think I’m doing OK.”

I had taken a lot of the burden on my own shoulders. Anytime I saw a kid or a teacher who was struggling, I feel I didn’t do what I needed to do for them. That’s when one of the counselors said, “Greg, you’re not the principal you used to be, and we need that principal back again.” That was a wakeup call.

I started seeing a counselor, and the one thing that we worked through early on was dealing with the situation emotionally. She asked me, “Did you cry? Did you grieve?” The way I operate is that when presented with a situation, I rationalize it. Here’s what happened, here’s what we need to do next. Trying to work through some of the emotions of that day was helpful.

I worked through things like guilt. We had one staff member who was in a room for two hours after the shooting. He was missed, and I didn’t realize that he was still in hiding. There was a lot of guilt that I didn’t go check on my kids. My wife was a 4th grade teacher in the building. All three of our children were in the building. I knew my son, in 7th ^{grade then, was OK and in the gym. There was some guilt there, because I think he dealt with a lot of fear as the shooting was going on, knowing that I’m probably headed in that direction.}

I’ve been working on my doctorate lately, and one of the topics that I’ve studied is post-traumatic growth. What I’ve learned from that is that nobody wants to say something good came out of a school shooting. Of course, if we could go back in time and prevent it from happening, we would. But I did grow as a person from that experience. I think I’m a better principal now. I’m more sensitive, more aware and quicker to reach out to others. I’m more willing to be vulnerable.

When it first happened, I thought the school needs to see a strong, consistent, positive strength from their principal, and that’s what I tried to show. But the school also needed to see that I’m a human, that there are things that I struggle with, and that’s that vulnerability piece.

The kids are all right

I’ve been surprised. A number of middle and high school students from the time of the incident have decided to go into education. A part of me was concerned it would turn them away. Addie got hired as a speech therapist in a school. Our son is majoring in education at Ohio State this year.

A number of students from that time were also married within three to four years of graduating. There’s always a concern after such incidents that students will increase their risky behaviors. But I guess they took stock of what’s important to them when they realized that life can be short.

I do know it’s when another event happens that things are bad. When there’s a shooting, it takes you back. Some of our students reach out to each when there is another shooting, or as Jan. 20 approaches.