Addressing Tragedy in Schools

The recent tragedy that took place in Boston has brought me back to thinking, not for the first time this year unfortunately, how to deal with devastating events happening in the world with your students. This time I am in a kindergarten classroom, and it doesn't seem that any of my students are aware that anything has happened and we have not talked about it in class at all. They do appear to have some knowledge of bad things that have happened in the world though. When we had a lockdown drill back in February and had to hide in the bathroom to wait for the police to come let us out we had a short conversation about it to prepare them and give the reassurances that it is just a drill to practice keeping them safe. While we were talking we tried to avoid any mention of situations that would lead to a lockdown other than if a bad guy came to our school. However a few of the students did bring up things that might happen like if a person had a gun or wanted to hurt them, though they didn't really seem to understand what it meant or make any connection to it. I think at the age of 5 or 6 the students have a hard time processing these events or things that don't happen directly to them. Especially as they are just starting to venture out into the world and begin school I don't know if it is a good idea to overexpose them to these tragedies and scare them, and parents are more likely to want a say in how aware or not their students are kept of these things.

However, I think back to last semester when I was student teaching in a 5th grade classroom when the school shooting at Sandy Hook happened. I was actually teaching in the classroom as it was happening and did not find out until lunch time. We chose not to talk to the students about it after lunch since, being a minimum day, there was not much time to have a conversation and we thought it best to give students the opportunity to talk with their parents first. The following Monday we had a short staff meeting before school, but we talked more about how to make our school more safe and address concerns in that area than how or if to talk to our students about it. We still did not initiate a discussion about Sandy Hook with our students, it seemed like most teachers, including my master teacher, took the stance of allowing conversation about it from the students if they brought it up, but to initiating the conversation ourselves. It did end up coming up later as we started a previously planned activity where students were making wishing trees for the holidays. The idea was that students were to write a wish for the holidays beyond just what they wanted for presents, but to send good thoughts and positive energy out into the world, and then tie these messages around the school. Many of the students suggested writing wishes for the people of Sandy Hook to help them heal and deal with what had happened. It was so great to see the students being aware and compassionate about what had happened, and it felt more natural and appropriate that they were the ones who brought it up and led the conversation.

I do still wonder what the best approach (if there is one) might be as teachers to dealing with these national tragedies which are unfortunately a part of our lives. It does not seem as if there is one definite answer, and that so much of this depends on the students' ages, awareness, trust in the classroom and with there teacher, the comfort level of all involved, and more. My hope is that in my own teaching career there are not too many instances in which I will have to figure this out.


Here is a link to an article on sharemylesson.com (also a good resource on its own for teachers) about helping children to cope with these events, along with a number of other links on related topics which I found to be interesting and useful- http://www.sharemylesson.com/article.aspx?storyCode=50007527