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Would you like to know how to create a comprehensive plan for coping with school-related crises?
Are you interested in practical tips and tools that can help your school put its crisis response plan into action?
Would you like to learn about successful strategies for preventing crises from occurring at your school?
If you answered YES to these questions, then this online workshop is for you!
Last year at this time, in response to the tragic attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the U.S. Department of Education initiated a series of activities to better understand and enhance the capacity of schools to cope with traumatic events. Click here to learn about some of the steps taken and lessons learned by the Department following the events of September 11th, as well as about future plans for helping schools and communities prevent and respond effectively to crises.
This online event, and the Middle School Coordinators/National Coordinators initiative overall, is part of the Department's broad-based effort to promote safe and secure learning environments for young people across the nation.
Objectives
This four-day, facilitated event is designed to provide drug prevention and school safety coordinators with the knowledge and skills to facilitate a comprehensive approach to crisis response and prevention. By the end of this event, you will be able to:
Identify the range of individuals and organizations that should be represented on a crisis response planning team
Collaborate with community and district personnel to ensure a comprehensive and coordinated response to potential crises
Determine if there are gaps in your school's crisis response plan and make sure that your school has the necessary "crisis kit" supplies
Help establish effective programs and strategies to prevent crises from occurring
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The Center's online continuing education training program offers a menu of skills-based, interactive learning activities designed to facilitate the transfer of knowledge into practice, enhance the exchange of effective practices among drug prevention and school safety coordinators, and strengthen their capacity to implement effective prevention efforts.
Visit the Drug Prevention and School Safety Coordinator website to learn more about the next online event, Middle School Coordinators as Change Agents.
You are ready to begin this workshop if you have (1) received confirmation of your participation, (2) visited the Orientation to Online Events website (to ensure that you and your computer are prepared for this event), and (3) complete the Pre-Event Assessment Form. Then, please take a moment to read through this page. It will help you understand how the site is organized, how much time you should expect to spend participating in the event, and where to go for technical support.
Crisis Response: Creating Safe Schools is a three-part case study designed to be completed over four days. On Days 1-3, participants are expected to read the designated materials, answer the accompanying set of questions, and share their responses with other participants in the Discussion Area. On Day 4, participants can continue their online discussion and will be asked to complete an online evaluation.
Each day will begin with a video/audio quote from expert speakers on crisis response. The quotes are taken from a three-hour video conference sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education and created in partnership with the Harvard School of Public Health, Prevention Institute, and Education Development Center entitled, The 3 Rs to Dealing with Trauma in Schools: Readiness, Response, and Recovery*. During the videoconference, Judge Eric Andell, special counsel to the secretary at the Department of Education, posed questions to panelists on various aspects of crisis response. His questions and the experts' answers provide a framework for each day of this online event's presentation and activities. For more information on the videoconference, see the Resources & Links section.
Day 1: Preparing for a Crisis
On Day 1, you will meet middle school officials in Virginia who have reviewed their crisis plans, organized crisis teams, made critical changes to the plans, and practiced those plans. You will be given a step-by-step guide of how to review and facilitate the implementation of a crisis plan that will work for your school.
Day 2: Responding to a Crisis
On Day 2, you will see how school officials in Newton, Massachusetts responded when a school bus on a music trip crashed in Canada, killing four middle school students. You will learn how a well-prepared and practiced plan helped officials respond to unforeseen problems in the days following the tragedy. You will also learn how to map community resources so that you can call in outside assistance when you need it most.
Day 3: Preventing a Crisis
On Day 3, you will learn how school officials in Palm Beach County, Florida began a comprehensive prevention program after a middle school student fatally shot his teacher.
Day 4: Sharing Key Learnings with Other MSCs
On Day 4, you will receive a summary of the week's discussion and be asked to complete an online evaluation. You are also invited to continue your online discussion.
Participants should log on at least once a day, although past participants have found that they could better monitor and contribute to the online discussion if they logged on several times throughout the day. Please allow enough time each day to read through the daily materials, complete any associated activities, and visit the Discussion Area.
On average, past participants have spent approximately one hour per day reviewing materials, completing activities, and contributing to the discussion. The training facilitator will check in two to three times a day to answer any questions and to facilitate online discussion.
Each online event website contains these sections:
Daily Materials (Days 1, 2, 3, and 4)
This is where participants can acquire a basic understanding of the event topic. Materials will appear in a variety of formats and can be printed for future reference. Each day, participants will also be asked to answer two or three discussion questions, which are intended to help you reflect on and apply the information contained in the materials.
Discussion Summary
This section will contain a summary of the previous day's online discussion. On the final day of an event, it will contain a summary of the entire week's discussion. Please read through the summary before beginning your day's work.
Resources & Links
The information contained in this section is designed to complement the event materials, facilitate your participation in the event, and enhance your overall learning.
Event Support
Participants with technical questions can go to this section and submit an online request for assistance.
Discussion Area
After reading each day's materials, participants will be asked to share their experiences and lessons learned in this section of the website.
Take some time to tour the site and familiarize yourself with its layout and content.
All of the materials and tools on this site can be printed and used for future reference. However, we strongly suggest that your review the materials online before you print them so that you can see how the different sections fit together. To print a specific page, go to the page of interest, place your cursor on File (at the top of the page), go to Print, and then press OK. This will print everything on the screen in front of you.
To print only the text (minus the navigation bars at the top and side of the screen), you must first open the site using the Web browser Internet Explorer. Then place your cursor on the page you want to print, right-click with your mouse, select Print, and choose OK.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to print the entire site with a single click of the mouse.
Participants with technical questions or problems can submit a request for assistance to Event Support. Your inquiries will be responded to immediately. You may also find answers to your questions in Tips for Participating in Online Events.
You will be able to visit this website at this address for one week after the event ends, though the Discussion Area will be closed during this time. After that, this event will be archived and housed in the Online Events section of the MSC website, where you will be able to access it at any time.
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*Copyright 2002: U.S. Department of Education and Harvard School of Public Health, Division of Public Health Practice.
Click on the icons to the right to hear Alan Steinberg, Ph.D., associate director of the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, speak about the steps that schools and communities can take to help prepare for a crisis*. Click here to read his comments. Click here to view the chart that he mentions.
Note: You will need to hit your backspace key after listening to each audio clip to return to this event. |
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Not long ago, Richmond, Virginia was viewed as the homicide capital of the country. Shootings took place so regularly that children and adolescents began to see them as a natural way to resolve conflict. Then, in 1995, four students walked home from school one day and got caught in the crossfire of a gunfight between rival gangs. All were seriously injured. That shooting galvanized the community.
Floyd A.Wiggins Jr., the chief of the Department of Safety and Security for Richmond Public Schools, took on the task of creating a citywide school safety plan. One critical piece of that plan was to develop a strategy to respond to crises.
Wiggins assembled a team of nearly 80 people, including representatives from the police and fire department, city council, local university, religious organizations, housing department, parks and recreation, architectural firms, and others. In building the team, Wiggins essentially invited anyone whose work touched on the lives of students.
Team members researched other crisis response plans around the country to learn what worked well. Many school systems had plans that Richmond could use as a basis for its own. Members researched studies to find empirical data on the best practices in crisis response. Wiggins gave the team four months to develop a plan. Each member had specific tasks and deadlines for completing them.
The team worked closely with police, fire and rescue officials to make sure that their plan meshed with the emergency responders' Incident Command System, the standard protocol used by police, fire and emergency medical technicians in responding to a crisis. The process resulted in a plan that was embraced by the community. About 80% of the plan's many goals have been implemented, Wiggins estimates.
To keep people on track, Wiggins sends out a quarterly newsletter to school crisis teams. The newsletter provides updates on school safety, reports the latest research on crisis response, and reminds school crisis teams to hold regular meetings. Team members are assigned tasks and given due dates to complete them by.
Many schools already have crisis plans in place. But the plans might sit on the shelf with no one knowing about them, or they might not address the broad range of crises that occur. Further, they may be out of date, for example failing to plan for the possibility of a terrorist attack, such as the events of September 11.
Shortly after Alice Spence, head counselor at Rosemont Middle School in Norfolk, Virginia, began her job, she learned something surprising about the members of her school's crisis response team: Many did not know that they were on the team.
Spence's job duties at the middle school included updating the school's crisis response plan each year. One of her first tasks was to talk to the crisis team members.
"I wanted to make sure that they knew that they were on the team and what expertise we expected from them," Spence says. "Some of them said that they were glad I came to them, because no one had ever told them about their responsibilities before."
Spence also noticed some glaring absences from the team, including the school's security officer, psychologist, social worker, and nurse. All of those staff members had key roles to play if a crisis erupted, and Spence added them to the team. Spence thought about other needs that might arise during a crisis, such as having someone who could perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation or restrain an out-of-control student. Spence learned that some of the physical education teachers had this expertise. They became part of the team as well.
At the beginning of each school year, Spence convenes the crisis team to review each person's responsibilities and ask for any changes that should be made to the plan. Each member is assigned specific tasks. The assistant principal might be in charge of making sure that all the school doors are locked or calling in community resources, such as pre-screened crisis counselors. A guidance counselor might be responsible for activating a phone tree to notify parents of a crisis event at school.
"During a crisis, things happen so fast," Spence says. "If you know beforehand what you are supposed to do and where you should go, then you don't have to worry about it."
At Washington Irving Middle School in Fairfax, Virginia, school psychologist Paula DeForest is part of a crisis team that had a comprehensive district-level plan in place. But the thick blueprint was too unwieldy to use during the chaos of an actual crisis.
"The plan was in a four-inch binder. Are you going to grab that when you're running out the door?" DeForest says. "We needed something that was really procedural."
The team went through the plan, culling it to its most essential elements. The first few pages list the members of the crisis team, their contact information, and their responsibilities. Most experts recommend that each task be assigned to a primary person, with one or two back-up people in case the first one is not available. Also, it is critical to update phone numbers to make sure that they are current.
The Washington Irving crisis team includes police officers and head school bus drivers as well as school personnel. That outside perspective is critical in planning for a crisis, DeForest says. For example, the head school bus driver helped point out that an aerial photo of the school could be used to plan alternate evacuations for students and school staff.
Like many schools, Washington Irving has a crisis bag that a team member can grab on the way out when a school is being evacuated. The bag includes updated student rosters, contact numbers for parents, blueprints of the school, a bus schedule, the crisis plan, and other critical information. Several of these bags are located around the school, with someone designated to take each one out of the school. That way, team members know that they will have access to at least one bag with the critical information and tools that they need in a crisis.
To practice its readiness for different types of crises, the team practiced drills with faculty and students and tabletop exercises of different crisis scenarios. These are exercises in which team members are given a crisis scenario and then decide how they would respond.
In a scenario where students needed to get off school grounds quickly, team members proposed sending them to the neighboring elementary school to be picked up by their buses. The head bus driver pointed out that the elementary school parking lot was too small for the number of buses needed.
"We never would have known that if the lead bus driver hadn't been there," DeForest says.
Many of those exercises came from the Fairfax County Police Department, which lent its expertise on crisis situations. Examples of crises included everything from a fire to an estranged husband coming into a school with a gun to pick up his children.
"The table-top exercises really get you thinking about things that hadn't occurred to you before," DeForest says. "Like, if there is a fire, do we have a safe room where we can take students who aren't mobile? How do we alert the fire department about where they are?"
