‘God forbid it ever happens’ — school counselors ready to deploy in crisis
After a student at Franklin Regional High School ran through the hallways with a pair of knives, slashing or stabbing 20 fellow students and a security guard, members of the South Hills Area School District Association wondered how a crisis like that would unfold at their schools.
The decades-old group includes social workers, counselors and Student Assistance Program leaders from 16 school districts across the South Hills region, who meet regularly to pool their resources and share expertise. The 2014 knife attack was something each member had strong feelings about, said Annette Giovanazzi, a social worker atBaldwin High School.
“That started the conversation within our group, like, ‘That could happen anywhere,’” she said. “’If that happened in one of our schools, what would we want to see happen?’”
They decided to create a “crisis
response team” that is ready to deploy at the request of any of the member school districts in case of a tragedy like what happened almost four years ago at Franklin Regional in Murrysville, or two weeks ago in Parkland, Fla., where a gunman entered a high school and fatally shot 17 students and teachers. SHASDA members wanted to be prepared to quickly provide counseling resources as necessary to students and teachers if a similar event occurred at a South Hills school, members said.
“We just felt that we know each other, and if an incident would happen, we would want to support each other, ”Ms. Giovanazzi said.
A handful of representatives from each of the member school districts underwent an intensive daylong “post-vention” training in March 2016 so they would be better able to help students and staff cope with trauma. It was led by experts from UPMC’s Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic. In case of a crisis, the superintendents of each South Hills district is prepared to allow members of the team to respond to other schools.
“We all get it, we all understand that we need to help each other out in the South Hills,” said Melissa Nelson, principal of Washington Elementary School in Mt. Lebanon.
While the team has never been dispatched for a mass shooting or violent event, it has responded to help schools that lost a longtime faculty member to illness and a school that lost a student in a shooting, Ms. Giovanazzi said. The crisis team’s members are prepared to help — if a school district asks — in case of a student suicide, accidental death or any other event that school leaders would like more help dealing with.
Ms. Nelson, who previously worked in the field of mental health before becoming an educator, said the adults in the school building need support as much as the students. The Mt. Lebanon School District invited SHASDA counselors to help teachers after the loss of a longtime faculty member, she said. That way, Mt. Lebanon’s own employees weren’t counseling their colleagues.
School districts often rely on local counseling and mental health agencies to help students cope with a trauma, Ms. Giovanazzi said. The SHASDA crisis team helps the South Hills school districts conserve resources, she said.
In most cases, when a school or district is working to help its staff and students process an event like a mass shooting, national experts are brought in, said Mary Margaret Kerr, a professor of psychiatry and psychology in education at the University of Pittsburgh.
“Sometimes it’s easier for us, who are not directly involved, to be able to step back and give guidance,” she said. “It can be anything from the death of a teacher to the death of a student, violently or otherwise. I’ve responded to three plane crashes, bomb threats, school shootings, and sometimesfire or floods.”
A new generation of counseling experts was trained when they responded to Hurricane Katrina, just as the wildfires in California last year created a new realm of expertise in the field, she said.
“When a crisis happens, it’s not predicted … people are caught off guard and they need resources and they need them rapidly,” Ms. Kerr said. “People who have been through this before, they can be more efficient.”
That assistance can come in the form of anything from helping with media interviews to drafting letters to parents, she said.
Ms. Nelson said the SHASDA team is equipped to provide its member districts with the assistance necessary in the “short term” after a crisis, to help triage until national resources can be deployed in case of a situation like what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.
“It really became very apparent that when people from outside agencies were responding to schools, there was a bit of disconnect,” she said about the formation of the crisis team.
The strategy would be to quickly identify first the “inner circle” of students or staff that would be affected most by a tragic event and make sure they get the help they need, whatever it may be, Ms. Giovanazzi said. That group could include siblings or other relatives, close friends, teammates, classmates or fellow club members.
The SHASDA team would quickly make sure those people have whatever they need.
“God forbid it ever happens, we’re prepared,” Ms. Nelsonsaid.