Renay has been stalled for three weeks. The news that a student had a medical emergency and then died was shared in the early morning before reaching administrators. And reasonably, the staff was gutted.
The emergency response was profoundly the best it could have been, given the way the news came into campus. Students were taken into campus. Administrators were informed as soon as the information was given.
Bad news that comes into a school, and no doubt involving death, is gut-wrenching. And all the teachers, secretaries, paraeducators, even the custodial team, are expected to “suck it up and teach”. While allowances may have been given by administrators, the challenge is sharing the information with students and families.
And the staff persevered.
And it should not have happened entirely. Procedures for student death, especially when a student receives services in special education, need to be handled with the utmost care. A student in special education has more contact with more adults, and those adults will be profoundly challenged no matter how they process grief.
The Things We Learn
Despite the forced resilience, the staff that Renay works with stepped in and took care of the entire department. Renay learned how the staff trusts each other and how they use the information to step around and support students to build a process.
There is the one who mobilizes the charities for the family. There is one who deals with the crying staff. There is one who shuttles messages from Admin back and forth. And there is one who keeps the students going through the activities of the day. And all these tasks are done by literally different people at the same time, and they are communicating in a manner that cannot be replicated. And that is the most important part.
All the other daily tasks of paraeducators are interchangeable. But grief, and extreme grief, brings forward the other skills that a paraeducator might have. And all these skills are the reasons that paraeducators succeed in their job and how we know good paraeducators are going to step up and cover the skills that grief takes away.
May your team never need to find out who does what in time of crisis.
May you hold your loved ones close.
May the memory of those who have gone be a blessing.
It seems fitting to post this on one of the days that celebrates Day of the Dead, the days that are meant to connect the dead and the living. There are many celebrations of similar to this holiday throughout the world.
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