I got called in to assist at one of the middle schools today to deal with the sudden death of a teacher. We were told that today would be focused only on teachers and helping them with the grief and loss they were feeling. The news was not to be released to the students until Monday. The team was two school psychs, myself and the other intern, and three middle school counselors. The day didn't match up with any crisis intervention plans that I had read about. Instead it was kind of a chaotic mess. A teacher spilled the beans about the death to his students, so then they announced the death over the PA system so that everyone would be aware. I guess this was the easiest way to get the info out to everyone at once, but it seemed like a weird way to do it to me.
The kids lunch period was so sad. So many sobbing children grouped up throughout the yard. I was told to go from room to room to room and no one seemed to have a real plan as to handle it. I did end up talking with a couple of children, but felt rather clueless about what to say. I've read a really good grief book, but it was focused on helping people who were close to you grieve. Since I didn't know these kids, I can't say that it was very helpful in this situation. It was difficult to say, "Hi, I'm Mrs. Z, tell me about all your feelings." Not really an appropriate time to sit down and shoot the breeze to establish a rapport of sorts, so instead I tried my best to give kids their options and thank friends for being together, helping and supporting eachother.
With all the chaos around me, my biggest worries were for the safety of the kids, they were all over the place, and were dealing with the news in totally different ways (as is typical for grief) my worry was that since the kids were spread all over the place that someone may hurt themselves or someone else in grief and no one would know about it. Thankfully, my worries seemed unfounded and the day went by without any incidents (that I am aware of). Very sad though, it's hard to be surrounded by sobbing people - especially when you never even met the person they are hurting for.
The only thing I can say that I truly brought to the day, was a little bit of the Best Practices that I had read in Psychology Seminar (huh, guess I did learn something in this schooling!). In the pre-talking to people meeting, there was discussion of how much info to share (it is the belief of many that the deceased person committed suicide by OD'ing on prescription meds). I heard all the higher ups (superintendent folk) discussing this as if it was fact and indicating we were going to share this information with the staff today and the kids on Monday. So I spoke up, in my best I'm-just-an-intern-so-I've-got-a-question voice asked, "are we positive that he OD'd? Because I know we just want to share the facts, right?" and my simple question reminded the people around me that perhaps, it wasn't a good idea to spread the news that the guy had killed himself/OD'd before we actually knew it was a fact. So there was my contribution to the day. I was chicken to speak up in front of the other psychs and district big wigs, but I am really glad that I did.
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