These school systems in Virginia illustrate the importance of developing, adapting, and practicing a school crisis response plan. Before developing their own plans, school systems researched studies to find empirical data on the best practices in crisis response and obtained copies of other school crisis response plans. Each school brought key faculty and administration members to the crisis response team. Schools also developed good working relationships with the community agencies they would depend on in the event of a crisis. By rehearsing examples of potential crises in advance, school crisis teams honed their abilities to respond to a real crisis.
Please review the Day 1 Activity and then think about the following questions:
As a middle school coordinator, what has been your role in creating or refining your school's crisis response plan?
How has the school responded to crises in the past? What are the biggest lessons learned that can help in planning for responding to a crisis in the future?
During a practice session, crisis team members at Thoreau Middle School in Fairfax, Virginia realized that if there was a lockdown, they had no way to communicate with the teachers in the classrooms other than the public address system. There were no telephones or radios in classrooms. What are some other ways of communicating with teachers in that situation?
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* U.S. Department of Education, Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program; The Harvard School of Public Health; Education Development Center, Inc., and Prevention Institute (April 23, 2002). The Three R's for Dealing with Trauma in Schools (satellite broadcast). Retrieved August, 2002, from www.walcoff.com/prevention/. (Copyright 2002: U.S. Department of Education and Harvard School of Public Health, Division of Public Health Practice.)
This completes today's work.
Please visit the Discussion Area to share your responses to the discussion questions!
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This activity is designed to enhance your understanding of the event content through hands-on learning. You will be asked to perform a series of tasks and then reflect on your experience.
Objective
To review your school's crisis response plan (or another school's, if yours is unavailable) and determine whether it is up to date or requires changes. You may not be able to complete this activity in one day. You can use whatever parts that you cannot finish as a template for the first steps in crisis response planning. Much of this work will be done as part of a crisis team.
Overview
The first step in crisis response planning is to determine whether your school has a plan and, if possible, obtain a copy. From there you can review the plan and see if changes need to be made in terms of membership, duties, practice, and types of crises envisioned. School districts often have crisis plans that local schools can adapt as long as they follow district policy. This activity is designed to help MSCs ensure that their school's crisis plans are up to date, familiar to key participants, and consistent with the school's overall safety plan.
Please review the materials from Planning and Preparing for a Crisis and Additions to School Safety Plans before beginning this activity. After completing this activity, please share your results and comments in the event's Discussion Area.
Part 1: Reviewing the Crisis Plan
For the first part of this activity, you will obtain a copy of your school's crisis plan and review it.
Step 1
Obtain a copy of your school's crisis plan. If your school does not have a plan, find out if a district-level plan exists, and obtain a copy of that plan. You can also go on the Internet and do a search for sample school crisis plans.
Step 2
Review the crisis plan. Make a note of anything that seems unclear to you. Ask yourself if any key elements are missing, such as a plan for a national terrorist attack or guidelines to assess for trauma in students.
Step 3
Find out whether your school has an active crisis team. If so, who are the members, and do they know that they are part of the team? Who heads the team? Are there people who should be on the team but are not, such as the head custodian, school security officer, school social worker, and school nurse? Make a list of those people.
Step 4
Ask for a meeting of the crisis team, if one exists. If it does not, then work with key staff, such as counselors, to form one.
Step 5
Hold a meeting of the crisis team. At the first meeting, ask members to review past crises in the school. What worked and what did not work? Assign tasks to each member, using Building a School-Based Crisis Team and Protocol for Dealing with a Crisis as a guide.
Please respond to the discussion questions that appear at the end of Day 1.
The process of organizing a school-based crisis team begins with the site's leadership. Someone must be given the responsibility of building the team. That person begins by identifying those who have formal roles that they must play during a crisis, those with specific skills that are needed, and any others who may be especially motivated to be part of such a team.
The next step is to set a meeting time and invite the potential members. To increase the likelihood that the meeting is focused and productive, it helps to do some pre-session structuring which includes the following:
Asking others to play a role during the meeting (e.g., meeting facilitator, time keeper, note taker)
Providing copies of the site's existing crisis response plans and some general material to read on the subject of a school-based crisis response
During the meeting, it helps to use worksheets that focus the discussion on key topics and decisions about task, assignments, and timelines.
The purpose of the meeting is to review the site's existing crisis response plans and discuss a variety of related matters.
The following is a sample agenda for the first meeting.
Focus on Planning
What are our roles and functions as team members?
Meeting facilitator reviews the key team roles and functions.
Decide who will take each role (fill in worksheet below). If there are enough people, designate a back up for each position. Discuss chain of command: Who will be in charge? Who will be next? If these two were not available, who would be third? Enter all necessary contact information (e.g., home numbers, cell phone numbers, beepers).
Role/Function |
Name (A person may serve more than one role/function.) |
Chain of Command (Who's in charge? Back-ups?) |
Contact Information |
Team leader |
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Administrative liaison |
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Staff liaison |
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Communications liaison |
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Media liaison |
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First aid coordinators (medical, psychological) |
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Communications coordinator |
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Crowd management coordinator |
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Evacuation / transportaion coordinator |
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Click on the following link to view and print this worksheet in Microsoft Word: MS Word (24K).
Discuss the latest crisis at the school. If one doesn't come to mind, use the possibility of a car accident outside school involving a student and observed by many students and parents. Each team member should assume his or her role in talking through the specifics of what to do. Brainstorm, with no discussion until the exercise is finished. Then take five minutes to highlight good ideas and suggestions for action.
Plan on a way for each team member to inform others at the school about the crisis team membership and roles. For example, who will talk to the faculty, the parent center coordinator, the office staff, and the PTA?
Prepare for the next meeting, which will focus on action.
Reference
Center for Mental Health Services at UCLA (2000). A Resource Aid Packet on Responding to a Crisis at a School. Los Angeles, CA: Author.
Schools need to develop comprehensive school safety plans that address the variety of crisis events they may face. While many schools and school districts revised plans to address school shootings following the tragedy at Columbine High School, the terrorist attacks in New York City and Virginia raise concerns that may not be addressed in current school safety plans. Following the events of September 11, the U.S. Department of Education issued the following guidelines for addressing these types of broad-based crises:
Evacuation: A major crisis may require several schools to be evacuated simultaneously. Because school plans frequently call for students to be evacuated to other schools in the district, alternative evacuation sites (and alternative evacuation routes) should be identified. This concern also suggests that safety plans for individual schools must be coordinated with overall school district plans. Special plans are also necessary to address situations in which bioterrorism is threatened or suspected. In these cases, evacuation procedures must ensure that cross-contamination does not occur.
Attendance: In a major crisis, schools may need to quickly account for students. A plan for collecting and maintaining accurate attendance figures throughout the school day provides the data necessary for this process. Schools should remember that attendance records should be maintained in locations that are readily accessible to teachers, administrators, and emergency service workers, including law enforcement officials.
Parental Notification: Parents will expect schools to provide quick and accurate information about the location and status of their children. Schools should have established procedures for making such notifications and should share those procedures in advance with parents. A major crisis that impacts an entire community may also mean that parents or other caregivers have been evacuated from their jobs. As a result, school safety plans need to address additional alternatives for communicating with parents in these situations. This scenario also demands that schools examine their procedures for releasing students to parents or other caregivers. If parents or other designated individuals can't reach students, or if students can't be transported to their homes because of a crisis, schools need to have a plan to respond to that situation.
Transportation: During a large-scale crisis, usual methods for transporting students may not be available. Alternative strategies for transporting students during evacuations and to home must be in place. And schools located at some sites (for example, on military bases) may be closed to the public; thus, alternatives for transporting those students are also needed.
Lead Official: Every school site should have one person designated as the lead official, that is, the person who is in charge when a crisis occurs. This person has responsibility for implementing the school's School Safety Plan. In addition to the lead official, schools should have a deputy or assistant lead official in case the lead official is not available in a time of crisis. Lead officials should meet regularly with law enforcement and other emergency responders to clearly define the roles and responsibilities for everyone involved.
Reference
US Department of Education, (2002), Letter from U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige to Chief School Safety Officers.
Crisis kit items should be gathered and stored at strategic locations inside and outside of schools. These items can be kept in a large bag, plastic garbage can, or barrel. Common locations include principals' offices, local fire and police departments, police car trunks, and specially designated places in all areas of schools. Information in the crisis kits should be updated periodically, as appropriate. Gather the number of supplies that are needed for the size of the school.
Separate placards with directional words, such as PARENTS, COUNSELORS, MEDIA, CLERGY, VOLUNTEERS, KEEP OUT
Color-coded name tags and sign-in sheets for the service personnel listed above
Blank white poster board for additional signs and duct tape to attach signs to tables
Notebooks, pens, and magic markers
Preprinted referral pads to be given to each counselor and clergy person:
Name of counselor/clergy _____________________________
Name of person to be referred for follow-up _________________
Concerns __________________________________________
Date ______________________________________________
Walkie-talkies to communicate with members of the crisis response team and other emergency personnel and extra batteries
Ankle bands or wrist bands (such as used in a hospital) to identify victims
First aid supplies
Blankets
School site layout, building floor plans, and aerial maps
Current roster of students and staff with pictures, addresses, phone numbers, emergency contacts, and important medical information
Attendance rosters
Brief summary of school history, number of teachers and staff, and name of principal
District fact sheet with enrollment, number of schools, etc.
County map with school district bus routes marked
Bus rosters and routes
Resources list of support personnel, e.g., contact person for local phone company
Caution tape to keep people outside restricted areas
Emergency response telephone numbers
Telephone directory for school system
Reference
Kramen, A.J., Massey, K.R., & Timm, H.W. (1999) Guide for Prevention and Responding to School Violence. Alexandria, VA: International Association of Chiefs of Police.
Establish or identify a crisis response team. Members should include principals, assistant principals, faculty members, custodians, school nurses, school mental health providers, security officers, transportation heads (lead bus drivers), and others who would play key roles in a crisis.
Review any existing crisis response plan. Determine if it is up to date and comprehensive. For example, does it cover a variety of school crises, such as school shootings, suicides, and major accidents, as well as broader crises such as the 9/11 events? Does it have a procedure for notifying parents about where to go to get information on their children in the event of an emergency? Plans should also address school policies on possession of cell phones, bioterrorism hoaxes, hate crimes, and threats against schools, students, and faculty.
Find out whether the policy is being used and is familiar to staff, including teachers and parents.
If a crisis plan does not exist, make the case for developing one. Cite research about the effect of a crisis environment on student achievement and guidelines from the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Secret Service.
Get on the crisis response planning team.
Find out how the school has responded to crises in the past.
Ask key players in the school about what worked and what did not work.
Bring questions about the plan to the table. Who is responsible for implementing the different parts of the plan? Is there a plan to assess for trauma in students? Offer resources that can help others do their job.
Make sure that the school crisis response plan is developed with input and support from a variety of public and private agencies representing law enforcement, fire departments, emergency services, victim services, and agencies responsible for homeland security. Whether schools are reviewing an existing plan or developing a new one, they should include agencies with relevant expertise that may not have routinely partnered with schools.
Reach out to other agencies that are involved in responding to crises, such as local law enforcement and fire departments, state, county, and local emergency preparedness agencies, and the National Guard, to ensure that they are part of any community preparedness drills. Make sure that the school safety plan coordinates with the Incident Command System, a nationally recognized system used by law enforcement, fire departments, etc. to prepare for and respond to all types of crises. School district officials should work closely with law enforcement officials and other emergency service agencies to ensure that clear lines of authority are established and well-known.
