Southwood High School in Shreveport faced crisis when twenty-three students were arrested after massive fights in just three days. Parents feared for their children’s safety. The school felt out of control, dangerous, like a place where learning had been replaced by survival. Teachers tried. Administrators tried. But the violence kept escalating.
Then father Michael La’Fitte launched “Dads on Duty”—forty fathers volunteering at school with kind smiles and dad jokes. Not security guards. Not police officers. Just dads, showing up with the specific energy only fathers can bring—protective but warm, authoritative but approachable, serious about safety but committed to connection.
They greeted students each morning. Not with suspicion or metal detectors, but with genuine warmth. “How you doing today?” “Need anything?” “Looking sharp.” The kind of acknowledgment that says I see you, not as a potential problem, but as a young person deserving respect.
They gave high-fives at lunch. Stood in hallways during passing periods. Made their presence felt not through intimidation, but through caring visibility. They told dad jokes—terrible ones, probably, the kind that make teenagers groan but also smile. They created an atmosphere where violence felt out of place not because of punishment, but because these men clearly cared too much to let it happen.
The moment dads arrived, fights stopped completely. Not gradually. Not through increasing discipline or implementing new policies. Completely. Because something shifted in the school’s atmosphere when forty fathers decided their children’s school was worth their time.
Students felt safe again. Not just physically, though that mattered enormously. But emotionally safe. Seen. Valued. Surrounded by adults who weren’t just enforcing rules but genuinely invested in their wellbeing. The fathers’ simple promise: show up with love so every child can learn and grow.
That’s it. No complex intervention. No expensive program. Just forty men deciding that their presence mattered, that showing up consistently with kindness and dad energy could transform a school in crisis. And they were right.
Students who’d been fighting suddenly had fathers everywhere—not their own necessarily, but father figures treating them like they mattered. Checking in. Offering support. Creating accountability not through punishment but through relationship. It’s hard to throw a punch when someone who just gave you a high-five and a terrible joke is watching, believing you’re better than your worst moment.
Teachers noticed the change immediately. Hallways that had felt tense became relaxed. Students who’d been on edge started smiling again. Learning could resume because survival was no longer the primary concern. The dads didn’t solve underlying issues—poverty, trauma, systemic problems—but they created space for healing to begin.
Michael La’Fitte started this, but it worked because forty fathers said yes. Forty men who had jobs and responsibilities and their own children at home decided that their community’s children needed them too. They showed up. Not once, not for a photo opportunity, but consistently. Day after day. Morning greetings and lunch high-fives and dad jokes and the steady presence that says: you matter, this place matters, we’re not leaving.
The photo shows five of them—smiling, wearing “Dads on Duty” shirts in bright orange and blue. They look ordinary. That’s the point. These aren’t superheroes or professional interventionists. Just dads who understood something profound: that presence changes everything. That children surrounded by adults who care behave differently than children who feel forgotten. That sometimes the most effective violence prevention is just showing up with love.
Southwood High School was in crisis. Forty fathers showed up with kind smiles and dad jokes. And violence stopped completely. Because love, it turns out, is the most powerful intervention we have.