Counselors help students process grief overload

Eleven grief counselors worked their second day at Germantown High on Monday, helping a student body bigger than some small towns begin processing the sadness of losing two classmates in one week. A third, Blake Freeman, died of an illness in September.

“For a lot of the children, this is the first time they have lost a friend, a peer,” said Nancy Kelley, supervisor of counseling services at Shelby County Schools. Besides the shock of sudden loss, “it puts them in the position to realize ‘this is someone my age; this could happen to me.’”

By the close of school Monday, Kelley’s team had seen close to several hundred students grieving the loss of Christian Hess, 16, killed in a car accident March 27 at South Germantown Road and Crestridge, and Him-yar Hassan, 16, killed March 28 in what investigators suspect was an accidental shooting at a home in the 8000 block of Tulip Rose.

Both boys were juniors. The school has 2,050 students.

GHS principal Ted Horrell announced the counseling in English and Arabic over the loudspeaker Monday morning and then read a sampling of the dozens of tweets that poured in over the weekend from alumni, parents and the public.

“I tried to express to the students the amount of support, love and prayers they are getting from the community,” Horrell said. “The grief is definitely manifesting itself in lots of different ways. This group of students has a remarkable ability and inclination to take care of each other.”

School officials set up a temporary counseling center in the school library where counselors could talk to students in small groups with their friends.

When GHS mother Samira Ju- bran heard of Himyar Hassan’s death, she called the school and the Shelby County sheriff’s department to help bridge the language and cultural divide. She spent the day Monday working in the GHS counseling center with Arabic-speaking students.

“These kids come from different backgrounds, and there are cultural implications to work through,” she said, “including that it’s OK to cry. It’s OK to talk about it or not talk about it. There are cultural parts for girls and boys.”