Practice elements of the crisis response plan, such as evacuations, on a regularly scheduled basis. These practices can be woven into other safety drills (such as fire drills) that schools are required to conduct. Practice does not always mean drills. It can include table-top exercises (simulations of different types of crises and how to respond that can be discussed around a table) and other events that do not tie up school time.
References
Kramen, A.J., Massey, K.R., & Timm, H.W. (1999) Guide for Prevention and Responding to School Violence. Alexandria, VA: International Association of Chiefs of Police.
U.S. Department of Education, (2002), Letter from U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige to Chief School Safety Officers.
These are questions to answer with your school-based crisis management team. The spaces to the left of each question are for the names and/or titles of people assigned to carry out the different tasks.
Crisis Team Member |
Questions to Be Answered |
Additional Considerations |
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Who will collect the facts about the crisis? |
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Who will inform crisis team members and all other staff, parents, etc. about the situation, and what will they be told? |
Remember to include all relevant personnel: after-school staff director, school nurse, custodians, ESL staff, secretaries, aides, PTA members, crossing guards, etc. |
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Who will be in touch with the family of the affected person or people? |
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Who will determine where, how, and what the staff and children will be told? Do all children need to know what happened, and should they all be told the same information? |
It can help if staff members have written information to impart. |
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Who will write a letter to parents? Will the letter go home with the students or be mailed? |
It is a good idea to have schoolwide address labels ready, as well as adequate postage, envelopes, etc. It is important that parents receive information on the same day as the children. |
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Who will be responsible for talking with the media? |
It is important that staff, parents, and students know the policy and refer people to the designated media contact. |
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Who will contact the PTA? |
Will there be a PTA representative on your crisis team? |
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Who will be responsible for calling the systemwide crisis team, the superintendent, and other possible community resources? |
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Who will be responsible for overseeing the support for students, staff, and parents provided during the days after the event? |
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Who is responsible for arranging food, etc. for affected family(ies)? |
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Who will be responsible for assessing whether there are students who may need extra support or intervention? |
If school personnel believe that a particular child or children would benefit from outside counseling, how will this be handled? What are the criteria? How will parents be notified? |
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Who should collect a list of the outside resources that the school might want to call for help in dealing with the immediate aftermath? |
Where in the school will representatives of those agencies be stationed to offer counsel? |
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Who will find out about and contact other schools, including preschools, that may be involved in the crisis because of siblings or because the students involved attended these schools in the recent past? |
If several schools are involved, it can be helpful to coordinate letter- writing and what information is to be shared in order to cut down on rumors, panic, and misinformation. |
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Who will decide which articles, bibliographies, and information about the grieving process will be helpful, as well as who should receive such information? |
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If there is a death, who will handle information about funeral arrangements? Who will ask the family about their religious and cultural practices so people from the school and community will understand how to respond appropriately? Who will decide if a school commemoration is appropriate? |
If there are plans for a commemoration someone will need to consult with the family of the victim to be sure that their wishes are respected. It is also important for other students and friends of the deceased to be part of the planning process. |
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Who is responsible for making sure that long-range plans are in place for moving on after the initial days/weeks have passed? |
It is important to think through a gradual, graceful, and helpful withdrawal of the support services that the PTA and school personnel provide in the aftermath. |
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Who will assess the plan for effectiveness of the protocol after it has been used? Who is responsible for updating and keeping your team current and prepared? |
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Click on the following link to view and print this worksheet in Microsoft Word: MS Word (28K).
Reference
Quarcoo, M & Daynard, C. (2000). Crisis Prevention, Intervention and Response Handbook. Newton, MA: Newton Public Schools.
Click on the icons to the right to hear Deborah Prothrow-Stith, M.D., director of the Division of Public Health Practice, Harvard School of Public Health, describe a key way to make your school safety plan relevant and useful*. Click here to read her comments.
Note: You will need to hit your backspace key after listening to each audio clip to return to this event. |
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At about 6 a.m. on Friday April 27, 2001, Assistant Superintendent Carol Daynard received a call from another superintendent with terrible news. A bus of middle school students on a music trip to Canada had skidded off a highway and flipped several times. By the time Daynard had dressed, the superintendent called back. Four students had been killed. Dozens more were injured.
Daynard quickly drove over to Oak Hill Middle School in Newton, Massachusetts. As head of the districtwide crisis response team, Daynard had to put the school's crisis plan into action. By the time she arrived at 7:30 a.m., most of the school and city's crisis response team was at the school. They briefly met to figure out the first step. Parents, hearing the news on the radio and television, had come as well, anxious for information about their children.
First, the city and school team brought the children into the gym. The school superintendent and principal made an announcement, saying that there had been an accident with fatalities. Police had not yet identified the children who died. Then school officials sent the children to their homerooms and parents to the library, where clergy were available to talk with them. At the same time, people showed up to volunteer as crisis counselors. The Red Cross arrived and set up a table for volunteers to sign in and fill out a form, which was used to gather information on the background and qualifications of potential volunteers, as well as contact information. Team members chose only those volunteers whom they knew personally or by reputation.
The principal's office became the command center. At 10 a.m., the team learned the names of the students who had been killed. The school-based team set up notification teams to tell the families before making a general announcement. Each notification team included a clergy member, a school administrator, a counselor or school nurse, and someone who knew the child. Because this incident happened away from school and, in fact, out of the country, law enforcement officials were not part of the notification team, as is typical in other types of school crises. Working with the counselors, the team developed a statement that would be read to the students in their homeroom classes. When the teacher read the statement, a counselor or clergy member was available in each classroom to provide support to the teacher and the students. That meant sending 35 counselors or clergy to each of the 35 homerooms in the school.
The team set up counseling centers in the library, counseling suite and faculty suite for anyone who needed to talk. They made sure that each area had plenty of water and food. When people are traumatized, they have a physiological response that makes them very thirsty. In the end, a local water company donated about 5,000 bottles of water.
School superintendent Jeffrey Young was the chief spokesperson on the tragedy, coming out as often as every hour that first day to give reporters and others updates on the situation.
"He was just terrific," Daynard says. "He was open and clear and set a tone that we were taking care of the children, and we were being responsive. It was very comforting."
The school principal sent out a letter and e-mail message that day informing the parents about what had happened. He continued to send out daily updates for the next week. When there was a memorial service, he told students and families what would be appropriate to wear, depending on the religious traditions of the deceased students. For example, one student was Buddhist. In that tradition, it is customary to wear white to a funeral service. In crises that involve schools, police agencies, hospitals and other community agencies, a crisis team would typically hold a multi-agency press conference to coordinate the release of information.
The crisis team had been in place for several years and developed close working relationships with community organizations, such as the police and fire departments, and the local mental health hospital. Those relationships made it easier to respond quickly to unexpected needs, Daynard says. The team had to coordinate logistics with another country in getting information and making arrangements. The town mayor helped arrange flights back for the surviving students and chaperones.
While the team had prepared carefully for a crisis, they still ran into unexpected problems. "The kids' belongings from the bus were soaked in diesel fuel," Daynard says. "One of the crisis team members from the local hospital was able to arrange for the hospital to autoclave the belongings and return them. We also had to make sure that the belongings of the deceased were not among them. We did it quickly and got them cleaned up."
The afternoon of the accident, the team set up committees to deal with different aspects of the crisis. These included a memorial committee to plan and coordinate memorials and a counseling committee to set up counseling and provide materials on trauma and grieving.
"We discovered that we only had three phone lines in the school," Daynard adds. "We kept one open to Canada, and the other two to make arrangements for parents to fly up to Canada and, once reunited, for the students and parents to be flown back." Cell phones did not work because the school was located in a "dead zone." Daynard recalls that she and the mayor hung out of the school library windows with their phones, trying to get a signal.
The bus accident occurred on a Friday morning. School officials decided to keep the school open over the weekend for students, parents, and faculty members to gather. Team members made sure that there were shifts of seven counselors at all times. Crayons and paper were available for kids to draw and write messages for a makeshift memorial in front of the school. Some of the boys played basketball. Counselors held a group for parents on how to talk to their children about the tragedy and gave them handouts to take home. They also held a group for the survivors of the bus accident. Teachers also met in groups over the weekend.
The next week, four memorial services were held for the students who had been killed. Each morning at around 6 a.m., the team met to plan the day. The team arranged for substitute teachers so that faculty could attend the services. The school held its own memorial service for all of the students, parents, faculty and staff the Thursday following the tragedy. Families of the students killed and the surviviors were invited to a luncheon on the day before the schoolwide memorial.
At that point, the crisis team felt that the students needed some closure. After a week of attending memorial services every day, the next day, Friday, would be a regular school day. After the service on Thursday, team members gathered up the messages on the memorial area in the front of the school. Students and parents helped. Volunteers organized the notes and drawings into books for each of the families of the children who had been killed. By Friday, most outward signs of the tragedy were gone.
"At some point you have to get back to a normal life," Daynard says. "Sometimes it's better to let people go numb as opposed to hitting them hard right away with counseling. We tried to make it available and let people make choices as opposed to insisting that people process."
Afterward, the team held debriefings each week until the end of the school year with faculty, counselors, and staff. The staff included administrators, teachers, custodians, and those who worked in the cafeteria. It is easy to forget about those staff who can also be traumatized by a crisis, Daynard says.
The team also held debriefings to determine what they could have done better in the crisis. One thing was clear: The school team needed a representative from the parent-teacher organization to provide a clearer link to the parents. The team also met with the citywide crisis team on ways to make it easier to make phone calls during a crisis. As a result, a new phone system is being installed.
In the following school year, a social worker from a local mental health agency who helped during the tragedy came to the school one day a week to check in and counsel students and faculty. School counselors and psychologists made lists of children they thought might be particularly vulnerable. Those included children who had been close friends with those who had died and children who had suffered other major losses in their lives. Counselors kept a close eye on them.
It is critical to make sure that support systems are in place over the long term. Any crisis or trauma can produce stress and other difficulties that last weeks, months, and years. Some people will not realize that a crisis has affected them until months later. Then they will need support. For others, the effect will be immediate and may continue long after the initial crisis has passed.
Counselors, teachers and other school-based personnel in Newton and other school districts have found that concrete activities can help student recovery. Teachers can ask students to write about their feelings in journals after a tragic event. Students can mark on the front of the journal whether they want a teacher to read their entries. Adolescents are often more willing to write about their feelings than speak up about them. From those entries, teachers have identified students who are struggling and may need some extra attention. Teachers have also incorporated lessons that address specific crises, such as the September 11 events. They have included lessons that address racial and ethnic bias and teach students about other religions, such as Islam.
"More than a year after the tragedy", Daynard says, "we are still a traumatized community." The events of September 11 triggered further grief and other reactions among the students, parents, and school staff.
"We have to be much more vigilant watching the kids now," she says. "The bus accident was a trauma, and anytime you have another traumatic event, those memories can get rekindled. So you look for any change in affect, sleeping patterns, any kind of mood changes. Around September 11, some kids cried a lot. Many of them thought that they were jinxed -- two terrible things happened in their community. The thing to do is to let kids talk about it, give them places where they feel comfortable, where they can feel sad. But you also tell them that these are unusual things that don't happen very often."
