Tuesday, December 17, 2024
We are all feeling and experiencing an immense amount of grief following another senseless tragedy within our school community. Schools are meant to be safe places, and no community should have to face the pain of losing children, teachers, and friends to violence.
After a violent event occurs in a school community, it is critical that we come together not only with love and care, but with trauma-informed resources and best practices. Whether the incident occurred in your community or in another one, we are all connected, and the social-emotional effects of trauma are not limited by geography. These incidents hit us hard, and the trauma is felt in all our communities and by every teacher, student, and family.
Educators and staff may have to act in the role of first responders to support the emotional well-being of our students and communities while at the same time processing the trauma and grief themselves. That’s why it’s incredibly important to revisit these resources. In the wake of trauma, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We do need to have already developed, trauma-informed resources to help us process and heal.
These resources are intended for schools, educators, and families to help process and navigate in this moment. These are in addition to state and local public health and social service resources which may be deployed.
- The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction has a one-page resource intended for families to help process grief and traumatic events.
- Talking to Children about the Shooting is a resource sheet from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network helpful to parents, caregivers, and caring adults wanting to help children understand their experience and feel safe expressing their feelings.
- The DPI's Student Services/Prevention and Wellness team has a dedicated webpage with content related to school safety and crisis response, as well as resources on fostering resiliency.
- Talking to Children When Scary Things Happen is a one-page resource from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network which centers a trauma-informed approach for educators to address violent incidents with children.
- Child Trends provides general, developmentally-sensitive approaches to comforting and reassuring children in the wake of a school shooting.
- The National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement Talking to Kids about Tragedies (Such as Shootings and Terror Attacks) in the News provides guidance in English and Spanish.
- The Wisconsin Department of Justice's Office of School Safety has resources to support recovery after schools are impacted by or exposed to a crisis event.
The OSS provides free consultation, best practice guidance, a vast resource library of handouts and communication templates, intervention recommendations, and local Critical Incident Response team deployment upon request for schools. Interventions are evidence-based and tailored to the needs of the school community.
You can request OSS crisis response and recovery support by contacting OSS at 1-800-MY-SUSO-1 (1-800-697-8761), or by emailing them at schoolsafety@doj.state.wi.us 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. - The Wisconsin Department of Justice Speak Up, Speak Out portal allows anyone to report a school safety concern. Reports can also be made confidentially to 1-800-MY-SUSO-1 (1-800-697-8761), or by emailing them at schoolsafety@doj.state.wi.us 24 hours a day, 365 days a year
- 211: a free and confidential service that connects you with thousands of local social service and support programs and resources.
- 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is a free, 24-hour text and phone line in English and Spanish. Can also be accessed by texting or calling to 988.
- Wisconsin Department of Health Services provides an online training module for first responders called First Responder Training Toolkit: Strength is Asking for Help
- Wisconsin Department of Health Services - Resilient Wisconsin resource library includes handout sheets as well as materials and activities to help build resilience in the wake of challenge and crisis.
No matter what, we at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction want you to know that you are not alone. We are a community brought together by the common goal of helping and caring for each other with professionalism, with warmth, and with care.