Remote Emergency Response Team

Preparing your team

• School leaders convene or appoint the members of your Emergency Response Team to review, update, or design protocols and procedures. 
• Seek the expertise of the guidance team and seek consultation as appropriate. 
• Re-establish relationships with parents and guardians in order to:
  • Exchange current contact information
  • Assess impact of the crisis 
  • Understand issues experienced by the community
    • How are families taking care of each other and their neighbors? What can you learn from their resilience? 
    • How could you leverage existing resources in the community?  
    • What kind of advocacy is appropriate?
• Analyze attendance and engagement data with regular frequency to identify red flags. 
• Familiarize staff with protocols. 
• Model professional self-care: Create a culture where it is ok to be upset, ask for help, and model willingness to accept help.

Responding to an Emergency  

• Verify information across multiple sources (family, hospital, police).
• Convene Emergency Response Team in order to confirm roles, protocols, and communication strategy.  
• Respect and strictly adhere to the requests and cultural norms of the family.
  • What information can be shared with the school community?
  • What are the most appropriate ways to show support? 
• Use family’s preferred way of communication (eg. phone vs email, language, etc). 
• Notify staff and prepare a statement to share with students.*  
• Review how staff should and should not engage with students and families. (See Quick Guides). 
• Notify students in small groups or Crews. Use a prepared statement that communicates the same information to all students and includes information about mental health services (See Sample Crew Lesson). 
  • Provide an overview or opening circle/meeting for staff so that they can ask questions or read through the grief protocol or Crew lesson prior to doing so with students.
  • Pair Crew leaders or teachers with support staff wherever possible for small group meetings. Plan for extra support for Crews that had a close relationship with the person who died.
  • If students work on written reflections, drawings or other activities that will be collected in Crew, remind students to include their name on the documents. If a student expresses concerning behaviors or feelings, this allows a Crew leader/counselor to follow-up.  
• Bring in a team (substitutes, community providers, school counselors or social workers from neighboring schools) to provide personnel support.
  • Prepare a breakout space and access to phones/remote tools, should students ask to connect with a family member or support person.
• Send a letter to other families in the school community.*

* See sample statements for students

Community Care and Healing

• Honor the life as a community in a meaningful, therapeutic way regularly (eg. a symbolic moment of silence at the end of Crew). 
• Avoid commemorative or memorialization events that set an inequitable precedent. 
• Educate staff and students in the various ways grief shows up.  
• Engage all personnel (Crew leaders, nurse, social workers, psychologists, etc) to identify which students may be at high risk for emotional distress. 
• Coordinate referrals to outside services through the Emergency Response Team. 
• Provide a support system for staff who may also be experiencing grief. Staff are entitled to support through their employer’s Employee Assistance Program. 
  • The UFT provides grief support, self-care resources and confidential phone/Zoom sessions to members during the pandemic. Email [email protected] to schedule a session.
• Discuss support seeking and giving, as normal and critical to healing. 
• Consider how to manage any triggers or reminders (eg. desk or locker). 
• Engage community in multiple modalities (phone,  images, video meeting, music).
• Be aware that grief, support and care are expressed in multiple ways, often guided by family, culture and religious beliefs. 
• If students write letters to the family, please be sure students write their names on the letters and a staff member reads letters before they are sent.

References:

• Guidelines for Responding to the Death of a Student or School Staff
• Supporting the Grieving Student
• Psychological First Aid for Schools