To mark the one-year anniversary of the bus accident, a committee of Oak Hill students, parents, faculty, and administrators planned a memorial site on school grounds. They thought about installing a stone from Canada with the names of the students who had died. When planning any memorial, it is important to take into account the needs of the parents whose children died, Daynard says. School officials also realized that they needed to develop a policy on memorials. In the year since the accident, other students had died. Neither students nor school officials wanted to minimize those deaths. While the policy was still being developed, Daynard said that officials were leaning toward "living" memorials, such as scholarship funds, concerts, and book awards, rather than permanent memorials, such as stones and benches.
Please review the Day 2 Activity and then think about the following questions:
What role could you play as a middle school coordinator during a crisis at your school?
How would you involve community organizations?
As a member of the crisis team, think about how you would handle an unexpected situation during a crisis. For example, what would you do in the following scenario: At the Oak Hill School in Newton, one of the students who died was Buddhist. As part of his religious tradition, the funeral cortege, including the hearse, drove to the school. The hearse was opened to release his spirit. His family asked the school to open all of its doors as well to release his spirit from the school. The crisis team received 10 minutes' notice that the processional was coming. The funeral procession was to arrive just as the buses were scheduled to pick up students from school.
![](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20090115174458im_/http://www.ed.gov/images/ed_c_dline.gif)
* U.S. Department of Education, Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program; The Harvard School of Public Health; Education Development Center, Inc., and Prevention Institute (April 23, 2002). The Three R's for Dealing with Trauma in Schools (satellite broadcast). Retrieved August, 2002, from www.walcoff.com/prevention/. (Copyright 2002: U.S. Department of Education and Harvard School of Public Health, Division of Public Health Practice.)
This completes today's work.
Please visit the Discussion Area to share your responses to the discussion questions!
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This activity is designed to enhance your understanding of the event content through hands-on learning. You will be asked to perform a series of tasks and then reflect on your experience.
Objective
To map your community's resources and practice a mock crisis event.
Overview
A key step in crisis planning is to determine the resources in your community that you can call on during a crisis and to make sure that your team has practiced what it will do before an actual crisis takes place. Again, you may not be able to complete this activity in one day. You can use whatever parts that you cannot finish as a template for taking the next steps in crisis response planning and practice.
Part 1: Mapping Community Resources
Step 1
Using the worksheet, Mapping Community Resources, begin researching the resources in your community that could respond to a crisis. Include police, fire, and emergency responder contacts, as well as mental health centers, the Red Cross, and the parent/teacher association, if they are not part of the crisis team.
Step 2
Fill out the worksheet, including updated contact names and numbers, along with the expertise or assistance that each contact can offer.
Part 2: Practicing a Mock Crisis Event
Step 1
Arrange for a meeting of the crisis response team to practice a table-top exercise of a possible crisis event.
Step 2
Using the practice crisis event, go through the exercise outlined.
Step 3
Discuss with the team what you learned. Make any changes necessary to your plan as a result.
Please respond to the discussion questions that appear at the end of Day 2.
ASSESSMENT
- Identify the problem and determine the degree of impact.
- Take steps to secure the safety and security of the site, as needed.
- Make an incident report to the district administrator.
- Determine if additional support is needed. If so,
- Call school police and/or city police.
- Call cluster crisis team.
- Call other district crisis personnel.
- Alter daily/weekly schedule as needed.
INTERVENTION: COMMUNICATION
- Set up a command center.
- Establish sign-in procedures at all campus entry sites.
- Administrator/designee/crisis manager should do the following:
- Review facts and determine what information should be shared.
- Consider police investigation parameters.
- Notify family, with sensitivity and dispatch (consider a personal contact with family).
- Develop and disseminate bilingual fact sheet (written bulletin). Distribute to the following groups:
- Faculty
- Students
- Parents and community
- Begin media interactions:
- Identify a media spokesperson (office of communications may be used).
- Designate a location for media representatives.
- Contact neighboring schools.
- Contact schools of affected students' siblings.
- Initiate other communication activities:
- Classroom presentations or discussions
- Parent/community meetings
- School staff meeting
- Provide for rumor control:
- Keep a TV set or radio tuned to a news station
- Verify facts
- Update fact sheet as needed
- Work with student leaders:
- As sources knowledgeable of rumors among students
- As peer leaders to convey factual information
- As runners (written bulletins should be sealed when necessary)
INTERVENTION: FIRST AID AND EMERGENCY RELEASE PLAN
- Designate rooms/locations/areas for the following:
- Individual counseling
- Group counseling
- Parents
- Staff (certified)
- Sign-in for support services
- Initiate the referral process, including procedures for self-referral:
- Identify a crisis team member to staff all locations.
- Provide bilingual services as needed.
- Distribute appropriate forms for student counseling referrals to staff.
- Disseminate student referral information to teachers and other staff.
- Identify and contact high-risk students.
- Identify and contact other affected students, staff and personnel.
- Initiate appropriate interventions:
- Individual counseling
- Group counseling
- Parent/community meetings
- Staff meetings
- Classroom activities and/or presentations
- Referrals to community agencies.
INTERVENTION: DISSEMINATE APPROPRIATE HANDOUTS TO STAFF/PARENTS
INTERVENTION: DEBRIEFING
- Daily and mandatory crisis intervention activities. Include the following:
- Review the actions of the day.
- Identify weaknesses and strengths of crisis interventions.
- Review status of referred students.
- Prioritize needs and personnel needed for the next day.
- Plan follow-up actions.
- Allow time for emotional debriefing.
Reference
Center for Mental Health Services at UCLA (2000). A Resource Aid Packet on Responding to a Crisis at a School. Los Angeles, CA: Author.
Many administrators prefer not to make a P.A. announcement when there has been a crisis event that affects the school. There is no hard and fast rule here. It depends in part on the situation and in part on the ability of the administrator to use the P.A. in an effective manner.
The most common means of communication is a note to teachers and school staff members. Such communications should be made as quickly as feasible and should be done in a clear and open manner (providing all known information). In turn, teachers and staff are directed to inform students, doing so with concern and caring. If feasible, students should be informed in small-group settings where questions can be answered, rumors clarified, and concerns addressed.
The following is a sample of a statement used to provide staff and students with relevant information about the death of a student.
We regret to inform you of the death of [name]. S/he died on [date] as a result of [cause].
At times such as these, it is important for everyone to be informed and to have some time to express their thoughts and feelings. Part of first period will be used for such sharing.
In addition, we encourage anyone who is very upset to come to room [ ], where staff members will be available throughout today to help. Staff members will also be available on request over the next two days should anyone want further assistance. Such assistance can be obtained by [explain process].
As soon as the information is available, we will circulate a notice about funeral arrangements and provisions for attending if the funeral is during school hours. |
Reference
Center for Mental Health Services at UCLA (2000). A Resource Aid Packet on Responding to a Crisis at a School. Los Angeles, CA: Author.
Date
Dear Family Members,
We regret to inform you about an unfortunate event affecting our school. Yesterday [brief factual statement about event]. An investigation is underway, and until it is complete, we will not have all the details about this tragedy.
The school's crisis team has begun meeting with students and staff. We anticipate that some may need continuing support for a while to help them deal with the emotional upset that such an event produces. Enclosed are some materials that you may find helpful in talking about the matter at home.
If you have any questions or concerns that you think we can help address, please feel free to call the school [phone number] and ask for any of the following staff: [________________]
The following community agencies also are ready to help anyone who is feeling overwhelmed by their emotions:
We know that events such as this are stressful. We are taking every step we can to be responsive to the needs of our students and their families.
Sincerely,
Principal's signature
Principal
Reference
Center for Mental Health Services at UCLA (2000). A Resource Aid Packet on Responding to a Crisis at a School. Los Angeles, CA: Author.
What resources are available in the school district and community to assist during and after a crisis? List all the community resources you know about (consult any resource books and look in the local phone book).
Divide up the list and contact each resource to get updated information about services. Include mental health agencies, law enforcement, social service agencies, local hospitals, school district resources, Red Cross, victim services agencies, and others.
Resource/Agency |
Available Services |
Contact Name |
Phone Number |
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Click on the following link to view and print this worksheet in Microsoft Word: MS Word (24K).
Reference
Center for Mental Health Services at UCLA (2000). A Resource Aid Packet on Responding to a Crisis at a School. Los Angeles, CA: Author.
Click on the link below to view and print a publication from the National Association for School Psychologists titled "Memorials/Activities/Rituals Following Traumatic Events: Suggestions for Schools".
PDF (24K).
After a crisis has occurred, students need help to recover from their loss and find a sense of safety again. School personnel can help that process by engaging students in a variety of age-appropriate activities. The following activities are suggestions. Local schools can adapt these depending on the type of crisis experienced and the school population.
Ask students to keep journals. Adolescents are more likely to write what they feel than talk about it. Teachers can ask students to put a yellow sticky note on top of their journal if they want their teacher to read it. At one school, following the sudden violent death of a student, the principal asked students to write him letters about their feelings. He received 3,500 letters. From those, school officials identified 300 students at risk for mental health problems, such as depression and self-destructive behavior.
Facilitate other types of expression, such as drawing, singing, or writing letters to the local newspaper or elsewhere that articulate students' feelings about the event.
Allow adolescents to express feelings of anger and let them know that they will feel better over time.
Be sensitive to cultural differences among the children. In some cultures, for example, it is not acceptable to express negative emotions. Also, the child who is reluctant to make eye contact with a teacher may not be depressed but may be exhibiting behavior appropriate to his or her culture.
Encourage children to develop coping and problem-solving skills and age-appropriate methods for managing anxiety.
Provide some activities that will comfort adolescents, such as listening to music.
Limit the number of reminders of the event in the classroom.
Hold meetings for parents to discuss the traumatic event, their children's reaction to it, and how they can help. Involve mental health professionals at meetings if possible.
Create memorials where students can attach flowers, poems, messages, etc.
Provide students with opportunities to help. This can include raising money for the victim's families or helping people who are suffering in other ways in one's community (homeless shelters, battered women's shelters, soup kitchens, etc.). Students can also clean up school grounds, a park, or a vacant lot together. Encourage students to come up with ideas of how to help as well.
Create a service learning project in which students are given credit for performing service and reflecting on what they have learned.
Introduce curriculum that teaches children about diversity and different cultures, such as Beyond Blame.
Plan an event for the anniversary of the crisis with the input of students, parents, faculty, and victims' families. Anniversaries give people the chance to step back and reflect on what happened and the positive steps that they and their community have taken in the aftermath. They are also an opportunity to set new goals for the next year.
References
The Three R's to Dealing with Trauma in Schools: Readiness, Response & Recovery (2002), Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education
Diener S. Responding to Violent Events By Building Community: Action Ideas for Students and Schools (2001). Cambridge, MA: Educators for Social Responsibility.
Helping Children and Adolescents Cope with Violence and Disaster. Bethesda, MD: National Institute of Mental Health.
Click on the link below to view and print a publication from the National Association for School Psychologists titled "Managing Strong Emotional Reactions to Traumatic Events: Tips for Parents and Teachers". It provides an overview of warning signs of anger and serious emotional trauma in young people.
PDF (68K).
All crisis response teams need to practice before a crisis occurs. The following is a table-top exercise that a team can use. To make the exercise seem more immediate, modify it to include today's date and your own geographic area.
