Confronting Death in the School Family: Guidelines and Tools for Adding a Tragedy Component to Your Crisis Response Team

Guidelines and Tools for adding a Tragedy Component to your Crisis Response Team

The death of a student or staff member can devastate a school and its surrounding community. Are You Prepared?

Often these tragedies occur with little or no warning, which means school administrators are left with little or no time to come to terms with the tragedy before they are forced to make decisions that affect the entire community. By developing a tragedy component to your crisis response team, Confronting Death in the School Family will help you respond to any and every tragedy in a consistent and compassionate manner.

Confronting Death in the School Family will provide you with:

• step-by-step proven guidelines and procedures for responding to real-life tragic situations
• samples of announcements (family, school, media, etc.)
• comprehensive classroom plans
• ready-made forms and worksheets for parents and teachers

The keys to successfully establishing a sound tragedy component to your Crisis Response Team are organization, preparation, and planing. Confronting Death in the School Family will give you the tools necessary to handle the most tragic of situations.

Dave Opalewski is President of Grief Recovery Inc., in Saginaw, Michigan, a certified Death and Dying and Suicide Prevention Instructor for Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. He is also a certified support group facilitator and child trauma specialist, along with being a 33 year veteran of K12 education; 25 years as a classroom teacher and 8 years as the Director of At Risk Programs. He worked 3 years part time in a funeral home as an aftercare consultant, working with families of the deceased and pioneered the Saginaw County Aftercare Adult Support Group. He is ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training) trained. His published books are, Confronting Death in the School Family, Answering the Cry for Help: A Suicide Prevention for Schools and Communities, Understanding and Addressing Adolescent Grief Issues, and Understanding and Addressing Children Grief Issues. Mr. Opalewski has been published several times in professional journals and is a highly sought after speaker at state and national conferences conducting professional development trainings for several school districts throughout the Country. He was recognized as the “2010 Advocate of the Year” at Central Michigan University for guiding college freshman and a nominee for the 2010/11 and 2012/13 “Excellence in Education” Award. He has recently retired as Professor Emeritus for Central Michigan University in the Teacher Education and Professional Development Department.