Does your school have a plan for tragic loss David Aderhold
I’m not a clinical pyschologist.
I’m not a grief counselor.
I’m not an expert in youth mental health.
Yet everyday I find myself in a position
of needing to offer insight and guidance
to staff members working
with youth in crisis.
I am a school administrator,
and unfortunately, anyone in a role
like mine,
already knows exactly what I’m
talking about.
This school year marks my 22nd year
in public education,
spending the past 6 years serving as
Superintendent of Schools.
During that time I’ve had to address
an exponential growth
in youth mental health concerns.
Depression, anxiety, and suicidal
ideations.
I have found myself in an unplanned
crusade to combat these issues,
a campaign that has led me to focus
on the culture and climate of our schools,
and the development of the whole
child.
Yet despite that focus, I recently joined
an undesirable group,
a growing cohort of school leaders that
have lost a student
due to death by suicide.
I’ve had to come to grips with the
devastating reality
that no matter what we have done
to support student wellness
and youth mental health,
that a student died by
suicide on my watch.
Nothing in my career prepared me for this
type of grief and sorrow.
The pain that rises within a school
community
carries with it an unbearable weight,
and yet, we must bear it.
A community grieves, families suffer,
teachers and staff members mourn,
students are left scared, grieving, asking
why,
mourning the loss of their friend
and classmate.
When a death occurs by suicide, a
community is left with a void,
a gaping hole with which there is
no repair, no solution, no explanation,
just pain, confusion, and sorrow.
The thing that is different about a death
by suicide
is that the community is left with a vague
sense of responsibility,
the feeling that we, or I,
could or should have done something
different to prevent this.
We ask ourselves questions:
What did we miss?
Why did this happen?
Why did they leave us?
With youth suicide, we often feel that it
wouldn’t have happened
if we had taken better care
of our student.
Entering this profession I never
thought about this aspect of leadership.
Never was there any discussion or training
about how to support
a school community in crisis,
and through tragedy, I’ve had to
learn structures and processes in place
to support a community after the death
of a student, staff member, or parent.
Now let me provide you some
context to define the current crisis.
In the past six months, the county
in which my district is located,
has lost five students due to
death by suicide.
Two years age, we lost an alumnus, a
19 year-old college freshman,
and we lost a 14 year-old, an entering
high school freshman,
both whom died by suicide.
This past school year, my school district
had over 400 alerts
on our web monitoring software that
required some form of intervention.
One such alert was for a student who
scheduled his own death.
You see, our students are in a constant
state of social media curation,
sleep deprivation, physical exhaustion
and social and academic pressure.
The issues our students are facing
are dynamic and multidimensional.
Mental health experts are
supposed to know what to do,
however these experts often do not know
the intricacies of the school district,
or community’s culture.
Expertise without context is incomplete.
In my role, I have the context,
and while I may not have been trained in
the same way as these experts,
my school community still comes to me
for answers,
and I do not get to opt out of my
responsibility to my community,
and decisions must be made.
When tragedy befalls your community,
you need to know the questions to ask.
I’ve had to learn how to respond.
You have to know whom to seek
guidance from,
what steps will you take,
who do you call for support?
Do you have a crisis team in place?
Do you have a plan for tragic loss?
Have you fostered relationships with
mental health providers and caregivers?
How do you set up a crisis center?
How should you communicate to your
community?
How do you speak to the parents who have
just lost their child,
to the father who just lost his daughter,
to the mother who just lost her son?
What do you say?
Through tragic loss, what I’ve learned
is the very act of navigating crisis
serves to develop one’s expertise.
Learning from those that have experienced
navigating crisis is paramount.
In my experience, I have discovered some
things I didn’t know before
because navigating school crisis
was never part of any formal training
that I’d received.
Here are some things I have discovered:
The school leader must think fast, but
slow down.
There are important and decisive
decisions that must be made,
so you need to gather your team, gather
your resources, and gather your thoughts
so you can make the most informed
decision possible
with the information you have available.
In that vein, it’s important that
school leaders
have a plan in place before
a tragedy occurs.
Having a team in place and having a plan
will only lead to a more
successful response.
We must remember that we’re never alone
in moments of crisis.
It’s important that during a crisis
response
that we take care of our caregivers.
Often the crisis team is comprised of our
own staff.
It’s important to bring in outside
support,
bring in counselors to support
the counselors,
and to have enough support that the
caregivers can rotate out.
Oversight and guidance is needed to
protect your team.
Additionally, it’s important to know that
during a tragedy
that the leadership will be imperfect.
As a school leader you’re supposed to
have the answers.
You’re supposed to have answers to
questions no one else has to think about.
And I’ve made my share of mistakes in
tragedy and crisis,
and it’s easy to be myopic in thinking.
For example, in addressing a tragedy
in one school building,
I did not think through the impacts
across the greater system.
While we messaged the district
faculty about the death of a student,
we did not intentionally identify the
teachers that had taught the student
and their siblings in other buildings.
By not identifying those most effected,
we failed to mitigate some
potential impact.
Through tragedy I’ve learned that there’s
a fundamental difference between
focusing on school culture and climate,
and responding to a school tragedy.
We must recognize that no matter how hard
we focus on school culture and climate
tragedy may still occur.
So our responsibility as school
adminstrators, as educators,
is to recognize while there are so many
things we cannot control,
we must focus on the things that
we can control.
Now using the mantra “on my watch” has
served me as a tool and reminder
for our collective responsibility in both
our response
and the systems we permit
and promote in our schools.
While I cannot control everything
that occurs,
on my watch, we will prioritize creating a
culture of care in our schools.
We will focus on the development
of the whole child.
We will put structures in place to
identify students in crisis.
We will ensure that we educate students
and staff members alike
around warning signs and risk factors for
suicidal ideations and mental health.
We will emphasize the importance
of self care.
We will build partnerships with teachers,
counselors, administrators,
students, and parents.
We will build partnerships with mental
health providers, local physicians,
and university partners.
On my watch, every student is going to be
known by a caring adult.
We must pledge that on our watch,
we can create a community of care in our
organizations.
We must commit to placing an intentional
focus on teen depression, anxiety,
and suicidal ideations.
Our children are depending on us.