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Reprinted from the February 2007 issue of the
Charter School Monthly, www.charterschoolmonthly.org.
Used with permission
Editor’s Note: Since “School Safety for Charter Schools: Part 1: Avoiding Tragedy” (Charter School Monthly, December 2006/January 2007) appeared, highly publicized
shootings have occurred in high schools in Tacoma and Las Vegas. This article focuses on what schools should do in the event a tragedy actually occurs.
Although a school tragedy can take numerous forms, it most often is the result of one or more deaths of either students or staff through a violent (e.g., school
shooting, suicide) or nonviolent (e.g., car accident, natural disaster) event. According to Scott Poland, past president of the National Association of School Psychologists and a recent presenter at the 2006 ACSA state conference in Tucson, what a school does in the first few hours, days, and weeks following a tragedy will set the stage for determining to what extent the school community recovers over the long haul.
Communication
If a school has a documented, well-thought-out crisis management plan, it will be able to react proactively as soon as a tragedy occurs. Communication is key,
whether it results from a schoolwide emergency or a more specific traumatic event.
Emergency Communication
According to Poland, during and in the immediate aftermath of a schoolwide emergency, administrators will have to address communication in three waves:
1. Police/media personnel: Designate one or more staff members to keep the street open for emergency personnel, as well as provide them with layouts of the
school building, entrances/exits, etc.
2. Media: Designate one person who will serve as a media spokesperson and will keep media across the street from the school.
3. Parents: Predetermine and direct parents to an alternate site and ensure they receive regular communications and updates.
A well-prepared school administrator, upon leaving the school, will take a preassembled emergency kit consisting of such items as the school’s floor plan, a bullhorn, emergency scenario flipchart, and pens and index cards.
Nonemergency Communication
If the tragedy is the death of a student, teacher, or staff member, communication is critical in the first hours following the event. If a death of a student, teacher, or staff member occurs during the school day, Poland recommends that the administrator/principal either send an email, immediately followed by an intercom announcement for teachers to check their email as soon as possible, or hand deliver a memo with the news. If the death occurs after the school day, Poland suggests activating a prearranged calling tree to let teachers know in advance that a death has occurred.
Counseling and Support
According to Poland, it is important to assess the degree of trauma when one or more deaths affect the school community. The crisis team should reflect on these questions:
- Who was the person(s)?
- What happened to them?
- Where did the death(s) occur?
- What else has impacted the school community?
- Who was the perpetrator?
Poland suggested that whenever feasible, the school be open, with counselors available to assist students, teachers, staff, and parents.
“Schools are the greatest source of assistance kids have,” Poland said. “So don’t close schools – reopen them.”
Surprisingly, perhaps, he recommended addressing the needs of parents and staff first.
“How do you help a kid who’s been through a crisis?” Poland asked. “You help your teachers, you help the parents.”
In a school shooting, teacher guilt must often be addressed.
“The bulk of what will be happening [in the way of student support] has to happen in the classroom,” according to Poland. “So you send your best counselor into the classroom and tell the teacher, ‘The things that made you care about kids so much are going to help you today.’”
In any tragedy, parent coping skills are critical to student healing.
“Kids’ recovery from [for example] natural disaster is all about the parents,” Poland said. “Who do kids look to to decide how upset to get? Yet parents’ coping can be incredibly difficult.”
Childhood reactions to trauma most often take the form of fear of the future, behavioral regression, academic regression, and nightmares, according to Poland.
Poland suggested that in grief counseling, school staff pay special attention to those students who have experienced prior trauma and that they let the students determine the direction the sessions will take.
“The less we talk, the more they talk, the better,” he said. “Teachers tend to superimpose their values on students.”
As part of the healing process, funerals should be planned so that both students and parents, as well as staff, can attend. In the weeks and months that follow, students and staff should have numerous opportunities to express their feelings about the tragedy.
“Eighty percent of the Columbine teachers left the school in five years,” according to Poland. “They said, ‘We never felt we could bring up what happened.”
Courtesy: Scott Poland, Ed.D. and Partners for Successful Innovation, “School Crisis: Lessons from the front lines.”
For information contact Jan Krygier, Charter School Monthly
Email: jkrygier@resolutions-esp.com
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