The War on Terrorism at Home and Abroad: America Responds
The Office of Homeland Security
________________________________________
EVENTS Homeland Security News and Events
June 26, 2002
12:07 p.m.
Attorney General Ashcroft has declared [your geographic area] under
an orange-high level of threat condition after intelligence unearthed a threat
to public schools in the Greater [your geographic] area. The higher the
threat condition, the greater the risk of a terrorist attack. Risk includes both
the probability of an attack occurring and its potential gravity. There has
been no specific threat. However, you, the school community, are being
alerted immediately, before this information is reported to the media.
You, the administrative staff of [the name of your school], now face a series
of questions:
- Now that you have received this notice of alert:
- How do you go about alerting the rest of the school community?
- Do you alert parents? If so, how do you go about alerting them?
- How do you handle the pick-up and/or dismissal of the students in your school?
- Not knowing the outcome of the threat:
- a. How do you go about setting up mental health support/after-care for the school community?
- b. What resources or programs should be made available for staff in the case of an attack? For students? And for parents?
Reference
Miller EF (April 2002). Training Exercise as part of videoconference The Three Rs to Dealing with Trauma in Schools: Readiness, Response & Recovery. Boston, MA: Harvard School of Public Health, Division of Public Health Practice.
Click on the icons to the right to hear Mark Weist, Ph.D., director of the Center for School Mental Health Assistance, University of Maryland, explain the importance of a positive school climate for student well-being*. Click here to read his comments.
Note: You will need to hit your backspace key after listening to each audio clip to return to this event. |
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Before Nathaniel Brazill age 13, shot and killed his language arts teacher, he told his friend that he would come back to the school that day with a gun. He told her four times.
She thought he was joking and did not report his threat to teachers or anyone else at the Palm Beach County, Florida middle school. On that last day of school in May 2000, Brazill was angry over his suspension for throwing water balloons. Witnesses later testified that Brazill told them that he was going to shoot the counselor who suspended him. He told one friend, "Watch, I'm going to be all over the news."
Later that day, Brazill walked up to seventh grade language arts teacher, Barry Grunow -- one of his favorite teachers -- and asked to see a girl in Grunow's classroom. Grunow refused. Brazill pulled out a gun and shot him once, killing the Lake Worth Middle School teacher.
At a youth assembly in Palm Beach County, Florida Nathaniel's friend Michelle spoke, urging her peers to take threats seriously. As school officials grapple with ways to prevent a crisis like a school shooting, they realize that students may be their best ally.
"We know that students have a lot of impact on fellow students in middle school -- more influence than adults. Students see and know things that adults don't know on campus," says Rick Lewis, training coordinator for the Department of Safe Schools of the School District of Palm Beach County. According to a U.S. Secret Service report, in more than 75 percent of school shootings, other students knew of the potential violence but did not report it to authorities.
The U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Secret Service recently released reports detailing the results of a three-year study that examined 37 incidents of targeted school shootings and school attacks that have occurred in the United States since 1974. Investigators paid particular attention to identifying pre-attack behaviors and communications that might be detectable and could help in preventing future attacks. Their full findings and recommendations are detailed in two publications on threat assessment in schools. Threat assessment is an essential part of a school's comprehensive violence prevention strategy.
A key component in threat assessment is persuading students to speak up about threats made by their peers. But that can be tricky. After Grunow's death, the Sunshine State School Public Relations Association (SUNSPRA) searched for ways to encourage students to speak up when they learn about threats. SUNSPRA staff held 14 focus groups with teenagers across Florida. Teenagers expressed strong reluctance to report threats. They did not want to be labeled a "snitch", and they did not trust adults to be responsive or protect their anonymity.
But if anyone could persuade teenagers to speak up, it's fellow students, the focus groups reported; in fact, they said that adolescents need to be reminded of the serious consequences of not speaking up.
Based on the focus groups and national research, SUNSPRA piloted the Silence Hurts campaign. The campaign teaches youth to speak up if someone's life is in danger. It seeks to build a community of caring that will make students feel safe enough to talk to adults about potential threats from other students. Strong messages, developed by teens for teens, are crafted to help break the "code of silence" to prevent school violence.
A student-led youth group, called Safe Ambassadors, guides the school in the initiative. Safe Ambassadors are either popular or influential kids in the school. The campaign gets the message out through public service announcements, banners, posters and other means. It teaches students to talk to a teacher or another adult if someone's life is in danger. Various teachers are identified as "listeners". They have information posted in their classrooms so that students know that they can share important information with them. The teacher will then notify an administrator who can take action. The student's identity is kept confidential.
"I have seen a change in students at Lake Worth Middle since [the shooting]," wrote Joanne Gendreau-Gaydos, a teacher at Lake Worth Middle School who witnessed the shooting, in the Palm Beach Post. "Under Principal Frank Mascara and Lake Worth police officer Debbie Wilson, students are learning about how silence hurts. The school's peer mediators and guidance counselors direct students as they watch a video and discuss the important topic of students bringing weapons to school. Students have come to understand that there are severe consequences when they don't speak up about a friend who plans to bring a weapon to school. Students now realize that seeking an adult's help could save people's lives."
The Silence Hurts campaign is part of a broad strategy to prevent violence and create safe schools by officials at the School District of Palm Beach County, which oversees 150,000 students and 150 schools. The district has its own safe schools center, which coordinates these initiatives. Although just one example of many possible approaches to violence prevention, Palm Beach County's plan is quite comprehensive; it includes creating a school climate of ownership and pride, including clear expectations about behavior, involving students in decision making, encouraging warm student-teacher relationships, building partnerships with families, teaching conflict resolution, and providing a safe physical environment.
Like many school districts, Palm Beach County has a lot of students who do not have the skills to manage conflict. Officials looked for a curriculum that addressed all types of kids -- popular, on the fringe, rich, poor, and of all ethnic backgrounds.
They settled on Aggressors, Victims, and Bystanders: Thinking and Acting to Prevent Violence, a 12-week curriculum developed by Education Development Center, Inc. The aim of the curriculum is to equip students with the knowledge and skills that will enable them to successfully resolve conflicts without resorting to violence. The 12-week class focuses on the key role that bystanders can play in helping to defuse a conflict. In Palm Beach County, police officers assigned to schools teach the course.
"Police officers bring something to a classroom that teachers can't bring, and that's their personal experience around this issue," says Rosemarie Backhus of the Aggressors, Victims, and Bystanders program at the School District of Palm Beach County. "Police officers have a lot of training in how to defuse a person and disengage them from their behavior. It's that and the relationship that develops between the officer and the teenagers, which spills over into the campus and the community. They see each other. It's the familiarity, the rapport, and the trust that is built between them."
The curriculum was pilot-tested at about 12 middle schools and is now expanding to all 30 middle schools in the Palm Beach County school district. The curriculum ties into the Silence Hurts campaign so that students have someone to talk with when they learn of a threat.
A police officer who teaches the curriculum to sixth graders wrote a letter about an incident he witnessed:
"I was in the hallway as classes were changing. I was between two sets of lockers. I noticed two students standing face to face with angry looks on their faces, and it looked like they were going to fight. I didn't recognize the students, so they must have been in the seventh or eighth grade. Just as I was going to step out and separate the two, I noticed one of my sixth graders pass by and stop. Of all the sixth graders that had to stop, it had to be Junior. You could classify Junior as an active aggressor. Throughout my program, while Junior was my student, he did nothing but talk and clown around. At one point I had to send him out of class, because his interruptions were hindering other students from learning.
"I thought to myself, I am about to have a three-way fight on my hands.
"But I couldn't believe what unfolded. Junior began to talk to the students. In a calming voice, he began to reason with them, telling them that fighting wouldn't solve the problem, and it would get them suspended. Junior became a successful problem-solving bystander. The two students listened to what Junior had to say and went their separate ways.
"Stunned and proud, I stepped out from behind the lockers. Just then, Junior turned and saw me. It was what he said next that made me appreciate the program even more. 'I guess I was paying attention in class,' he said.
"This just goes to show you that even though students may look as though they aren't paying attention, we can't give up, and we must continue to teach them. They are listening, if we are willing to instruct them."
Please review the Day 3 Activity and then think about the following questions:
What is missing from your school's prevention plan that specifically addresses crises?
How would you prioritize which prevention interventions to advocate for your school?
What are some no- or low-cost prevention ideas that you could easily help put in place?
* U.S. Department of Education, Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program; The Harvard School of Public Health; Education Development Center, Inc., and Prevention Institute (April 23, 2002). The Three R's for Dealing with Trauma in Schools (satellite broadcast). Retrieved August, 2002, from www.walcoff.com/prevention/. (Copyright 2002: U.S. Department of Education and Harvard School of Public Health, Division of Public Health Practice.)
This completes today's work.
Please visit the Discussion Area to share your responses to the discussion questions!
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This activity is designed to enhance your understanding of event content through hands-on learning. You will be asked to perform a series of tasks and then reflect on your experience.
Objective
To conduct an inventory of your school's crisis prevention activities and determine what additional activities are needed.
Overview
While schools need to be prepared for a crisis, they also need to try to prevent crises from occurring. While you have developed a school prevention plan, you may not have included specific elements designed to prevent crises. This activity is designed to help MSCs determine the types of prevention programs and approaches that best suit their school, specifically in the area of crisis response.
Part 1: Creating Your Inventory
For the first part of this activity, you will compile a preliminary list of prevention activities taking place at your school.
Step 1
Print Elements of a Crisis Prevention Plan.
Step 2
Using that list as a guide, complete the Prevention Activities Worksheet, filling in the prevention activities that your school is already engaged in under each category. You may have done a lot of this work in the previous online event "Identifying Prevention Priorities and Strategies for Success." If so, focus on categories that you believe are missing in your school's prevention response that could be aimed at preventing crises, such as threat assessment. Make note of the specific characteristics of your school and student population that may lend themselves to interventions, such as having Muslim students or students with parents in the military.
Part 2: Planning a Prevention Response
Step 3
Brainstorm ideas for measures needed under prevention activities specifically directed at preventing a crisis.
Step 4
Meet with your school safety committee or crisis response team (whichever is appropriate) and ask members for their input.
Step 5
Choose one idea and make plans to put it in place, establishing a timeline with specific tasks.
Please respond to the discussion questions that appear at the end of Day 3.
Establishing and Enhancing Clear School Policies Regarding Appropriate Behavior
- Create a climate of ownership and school pride, for example a graffiti and community clean-up program.
- Ensure that behavior expectations are clearly communicated, consistently enforced, and fairly applied.
- Develop and enforce a school dress code. Students and staff tend to behave the way they are allowed to dress.
Developing Threat Assessment
- Develop threat assessment procedures. Include descriptions of the early warning signs of potentially violent behavior and the procedures for identifying children with these signs.
- Refer troubled, agitated, ot depressed youth to mental health services and make sure that they get help.
- Identify and track repeat offenders. Most school crime problems are caused by a small percentage of students.
Enhancing Students' Personal and Social Skills
- Ask students to sign a pledge not to tease, bully, or put down others.
- Encourage students to report suspicious individuals or threats. Provide a toll-free anonymous hotline to report weapons and other criminal activity.
- Actively involve students in making decisions about school policies and programs:
- Implement a peer-counseling and peer mediation program.
- Involve students in managing student events and campus beautification projects.
Building Family Partnerships
Conduct formal discussions with parents about safety and security:
- Encourage parents to teach their children healthy ways of responding to bullying, teasing, and harassment at school.
- Advocate home security for weapons and promote gun safety instruction for all family members.
- Give parents information on effective parenting practices and offer training to those who seek additional support.
Fostering Diversity
- Create written policies that prohibit all forms of harassment and publicize them.
- Promote cultural diversity and tolerance through classroom discussions, lesson plans, etc.
Influencing School and Community Norms Related to Violence
Identify appropriate research-based programs and strategies to promote student safety:
- Teach conflict resolution, anger management, mediation, social problem solving, etc.
- Bully-proof schools by adopting effective, anti-bullying/harassment programs.
Securing School Grounds
- Provide a safe physical environment. School grounds should be assessed for such things as ease of access by dangerous individuals and natural barriers to surveillance, such as shrubs. Eliminate dark, secluded, and unsupervised spaces.
- Control campus access. Minimize the number of campus entrance and exit points used daily:
- Establish uniform screening procedures to monitor visitors and potential intruders.
- Require picture ID cards for all students and staff.
References
Adler, A. Schools Checklist: Creating a Positive and Safe School Climate. Jacksonville, FL: Silence Hurts
Oregon School Boards Association (2002). What Can Schools Do? Salem, OR.
Stephens, R. 40 Ways to Safer Schools. Westlake Village, CA: National School Safety Center.
Category of Prevention |
Measures Already in Place |
Measures Needed |
Establishing and Enhancing Clear School Policies Regarding Appropriate Behavior |
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Developing Threat Assessment |
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Enhancing Students' Personal and Social Skills |
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Building Family Partnerships |
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Fostering Diversity |
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Influencing School and Community Norms Related to Violence |
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Securing School Grounds |
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Other |
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Other |
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Click on the following link to view and print this worksheet in Microsoft Word: MS Word (20K).
Discussion Summary
This document summarizes the questions and comments posted by participants throughout the four-day event. Please review the summary and then visit the Discussion Area to share your impressions.
Evaluation
The evaluation form is no longer available. Please submit any comments or suggestions to amalia.cuervo@ed.gov
Thank you for participating in
Crisis Response: Creating Safe School!
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Thank you for making this event a great success by asking important questions of one another and sharing your own ideas and experiences on the topic of crisis response. This is a sensitive, yet vitally important issue that all schools must make a priority as they work to create safe and effective learning environments for young people. Below you will find a brief summary of the discussion from Day 3, as well as some of the key points from the first two days of this event.
Wearing red, white, and blue
Sharing a moment of silence
Holding ceremonies/assemblies (e.g., students saying they are proud to be an American in different languages, principal discussing the importance of respect and tolerance, music, guest speakers)
Readings over the intercom
Classroom projects, including writing about the heroes of 9-11
Explaining the significance and history of TAPS followed by a moment of silence and the playing of TAPS
Signing a community banner
Holding community meetings
Passing out patriotic stickers
Driving with headlights on
Discovery groups, similar to focus groups, only ask for "time" from parents, teachers, and students. They are opportunities to get their observations and perspectives about an issue/topic. We don't necessarily focus on solutions...but "raise issues"...so we can target the next step.
Our MS students do projects to create their own "anti-drug" messages and we will be doing this with violence and bullying.
I use our school newsletter to educate parents and community members.
Radio PA announcement and newspaper articles offer free ways to educate parents and other community members.
Integration of prevention across the curriculum and enhancing the use of technology can also help provide low cost prevention activities.
We are also networking with other small rural districts in our county to share resources and materials.
Create a team of teachers who want to reduce violence. There are always interested teachers and they have great ideas. In one of our schools, an English teacher asked all of her students to write about the violence they have seen in their schools. She then made transparencies, which she showed to teachers at a faculty meeting to raise their awareness.
Our PTO has two programs a year, one on violence and one on drugs. They are always looking for materials for these programs because they bring in a lot of parents who are not on the PTO but are concerned about their kids. PTOs are also great sources of money
What we are doing that is low/no cost are the following: staff-to-student mentorship, peer mentorship, peer mediation, and CPI training for teachers and school social workers providing class lessons on bullying.
Student-developed posters/poster contests, rap contests, chain letters, and skits.
A low-cost plan that I am implementing with my schools is the 40 developmental assets (from the Search Institute) in order for students to make connections and develop relationships with caring adults on campus (teachers, clerical, cafeteria workers, custodians etc.). Signs have been made for teachers to place on their doors letting students know that the teacher is a part of a team of caring teachers that they can talk to.
A low cost whole school prevention program that one of my three schools has decided to implement is democratic class meetings. Class meetings are wonderful for problem-solving, conflict resolution, team-building, and much more. Plus, they provide that "connectedness" that we are all working towards.
Being able to really think beyond the "unthinkable" and having the "time" & "opportunity" to solicit information & perspectives from all the necessary key players -- from administration to counselors to law enforcement to students. Everyone is just too busy to make it a priority.
The main thing absent in our crisis planning process is practice, practice, practice. There simply does not seem to be enough time to really show people how important these plans are. Unfortunately, some people hold to the belief that "it won't happen here."
What is missing in my school is an effective conflict mediation program.
Another major component missing is appropriate supervision during transition times.
Assess school needs pertaining to crisis response
Share best practice information on the topic as well as model crisis response plans
Help organize a crisis response team if one is not already established; if a team is in place, help ensure that all of the key players are at the table
Network with community agencies that may have a role during a crisis
Facilitate the development and or/review of crisis response plans, making sure that they are up-to-date and coordinated with the crisis response plans of other relevant agencies
Coordinate trainings for crisis response team members as well as practice drills and exercises
Help provide debriefings
Make sure that new staff understand their duties pertaining to crisis response
Prepare relevant materials for distribution
Model appropriate and effective behavior during an actual crisis
Fill in as needed during an actual crisis, since no students are assigned to MSCs
Contact and coordinate community services during an actual crisis, since MSCs have established strong working relationships with relevant community agencies
Thanks again for your participation!
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Tip Sheets
Audio Clips
- Day 1: Alan Steinberg, Ph.D., associate director of the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, speaks about the steps that schools and communities can take to help prepare for a crisis.
- Day 2: Deborah Prothrow-Stith, M.D., director of the Division of Public Health Practice, Harvard School of Public Health, describes a key way to make your school safety plan relevant and useful.
- Day 3: Mark Weist, Ph.D., director of the Center for School Mental Health Assistance, University of Maryland, explains the importance of a positive school climate for student well-being.
Links to Information on Crisis Response
Facilitated communication among participants in this online workshop will be asynchronous, meaning that drug prevention and school safety coordinators can log on to the event at their convenience to read and contribute messages. Here are a few tips to keep in mind as you participate in this exciting online event.
Your involvement is the key to event success! We hope to have enjoyable and stimulating discussions, but that can only happen if you log on and participate.
Make sure that you have adequate time to review new information and messages.
Log in at least once a day and participate in the online discussion as often as you can. You can share long or short messages, ask big or small questions, or contribute brief reactions to the messages posted by other MSCs and facilitators.
You can compose, review, and edit messages in a word-processing program (e.g., Microsoft Word) or in the event's Discussion Area prior to posting your messages online. Your messages will not appear online until you actively choose to post them. This allows you time to think about what you want to say and how you would like to say it.
When you reply to a message that was posted by a fellow coordinator or a facilitator, make sure to refer to the original message in your response so that others can follow the conversation.
To participate more fully during the event, try enabling the mailing list feature. This will enable you to receive all discussion postings by e-mail.
If you have any technical questions or problems, please do not hesitate to submit a request for assistance to Event Support. We promise you a quick response.
Relax and have fun with this opportunity to learn and connect with your fellow coordinators!
- Adobe Acrobat:
- A collection of programs developed by Adobe Systems, Inc., for creating and distributing electronic documents. These programs let you create and/or read a Portable Document Format (PDF) for your files, which preserves the document's layout. This is an advantage over other electronic formats, such as HTML, where the layout can vary depending on the software being used.
- Asynchronous discussion:
- Two-way communication that occurs with a time delay, allowing participants to respond at their own convenience. An example of an asynchronous discussion is the Discussion Area used for these online events.
- Chat room:
- A "virtual" room where people have real-time (synchronous) communication with one another via computer. During a chat session, either user can enter text by typing on the keyboard; the entered text will then appear on the other user's monitor. Most networks and online services offer a chat feature.
- Discussion Area:
- The section of this website where active participants can engage in asynchronous discussion.
- Discussions:
- Online "conversations" that take place within central Discussion Areas of the WebBoard. Discussions appear on the left hand side of the screen. One or more discussion areas will be available to you during an event.
- Internet access:
- One's ability to log on to the Internet. There are a variety of ways to do this. Most online services, such as America Online, offer access to some Internet services. It is also possible to gain access through a commercial Internet Service Provider.
- Internet Service Provider (ISP):
- A company that provides direct Internet access via modem or high-speed connection. For a monthly fee, the ISP gives you a software package, user name, password, and access phone number. You can then log on to the Internet, browse the World Wide Web, and send and receive e-mail.
- Link:
- In hypertext systems (i.e., the World Wide Web), a link provides a direct path from one document or Web page to another.
- Logon:
- The steps you must take to gain access to a network. Most personal computers have no log-on procedure -- you just turn on the machine and begin working. For larger systems and networks, however, you usually need to enter a user name and password before the computer system will allow you to execute programs.
- Modem:
- A device used to link computers via a phone line; "modem" is short for modulator-demodulator.
- Online:
- An adjective meaning that you or your computer are connected to another computer via a modem. It can also mean that you have unspecified access to the Internet.
- Online learning:
- The process of learning new skills and acquiring knowledge via the Internet, without needing to be physically present in the learning environment.
- Online resource:
- Information that is located on the Internet.
- Post:
- Sending a message to the Discussion Area of the WebBoard that begins or continues a thread of discussion. You must first select a Discussion before posting a new topic (or continuing an ongoing one).
- Reply:
- A posting/message made in response to another posting/message, always threaded under an existing topic on the WebBoard. Replies appear indented beneath the messages to which they correspond.
- Synchronous discussion:
- Interaction between two or more people that occurs at the same time, that is, with no appreciable delay between the end of one message and the beginning of another. Talking on the phone and participating in a chat session are examples of synchronous discussion.
- Threaded discussion:
- In online discussions, threaded discussions include a series of messages that have been posted as replies to one another. A single forum or conference typically contains many threads covering different subjects. By reading each message in a thread, one after the other, you can see how the discussion evolved. You can also start a new thread by posting a message that is not a reply to an earlier message.
- T1 communication:
- A high-speed network link that transmits data at 1.5 mbps (millions of bit per second). T1 lines transmit data almost 30 times faster than an ordinary phone line.
- Topic:
- A specific thread of discussion within a Discussion Area of the WebBoard. Topics appear indented, under a Discussion.
- URL:
- Short for "uniform resource locator," this is a website's specific Internet address.
- Web:
- Short for the World Wide Web, this is a method of using the Internet to access information via a graphical user interface.
- Web access:
- One's ability to log on to the Internet, an online service, or another network.
- Web browser:
- A software application used to locate and display Web pages.
- Web-based learning (workshop/training):
- The process of learning new skills and acquiring knowledge through the use of an educational site.
