Threats from alleged terrorists, some more widely publicized than others, have now been sent to school districts in San Francisco, Long Beach, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Dallas, Houston, New York and Los Angeles, as of Thursday. No matter that each threat has been investigated and found to be not credible. Whether targeted or not, school districts are being asked to respond to what Jeff Godown, chief of the Oakland School Police Department, earlier this week called “an air of anxiety in this country.”
The advice schools are receiving, experts say, starts with this: Keep the adults calm.
As with any crisis that involves children, adults are responsible for helping students manage their anxieties, said Stephen Brock, past president of the National Association of School Psychologists and an education professor at Sacramento State University. “Children take their emotional cues from the significant adults in their lives,” Brock said. “To the extent that teachers are overtly anxious and frightened, that’s not a good thing.”
Public anxiety about terrorist threats has increased in the aftermath of attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, according to opinion polls, and concern about keeping children safe at school has been heightened for years because of school shootings. Some schools already struggle to maintain normalcy while living in an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty – they are in communities with high rates of violence, drug abuse or student suicides. All schools affected by trauma benefit from similar coping strategies – including the need to stay calm and stay connected, according to the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative, a Massachusetts-based organization that works to create “trauma sensitive” schools.
To continue reading this article by Jane Meredith Adams, go to: http://edsource.org/2015/key-t...he-adults-calm/92117
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