Easing the Pain When a Classmate Dies : Crisis counseling: L.A. school district’s psychological services crisis team recently visited six Valley schools to help children cope with death and violence.

One child was killed and twelve others were injured in 1984 when a sniper opened fire on students at 49th Street Elementary School in Los Angeles. Medical professionals were at the scene immediately to take care of the physical wounds, but no one at the Los Angeles Unified School District had a plan for dealing with the psychological aftermath.

Now, after the deaths of five students involving six schools in the San Fernando Valley, the district’s psychological services crisis team is being applauded by parents, teachers and administrators for its quick reaction and support.

“After the crisis at 49th Street School, we found we were very ill-equipped to deal with the psychological problems that accompany such an incident,” said Dr. Loeb Aronin, supervisor of the school district’s psychological services. “Now, we’re ready for that kind of thing. We proved it this past week.”

In the last two weeks of March, psychological crisis teams were sent to two elementary schools, two junior highs and two high schools in the San Fernando Valley to identify children who are unable to cope with grief, talk with them in small groups and give them simple but accurate information about the incidents.

Aronin said that the system, which includes a crisis team for each school in the district, has been tested in the past few weeks, with so many schools in need of crisis intervention.

“I am starting to feel very comfortable that we’ve taken the best strategies possible and have them in place for this kind of thing,” Aronin said. “It is calming for everyone--teachers and students--just to know there is a system and someone has a plan.”

On March 23, third-grader Paul Bailly was abducted outside Darby Avenue Elementary School and later found burned to death in a field near Simi Valley. A 21-year-old former day-care worker at the school has been charged with murder, kidnaping and arson in connection with the slaying.

Students were encouraged by psychologists to draw pictures of Paul as they remembered him, and to write letters to his mother. During a March 28 church service, the students recalled their friendships with Paul. Last Friday, the students planted a tree on campus after psychologists suggested such a ceremony would help finalize the ordeal.

“Many children have drawn pictures and written letters and I believe it is helping them cope with his death,” said Darby School Principal Sydney Yukelson. “And after we planted the tree, we were able to look forward to Monday with the kind of attitude that life goes on, even if we have suffered a great loss.”

On March 20, a Reseda woman committed suicide after killing her three children. The oldest child, 16-year-old Brandy Fernandez, was a popular student at Cleveland High School. Her sister, Leticia Fernandez, 13, had attended both Sutter and Parkman junior highs. And their 7-year-old half-brother Jeremiah Jones attended Blythe Street Elementary School.

At Blythe Street Elementary School, psychologists met with teachers and with Principal Maureen Banks on the morning after the shooting victims were found. The teachers agreed to tell each class individually about what had happened before instruction began. The younger children were most affected because they knew Jeremiah, and several children were sent to the school library, where they met in small groups with a psychologist, Banks said.

“It was a great feeling of relief to know that I wasn’t left alone to deal with the kind of tragedy I’d never dealt with before,” Banks said. “Then, a week after the incident, several children began showing a severe reaction to Jeremiah’s death.”

Psychologists had alerted Banks and teachers at Blythe Street School that after the death of a classmate, students seriously affected will cry more easily, act up in class, exhibit a sudden fear of leaving the classroom, or become withdrawn. Banks noticed a variety of these reactions in a small group of children.

“I called psychological services and they sent someone down to our school right away,” she said. “It is a wonderful system and it works perfectly in this kind of tragedy.”

Psychologists were able to come to the school the day Banks called and meet with each troubled child individually. The children will meet in a group with the psychologist once a week until the children can deal with the loss on their own, Aronin said.

On March 24, Ryan Vela, 17, an outfielder on the Sylmar High School baseball team, was killed when he was driving home with two teammates and the car they were riding in was broadsided by a Los Angeles police car. The cause of the accident early that Saturday morning is still under investigation.