- WebBoard:
- The brand of software we use for the MSC online events to help conduct both synchronous and asynchronous online discussions.
- Web server:
- A computer that delivers (serves up) Web pages to your computer. Every Web server has an Internet Provider address and possibly a domain name. For example, if you enter the address <http://www.edc.org/msc> into your computer, this sends a request to the server whose domain name is <edc.org>. The server then fetches the page named in directories as "msc" (the general MSC website) and sends the requested page to your browser.
- Web service provider:
- See Internet Service Provider.
- Website:
- Any collection of pages that is accessible on the Web, usually referring to a constellation of separate pages accessed through a main title/menu or home page. You can access a website by instructing the computer to find and connect to the site's specific Internet address, known as its "uniform resource locator" (URL).
Day 1: Alan Steinberg, Ph.D., associate director of the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, speaks about the steps that schools and communities can take to help prepare for a crisis:
"The first step is to have a well thought out disaster plan that can be incorporated into part of an overall school safety plan. The disaster plan should be focused on ensuring the safety of faculty, students and school personnel. I'll sketch out for you a couple of categories that should be included in any sound disaster plan. If we can look at the Graphic Number 5, there are some standard categories that people use. First there needs to be preparation of emergency supplies. A really important one is familiarization with the types of disasters likely to occur in the geographical area. So, for example, in Los Angeles we are very aware, and our disaster plans reflect an awareness of, the potential for earthquakes, for fires and floods. In other areas of the country, there are risks for hurricanes, tornadoes, and industrial disasters, and, of course, sadly, we're having to include in our planning consideration of catastrophic school violence, terrorism, mass casualty events. Disaster plans should include teaching methods of physical self-protection to be engaged during a catastrophic event. There needs to well-rehearsed evacuation protocols for schools. There needs to be a system for tracking the location and safe dissemination of children. One of the things that we've found consistently is that the longer you separate children from their families, the greater the impact of that kind of traumatic situation. Schools need to know where the children are sent when they are sent to medical care and have a method for bringing children and families together. There has to be a plan for the restoration of the school facility, including the removal of trauma-evoking imagery. It's a very important one. After an earthquake, to leave a school with cracks -- it's really going to make it difficult for children to pay attention and concentrate in classrooms where they are being reminded about a very frightening event. And also a mechanism for directing media responses to a disaster."
Pre-disaster training includes the following:
- Preparation of emergency supplies
- Familiarization with types of disasters likely to occur in the geographical area
- Teaching methods of physical self-protection to be engaged during a catastrophic event
- Well-rehearsed evacuation protocols for schools
- A system for tracking the location and safe dissemination of children
- A plan for the restoration of school facilities
- A mechanism for directing media responses to a disaster
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Day 2: Deborah Prothrow-Stith, M.D., director of the Division of Public Health Practice, Harvard School of Public Health, describes a key way to make your school safety plan relevant and useful:
"One of the important aspects is to look at settings where they are in fact using it as a living plan rather than it sitting on a shelf. I suspect that, in that context, everybody put the plan together across disciplines, everybody feels some ownership of the plan, and in fact everybody has a part to play. I suspect that it's that interdisciplinary piece that's the most complicated and the most difficult. I guess, to get the school nurse as part of the crisis response team, to get the security personnel talking with the school psychologist, to get the teachers involved. Everybody understanding that they have a little bit of a role that steps out of their traditional professional responsibility and allows them to interact with other professionals."
Day 3: Mark Weist, Ph.D., director of the Center for School Mental Health Assistance, University of Maryland, explains the importance of a positive school climate for student well-being:
"It matters in a huge way. A recent really impressive study, the longitudinal study in adolescent health, documents that one of the most important things for youth to do well is to feel connected to school. There are a lot of things that a school can do to promote that sense of connectedness. Again, the teachers reaching out, teachers forming a relationship with every student, classrooms being managed well, hallways being monitored, students having the opportunity to develop friendships and participate in extracurricular activities. These are all really important things to help with a sense of connectedness, and when youth feel connected to school, they're less likely to involve themselves in risk behavior, less likely to have mental health issues, more likely to do well in school, so we're learning that the sense of connectedness is really, really important."
Source
U.S. Department of Education, Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program; The Harvard School of Public Health; Education Development Center, Inc., and Prevention Institute (April 23, 2002). The Three R's for Dealing with Trauma in Schools (satellite broadcast). Retrieved August, 2002, from www.walcoff.com/prevention/. (Copyright 2002: U.S. Department of Education and Harvard School of Public Health, Division of Public Health Practice.)
Letter from the Secretary of Education
THE SECRETARY OF EDUCATION
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20202
February 11, 2002
On January 8, President Bush made an unprecedented commitment to America's future by signing the No Child Left Behind Act, which takes historic steps to bring comprehensive change to our system of Education. Over the next two days, I hosted meetings with many Chief State School Officers from across the country to share ideas and strengthen relationships. I believe your colleagues who attended the meetings went home with the same vision for partnership and sense of energetic optimism the president and I hold.
As we work together to bring positive and meaningful change to our schools, we must simultaneously recognize and adapt to the changes thrust upon us by the events of September 11, 2001. My office has worked diligently to offer support and guidance to assist schools and parents in coping with the new and extraordinary challenges we all face. We have also learned critical information that will help us ensure our schools are secure and safe learning environments. In addition, the U.S. Department of Education is planning several activities and initiatives to prepare our schools further for potential threats affecting our students, educators, and their families.
This document offers detailed information to bring you up to date on the specific actions taken by the Department of Education to address the needs of those directly and indirectly affected by September 11. It also provides several important lessons learned with respect to threat assessment and crisis management in our schools, as well as actions educators and communities can take to implement effective policies to protect our children from both internal and external threats. I encourage you to share this information with members of your staff working on safety and crisis management issues.
Whether we are working to raise expectations for academic achievement or seeking to increase safety within our schools, I am committed to helping you provide an optimistic and hopeful future for every American child.
Sincerely,
/s/
Rod Paige
Overview of Activities, Lessons Learned, and Next Steps
The Department of Education has worked to offer all possible assistance to the victims of the September 11 attacks as well as help the many individuals and groups that were indirectly affected. Note: The information that follows was compiled and distributed to education leaders shortly after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Many of the activities that are mentioned have since taken place and many of the products that are mentioned have since been made available.
Information on the Department's Website: Immediately following September 11, the Department provided resource information on its website to help teachers and parents identify reputable sources for advice on helping students deal with the crisis.
School Emergency Response to Violence (SERV) Grants: Grants were provided to the New York City Board of Education and the state departments of education in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Virginia to help schools reestablish safe and secure learning environments.
Trauma Experts to New York City: After working with officials from New York City Public Schools to understand their immediate needs, the department identified several experts in trauma response and provided support for their travel to New York City to assist in the development of a strategy for dealing with the effects of September 11.
Trauma Response Training: The department sponsored a one-day workshop on responding to traumatic events for officials from nonpublic schools in New York City. Experts from the University of California at Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Unified School System conducted the training.
Lessons Learned and Recommendations
To gain a better understanding of actions taken in response to September 11, the Department has met with educators, students, teachers, administrators, law enforcement officials, medical experts and mental health professionals from around the country. These meetings were very productive, and the following items were determined to be critical elements to ensuring successful crisis management.
We strongly urge schools to have a plan for dealing with crises, such as school shootings, suicides, and major accidents, as well as large-scale disasters, such as the events of September 11, that have a significant impact on schools throughout the country. We recommend that every school review its school safety plan to ensure that it is comprehensive and addresses a wide range of crisis situations. Schools that do not have a school safety plan should implement a plan immediately. Some suggestions regarding issues that should be addressed in a school safety plan are included at the end of this document.
Effective school safety plans are developed with input from, and support of, a variety of public and private agencies, including agencies representing law enforcement, fire departments, emergency services, victim services, and agencies responsible for homeland security. To be effective, school safety plans must communicate goals and assignments clearly and be updated regularly to remain relevant over time. Whether schools are reviewing existing plans or developing new ones, they should seek to include agencies with relevant expertise that may not have routinely partnered with schools.
Developing a comprehensive school safety plan is only part of the task. Schools should conduct practice drills on a regular basis, and the results of practice activities should be reviewed to determine if revisions are needed. Practices can be incorporated within regularly scheduled safety activities, such as fire drills. Schools are encouraged to maintain contact with agencies that respond to crisis, such as local law enforcement and fire departments, emergency preparedness agencies, and the National Guard, to ensure that schools are included in any community-wide emergency preparedness drills.
During a crisis, there is no guarantee that normal chains of communication, command, and control will work as intended. Communications between schools and central headquarters can be disrupted, delayed, or otherwise impeded during a crisis. School-level administrators cannot be certain that information, guidance, or orders will be available, and they must have the skills and confidence to respond to any crisis situation they might face. School administrators are encouraged to consider several options to overcoming communication difficulties. First they may want to delegate decision-making authority to building-level principals during times of crisis. School district officials should work closely with law enforcement officials and other emergency service agencies in advance of a crisis situation to ensure that clear lines of authority are established and well known. Finally, we encourage officials to work with experts in the telecommunications field to understand what communication links are likely to be affected in certain circumstances and explore back-up systems or plans, including "low-tech" or non-traditional communication strategies.
Accurate and timely information on a crisis needs to be provided to students, family members, and faculty when appropriate. Absent such information, rumors and false information are likely to spread, which can cause additional problems for school and law enforcement officials. Therefore, school districts should develop a detailed procedure for providing accurate and timely information to students, parents, and faculty.
School policies that address typical problems may not provide adequate guidance regarding some situations faced by schools in recent years. Policies need to be reviewed to make sure they address a wide range of situations. We also encourage schools to work with parents, faculty, and students to develop strategies for publicizing the serious consequences associated with making threats.
School safety plans must address issues beyond safety and consider the health and mental health needs of students, faculty, and parents that result from a crisis. Crises such as the ones experienced at Columbine and on September 11 affect students, faculty, and parents in every school district to varying degrees. When addressing health and mental health issues, school safety plans should recognize that some students, faculty, and parents might need these health-related services for long periods of time. We recommend that every school safety plan include a section that deals with recovery issues, including the health and mental health needs of students, faculty, and parents.
Almost every community has access to the health and mental health services that can address the needs of those affected by crisis, but many school districts have not developed linkages with the organizations that can provide these services, and as a result, these services are not immediately available in the time of crisis. We encourage school districts to initiate conversations with local health and mental health providers and develop memoranda of understanding to delineate roles and responsibilities in times of crisis.
Schools experiencing a major crisis invariably receive an outpouring of support from potential volunteers who want to help. However, few districts have a plan in place to screen volunteers to make sure they are qualified and suitable to provide services in schools. We recommend that school safety plans include a process for screening persons who volunteer to assist during a crisis. Schools may want to consider having a cadre of experts and other service providers prescreened, so they can participate in emergency response activities without delay.
Only a few school districts have staff members who are adequately trained to deal with the results of a crisis such as a school shooting or the events of September 11. We encourage every district to designate and train a person, or group, to act as lead official(s) for response to crisis situations.
Students are sometimes further traumatized by actions taken, often with the best intentions, by teachers, faculty, and parents. Consistently retelling or reshowing portrayals of violent events can have a traumatic effect on students. School districts are encouraged to work with mental health service providers, teachers, and parent groups to establish guidelines for activities that respect the developmental capacity of students.
