1 What can School Leaders do about Violence in Schools? 1 By Melanie C. Brooks & Jeffrey S. Brooks, University of Idaho Like many people around the world, we were horrified and shocked by the brutal massacre of students and teachers that took place in Newton, Connecticut at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012. As we mourned the loss of the 20 students and 6 staff members whose lives were taken too soon, we also tried to learn as much as we could about the incident and began to ask ourselves—what can we do to prevent such a tragedy in the future? Popular public discourse focused on two main issues—gun control and mental health—and at the time we discussed how we had taught next to nothing about either of these topics in any of our educational leadership courses over the past decade. As a consequence of this dearth, many schools lack a focus on youth mental wellness and the tools needed to identify and prevent the development of psychopathology (Dwyer and Van Buren, 2010). The victims of the shooting were educators and children, the kind of people we prepare and serve—had we done a disservice by not preparing them for this unimaginable scenario? This second question urged us to reflect more purposefully on what educational leaders can know and do to make schools safer places. This brief essay discusses different forms of violence that occur in schools and domains in which these violent acts take place in order to broaden school leaders’ apperception of violence. Types of Violence Violence is commonplace in schools and occurs overtly and covertly. There are three basic types of violence: (1) Existential threats, (2) Microaggressions, and (3) Violent acts 1 FORTHCOMING: Brooks, M. C. & Brooks, J. S. (2013). What can school leaders do about violence in schools? Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy.