California School Counselor - Fall 2008 - (Page ST3)

SAFE PASSAGE LEADING YOUR SCHOOL THROUGH CRISIS AND RECOVERY By Cheri Lovre With Safe Passage, you will learn how to organize and train teams to effectively respond to critical incidents. The author draws on 30 years experience in responding to some of the nation’s most well-known school tragedies to guide you through the planning stages, the immediate response, and the essential long-term emotional recovery that is so often overlooked. Safe Passage includes a CD, as well as a tabbed at-a-glance section of reproducibles, checklists, and handouts to enable you to quickly respond with calm and conﬁdence during your school’s greatest challenges. CD; grades K–12 804MPCA–BKF225 $59.95 REGAINING BALANCE LEADING YOUR SCHOOL THROUGH LOSS By Cheri Lovre MEDIA RELATIONS FOR SCHOOLS INCLUDING CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS By Cheri Lovre THE SAFE ROOM A GUIDE FOR SCHOOL CRISIS RESPONDERS By Cheri Lovre Provide teachers, counselors, school and district administrators, and other school crisis responders with the guidelines and tools for setting up and stafﬁng a Safe Room for those affected by loss. A Safe Room is a reassuring environment where bereft students and staff can come to terms with their grief, learn to accept and support others who are grieving, and come together without interrupting the teaching and learning processes in the rest of the school. 161 pages; CD; grades K–12 804MPCA–BKF208 $17.95 The death of a beloved teacher from cancer, a child abducted over the weekend, or a drunken-driving accident that claims the lives of several students can devastate a school community. Regaining Balance shows you how to create a systematic, caring response that supports your most vulnerable students and staff, builds community relations, and allows your school to return to academics more quickly. This resource features step-by-step suggestions for each stage of your response, a CD with invaluable reproducibles, checklists, and handouts, as well as a tabbed “quick response” section. 441 pages; spiral bound; CD; grades K–12 804MPCA–BKF205 $59.95 Establish proactive, positive media relations to minimize negative press coverage and build community support. When crisis hits, the local media can be a valuable source of support—if you are prepared to meet the press with a solid action plan. This step-by-step guide is adaptable to the needs of schools and districts of any size and includes dozens of checklists, examples, and reproducibles. 125 pages; CD; grades K–12 804MPCA–BKF219 $17.95 By Cheri Lovre The Safe Room is an outgrowth of our new knowledge about grief and trauma. Simply put, it is a space set aside within a school setting where students can gather to talk about, learn about, and begin to reconcile grief and loss in the aftermath of a death or crisis in the school community. The Safe Room is, in a sense, the heart of crisis response. It exists primarily to meet the emotional needs of students, but it beneﬁys the school on a classroom, building, and district level as well. There are still a few people who think that we should send kids home to grieve with their parents, as was the custom when many of us were children. The reality is that we grieve best with those who shared a relationship with the deceased similar to our own. One of the hallmarks of mourning is a sense of joined community: Kids who were on the same basketball team, in the school play, in homeroom, or in algebra with the deceased, need to be together. In the Safe Room, they can complete some of what Dr. Alan Wolfelt calls the tasks of grief: putting their own words to the loss, sharing memories with others who knew the deceased, paying tribute to the life, and examining the meaning of the death and how it will change their personal identities. With the help of trained, caring adults, students learn lifelong skills for coping with grief and loss. Others wonder if creating a Safe Room isn’t making “too big a deal” out of a death. But grief is a natural response to death: For deeply affected students, learning will be impossible until they begin to reconcile their grief. Teachers often feel torn between meeting the emotional needs of the few—at the expense of those ready to learn—and meeting the educational needs of the majority—at the expense of those most in need of help. But if grieving students have a place to go, teachers can maintain the academic process for the rest of the class, and the building and the school returns to normalcy much sooner. Over time, as Safe Rooms become a familiar part of a school’s response, discipline rates go down instead of up in the aftermath of crisis. As these teachable moments accumulate, students learn the concepts of grief and the language of compassion. Even students who do not visit the Safe Room are affected by the announcement of a death, the opening of the Safe Room, and the expectation of respect and understanding for those who are grieving. They begin to consider what others might be going through after the loss of a friend, and overall school climate improves as a result. On a district level, implementing Safe Rooms into all buildings brings consistency to students as they pass through all the grades. It sends the message that all students, popular and unpopular, receive support when they lose a friend—that every student counts, and that life matters. http://www.solution-tree.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of California School Counselor - Fall 2008

California School Counselor - Fall 2008 Contents Presidential Perspectives Jackie's Jottings Executive Director's Report Pics, Clicks and Technics Calendar Index to Advertisers Prevention is Key in Crisis Response High Schools Partner with Cash for College to Boost Cal Grant Awards CASC Southern California Conference and Research Summit II Reflection 2008 WACAC Annual Spring Conference H.B. McDaniel Foundation Awards Announced 2008 Delegate Assembly 2008-2009 School Counseling Program Grant Recipients Named Solution Tree Outsert

California School Counselor - Fall 2008

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