The suicide of a competent and popular teacher required rapid but careful response by administrators at a midwestern high school. This article explains how faculty members and students were informed and how crisis specialists were brought in to help respond to strong student reactions. (PGD)

Provides guidelines from social work perspective on how social workers and health care professionals can provide bereavement counseling for families whose relatives have died in emergency room. Discusses providing family with privacy and accessibility; keeping family informed; using understandable terminology; speaking directly about death;…

Teachers can help children cope with the loss of a parent or friend in two ways. Discussion about death can be integrated into the curriculum on an ongoing basis. Teachers can help students with the tasks of mourning: understanding, grieving, commemorating, and going on with life. (IAH)

Assesses the impact of a loss experience within the family unit. Discusses how the loss affects the nuclear family and how socio-cultural and psychodynamic factors impact family grief. Issues in family counseling are then highlighted with suggestions for the grief counselor. (ML)

Asserts that crisis caused by the sudden death of a student or teacher can be averted or diminished via a preplanned team intervention approach. Describes such an approach implemented successfully by the Easton, Massachusetts, public schools. Provides both guidelines and strategies of the field-proven intervention program. (Author/NB)

This document presents a program for training volunteers to assist individuals and families who are going through a crisis related to terminal illness and death. The training is described as being both didactic and experiential. A discussion of the didactic portion of the program includes descriptions of: (1) the stages of preparatory grief as…

To handle a death in the school community wisely and sensitively, school boards need to develop a death response policy. A policy developed by a diverse committee will be sensitive to the needs of the entire school community. Offers seven points to consider in drafting a policy. (MLF)

Crisis intervention is a vital component of any comprehensive approach to maintaining psychological well being. An active school-based crisis intervention team can make a powerful contribution to a school's sense of community and commitment to taking care of each other. This special edition presents promising practices that may be helpful to…

To deal with rising teen suicide and attempted suicide, this Michigan school system developed a comprehensive crisis response plan encouraging greater communication with students, parents, and school staff members and involving immediate response by trained professionals and followup procedures to stabilize the school community. (WTH)

Intended for use as part of an inservice program, this guide was designed to provide insight into adolescent suicide and to serve as a reference tool. It begins with an overview of suicide, citing society's desensitization to death, rapid changes in society, success codes, and the disappearance of the extended family as factors in the increase of…

This manual was written to help schools address the problem of youth suicide. The introduction presents a teenager's and a parent's perspective of youth suicide, discusses the problem of youth suicide, and develops a hypothesis of why the problem exists. Section 1 describes the contributing factors involved with adolescent suicide and provides…

This book is designed to be a systematic guide that incorporates a thorough analysis of grief in a school. It details normal and abnormal grief reactions, factors affecting these grief responses, and the differences in death beliefs and responses of students at different ages and developmental stages. It can also act as a map or a step-by-step…

This book provides strategies for helping atypical students deal with the crises of disruption, disaster, and death. The importance of collaborative networks between school and community agencies in addressing crises is stressed throughout the book. Chapter 1 notes the relationship between crises and special education and the need to utilize a…

What happened in the small farm community of Elk Point, South Dakota, on January 8, 1986, was unimaginable--a father shot his family and then walked to work and shot himself. Upon learning of the murder/suicide, the Elk Point School District faced the difficult questions of what teachers should say to students, how the district should deal with…

This three-part manual is intended for principals and other administrators responsible for developing and managing school crisis plans. Part 1, preparation for a school crisis, includes sections on the selection and training of members of the school crisis team, steps in developing a school crisis plan, and four crisis scenarios to train team…