Upcoming Department of Education Activities
In order to help ensure that schools and students are safe from internal and external threats, the Department of Education is planning several activities, including:
Incorporate schools in Federal, State, and Local Emergency Planning: It is important for educators to be included in emergency planning processes, so we will work with the Office of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to ensure that schools are routinely included in planning for emergencies.
International Forum on Response to Terrorism: The Department of Education is hosting a meeting of educators from 10 countries that have had experience in dealing with terrorism to learn more about their experiences and how they have dealt with them. Information from this forum will be shared with educators throughout the United States.
Teleconference on Bio-terrorism: The Department of Education is collaborating with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to provide educators with the best science available on identifying and handling bio-terrorism threats, such as anthrax. We anticipate holding the teleconference in late winter 2002.
Teleconference on Developing a Mental Health Response to Crisis: The Department of Education is collaborating with the Harvard School of Public Health to provide educators with the best possible information on the mental health needs of those affected by crisis. We anticipate holding this teleconference in early spring 2002.
Threat Assessment Guide: We know that schools regularly receive threats against students and faculty, and those threats can have a detrimental effect. We are working with the U.S. Secret Service on the development of a Threat Assessment Guide. The guide, which will be released in the spring, will provide educators with practical advice on how to differentiate between persons making threats and those posing threats. The guide will be supplemented by a series of training activities.
Bomb Threat Guide: The Department of Education has been working closely with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to develop and disseminate materials that will help school officials develop strategies for the prevention of bomb threats and for handling them effectively when they occur. Release is anticipated by summer 2002.
The 3 Rs to Dealing with Trauma in Schools -- Readiness,
Response and Recovery
This two and a half hour video conference features experts from around the country who explore issues related to trauma, its impact on children, and implications for schools and school personnel. The conference was presented by the U.S. Department of Education Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program; The Harvard School of Public Health; Education Development Center, Inc.; and the Prevention Institute. The video conference can be viewed online.
Developing Good Crisis Plans
This paper was published in September 1997 as part of a continuing series of school safety and violence prevention issue papers from the Pennsylvania State School Safety Center, Center for Safe Schools.
National Association of School Psychologists
The mission of the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) is to promote educationally and psychologically healthy environments for all children and youth by implementing research-based, effective programs that prevent problems, enhance independence, and promote optimal learning. This is accomplished through state-of-the-art research and training, advocacy, ongoing program evaluation, and caring professional service. Numerous crisis response resources are available through NASP.
National Resource Center for Safe Schools
The National Resource Center for Safe Schools works with schools, communities, state and local education agencies, and other concerned individuals and agencies to create safe learning environments and prevent school violence.
UCLA Center for Mental Health in Schools
The UCLA Center for Mental Health in Schools produced a guide to crisis response entitled "Responding to Crisis in School." The document provides a set of guides and handouts to use in crisis planning and as aids for training staff to respond effectively. The guide contains materials to guide the organization and initial training of a school-based crisis team, as well as materials to use in ongoing training and as information handouts for staff, students, and parents.
Virginia Department of Education
The Virginia Department of Education developed a model school crisis plan, which was intended to be used as a tool by schools and school districts that are developing or refining crisis plans. It contains model policies, procedures, and forms that can be adopted or modified.
State of Missouri Department of Public Safety
This model plan provides communities with tools for developing a comprehensive crisis response plan. The plan emphasizes collaboration while explaining the importance of mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery.
Los Angeles County Office of Education Safe Schools Center
The Los Angeles County Office of Education's Safe Schools Center provides local leadership and support to this county's 81 school districts, comprised of over 1,700 schools. In particular, the Center helps ensure that all schools remain safe and secure.
State of California
The Crisis Response Box reflects best practices used throughout California and the nation in presenting and responding to school crises, such as school shootings.
Final Report and Findings of the Safe School Initiative: Implications
for the Prevention of School Attacks in the United States
The U.S. Secret Service completed a study of the behavior and thinking of young persons who committed acts of targeted violence in the nation's schools. The goal of the U.S. Secret Service's Safe School Initiative is to provide accurate and useful information to school administrators, educators, law enforcement professionals, and others who have protective and safety responsibilities in schools in order to help prevent incidents of targeted violence in school. In this report, investigators released findings from their analysis of the behavior and thinking of more than 30 school shooters.
Threat Assessment in Schools: A Guide to Managing Threatening
Situations and to Creating Safe School Climates
Based on its findings from its study of school shooters, the U.S. Secret Service released a report that sets forth a process for identifying, assessing, and managing students who may pose a threat of targeted violence in schools. The guide is intended for use by school personnel, law enforcement officials, and others with protective responsibilities in the nation's schools. The guide includes suggestions for developing a threat assessment team within a school or school district, steps to take when a threat or other information of concern comes to light, consideration about whether to involve law enforcement personnel, issues of information sharing, and ideas for creating safe school climates.
The School Shooter: A Threat Assessment Perspective
This monograph was developed from the concepts and principles developed by the FBI's National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) in nearly 25 years of experience in threat assessment, ideas generated at a 1999 NCAVC symposium on school shootings, and an in-depth review of 18 school shooting cases.
Blueprints for Violence Prevention
In 1996, the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence (CSPV), with funding from the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (and later from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency), initiated a project to identify violence prevention programs that met a high scientific standard of program effectiveness. These outstanding programs are described in a series of "blueprints" that provide information regarding their theoretical rationales, core components, evaluation designs and results, and the practical experiences that programs encountered during implementation across multiple sites.
School Violence Prevention Initiative
This Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) initiative is designed to improve mental health services for children with emotional and behavioral disorders who are at risk of violent behavior, and to focus on developing the integrated continuum of prevention, early intervention, and treatment. The CMHS initiative on school violence focuses on the collective involvement of families, communities, and schools to build resiliency to disruptive behavior disorders (for example, oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).
Hamilton Fish Prevention Program
The Hamilton Fish Institute, with assistance from Congress, was founded in 1997 to serve as a national resource to test the effectiveness of school violence prevention methods and to develop more effective strategies. The Institute's goal is to determine what works and what can be replicated to reduce violence in America's schools and their communities.
School Safety Resources
This site provides an extensive list of school safety publications, including the Annual Reports on School Safety and Indicators of School Crime and Safety, from the U.S. Department of Justice as well as from other federal agencies. It also provides links to to a sampling of additional agencies and organizations with resources on school safety
Best Practices of Youth Violence Prevention: A Sourcebook for
Community Action
Best Practices, a publication from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC), is the first of its kind to look at the effectiveness of specific violence prevention practices in four key areas: parents and families; home visiting; social and conflict resolution skills; and mentoring. These programs are drawn from real-world experiences of professionals and advocates who have successfully worked to prevent violence among children and adolescents. The sourcebook also documents the science behind each best practice and offers a directory of additional resources.
Youth Violence: A Report of the Surgeon General
This report is the first Surgeon General's report on youth violence. The product of extensive collaboration, it reviews a large body of research on where, when, and how much youth violence occurs, what causes it, and which of today's many preventive strategies are effective.
Aggressors, Victims, and Bystanders
Aggressors, Victims and Bystanders is a 12-week curriculum that aims to change the roles that students play in potentially violent situations. Most students are not aggressors but rather bystanders to violence. Typically, most people either passively accept violence or overtly encourage it, as a result of habitual patterns of thought and behavior. The curriculum's goal is to change those patterns and to teach children to become "nonviolent problem-solvers." In that role, they can change the course of volatile situations at school.
Bullying Prevention Program
The Bullying Prevention Program is a universal intervention for the reduction and prevention of bully-victim problems. The main arena for the program is the school, and school staff has the primary responsibility for the introduction and implementation of the program. The program targets students in elementary, middle, and junior high schools. All students within a school participate in most aspects of the program. Additional individual interventions are targeted at students who are identified as bullies or victims of bullying.
Resolving Conflict Creatively Program
Educators for Social Responsibility created the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program, which is a comprehensive K-12 school-based program in conflict resolution. The primary goal of the curriculum is to ensure that young people develop the social and emotional skills needed to reduce violence and prejudice, form caring relationships, and build healthy lives.
Silence Hurts
Silence Hurts is a research-based informational campaign designed to supplement existing efforts to promote school safety. Strong messages, developed by teens for teens, are crafted to help break the "code of silence" to prevent school violence.
Beyond Blame
In response to the terrorist tragedy of September 11 and subsequent attacks against Arab Americans, Education Development, Inc., developed a free, 30-page curriculum for middle and high school students focused on issues of justice and mislaid blame. The curriculum features three lessons that are designed to stimulate student reflection, discussion and writing.
Educators for Social Responsibility
Educators for Social Responsibility have created more than 50 free lesson plans customized to help educators and students discuss and understand recent events, including war, peace, conflict, bullying, anthrax, airline safety, Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine, discrimination, hate crimes, and a range of divergent points of view.
Peace Corps Returned Volunteers
The Peace Corps sponsors a program in which returned volunteers go to schools and talk about their experiences of living in another country and culture. Volunteers share their experiences, insights, and stories of learning to live effectively and respectfully with those of another culture. The goal is to broaden perspectives and promote understanding, with a focus on getting kids to think about the world, themselves, and others in a way that promotes tolerance and understanding across cultures.
National Service-Learning Clearinghouse
The National Service-Learning Clearinghouse (NSLC) provides resources for those interested in establishing or enhancing service-learning projects. Service-learning combines service objectives with learning objectives, with the intent that the activity change the recipient and the provider of the service. NSLC provides tool kits, syllabi and curricula, funding sources, effective practices, and other resources.
Learning In Deed: Making a Difference Through Service-Learning
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation launched this national initiative in 1998 to engage more young people in service to others as part of their academic lives. Learning In Deed is comprised of four components: Policy and Practice Demonstration Projects, National Commission on Service-Learning, Learning In Deed K-12 Service-Learning Leadership Network, and Learning In Deed Research Network.
Fast Response Survey System
This survey collects and reports data on key education issues at the elementary and secondary level. It was designed to meet the data needs of USED analysts, planners, and decision-makers when information could not be quickly collected through traditional surveys from the National Center for Education Statistics.
Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2000
This report, the third in a series of annual reports on school crime and safety from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Center for Education Statistics, presents the latest available data on school crime and student safety. It synthesizes information from a variety of independent data sources from federal departments and agencies, including the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Center for Education Statistics, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health
The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) is a school-based study of the health-related behaviors of adolescents in grades 7-12. It was designed to explore the causes of these behaviors, with an emphasis on the influence of social context. Add Health postulates that families, friends, schools, and communities play roles in the lives of adolescents that may encourage healthy choices of activities or may lead to unhealthy, self-destructive behaviors.
Monitoring the Future
Funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, this is an ongoing study of the behaviors, attitudes, and values of American secondary school students, college students, and young adults. Each year, a total of some 50,000 eighth, tenth, and twelfth grade students are surveyed (twelfth graders since 1975, and eighth and tenth graders since 1991).
School-Associated Violent Death Study
This study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in conjunction with the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice, seeks to estimate the rate, describe the epidemiology, and identify potential risk factors and common features of school-associated violent deaths in the United States.
Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS)
Developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in collaboration with federal, state, and private sector partners, this system provides information about the prevalence of risk behaviors among young people at the national, state, and local levels in order to more effectively target and improve health programs.
Last Modified: 09/19/2008
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