From wielding a gun to a welding gun: How Sequoyah’s SRO is building relationships

SODDY DAISY, Tenn. (WDEF) — Our students see them every day, roaming the halls and keeping their school safe. But a school resource officer is more than just a badge.

Sequoyah High is a small family of 348 students. Hamilton County Deputy Mark Easterly joined that family at the beginning of the school year, and he’s welding together his relationships with his students one piece of metal at a time.

“I think a lot of times they look at an SRO is like, when they walk around the corner, ‘Oh my gosh, I better stop doing what I’m doing.’ But with him it’s not that,” welding instructor Candice Clark said.

From wielding a gun to a welding gun, Deputy Mark Easterly now adds a jacket and gloves to his uniform after becoming Sequoyah High’s SRO.

“I went up to him one day and just jokingly said, ‘Hey Mr. Easterly, I need you to come into welding one day so you can teach me how to do that,'” sophomore Landyn Aslinger said.

“He’s a goof ball, basically is what you can say. He just come up and say, ‘Hey, I want to challenge you to welding.’ I said okay. Didn’t say nothing a word, didn’t tell him I had a background in welding,” Easterly said.

Easterly has been a fixture of the welding shop ever since.

“He started that and these kids just kind of clung to him. They started welding with him. And they were showing them how they would weld, and he would show them how he welded. And it kind of turned into more of a friendship,” Clark said.

“It makes you feel good that the fact that he’s not just here for just his job, that he’s going out of his way to come in and help us and be around us and get to know us better. It definitely helps,” senior Marie Holland said.

In a time when school safety is a major issue, Easterly keeps Sequoyah safe by building relationships beyond the badge.

“A lot of students have opened up a lot better since I started going to, like welding, I like doing it, going to another trades and get in. Makes it a lot easier to do my job. If something comes up, I can just say something, and they work well with me,” Easterly said.

“He’s here to make us feel safe, and he does that by hanging out with the kids and not just locking himself in the office and waiting for something bad to happen. He makes us feel safe by being around us and being friends with us,” Aslinger said.

“I’ve always looked at Sequoyah as a family, as a community, and I think they’re definitely a big part of that community,” Clark said.

Of the 46 welding students at Sequoyah, 5 students already have full or part time jobs in the industry.

Currently, the United States is in need of 200,000 skilled welders.