“We knew we would need several psychologists to talk to the kids because Ryan was a popular boy involved in school activities,” Aronin said. “We were notified by Sylmar High School administrators and we had a crisis team ready to be there Monday morning.”

“I met with them early that morning and then we separated the baseball team into one room and took the other kids who were affected into the library,” said Sylmar baseball coach Gary Donatella. “A lot of those kids had never experienced death or dying and the crisis team was able to put them at ease.”

The baseball team talked with psychologists for the first two hours of the day, expressing their concerns for Ryan’s family and for the other two teammates who were involved in the accident but received only minor injuries.

“The psychologists did a great job of getting the kids to open up and talk about their feelings and make them understand that they aren’t alone in their grief,” Donatella said.

In each incident, students and teachers at the Valley schools affected received what Aronin calls “psychological first aid.”

Aronin said that although the district has always had psychologists on staff, it wasn’t until 1985, after the 49th Street School shooting, that they began to plan for crisis intervention.

Initially, the crisis team was geared toward treating children in the aftermath of a major earthquake, but it has instead been used to deal with the loss of students through accidental or violent death.

The Los Angeles Unified School District crisis plan is being used as a model for other school districts in the state. Representatives from several other districts met with Aronin and his staff March 29 at a psychological services convention in Irvine.

“Now that we can see it working, other school districts want to have a similar plan ready in case of an emergency or sudden tragedy,” Aronin said.

Every school in the district has a crisis team assigned to it, Aronin said. The team is made up of the school principal, nurse, counselor, senior teachers and the staff psychologist. Not every school has a full-time psychologist, but the district employs 340 psychologists, many of whom are assigned to several schools. Thirty-two of the psychologists have attained senior status and are able to handle severe problems or a crisis involving several children.

The crisis teams for the entire district are managed and operated out of the district’s central psychological services office in Reseda, at the former site of Newcastle Elementary School.

Aronin and other officials working out of the Reseda office have spent the past five years training crisis teams through seminars and developing the district’s psychological first aid manual. The manual gives advice on how to identify severe emotional problems and teaches crisis team members how to get the children to express their feelings.

In general, the team members encourage students to express their feelings, then offer constructive ways to deal with the tragedy. In the case of the Reseda woman who killed her three children before commiting suicide, psychologists urged students to come up with different ways the woman could have handled her problems.

At Cleveland High, psychologist Barbara Valastro helped students who were on the drill team with Brandy Fernandez to think about services people can turn to, to help them cope with problems, such as a welfare office, church groups, and mental health clinics that are available for people in need.

“They needed to talk about their feelings and realize that there are positive ways to deal with depression,” Valastro said.

Junior high and high school students also were given information about death, funeral services, appropriate ways to express sorrow to the student’s family, and ways to memorialize the student, such as the tree-planting at Darby School.

“Sometimes it’s just a matter of telling a student how to go to the florist and send flowers to the funeral home,” Aronin said. “A lot of them have never done something like that and it makes them feel they’ve done something positive.”

The psychologists and crisis team members who are not on staff at the school stay with students until there is no longer a need for their services, Aronin said.

“The important thing is that every school is covered with a crisis team and a psychologist for the immediate psychological first aid,” Aronin said. “Then, depending on the need, additional crisis team members and psychologists can be sent in.”

Each of the recent incidents required additional time from senior psychologists who are able to deal with students who are more deeply troubled. Aronin said it is ideal when the entire team is sent out before school starts on the morning after a crisis.

Senior psychologist Vera Taylor was at home Sunday afternoon when she received a call from Aronin notifying her of Paul’s murder. She immediately phoned members of the Darby Street crisis team, calling an early morning meeting before school Monday.

“Several psychologists and the school’s crisis team met in the auditorium that morning,” Taylor said. “We talked to the teachers and told them how to factually instruct the children about what happened to Paul.”

Students were told that Paul had died and that he wouldn’t be coming back to school. They were also told that it was not clear how he died but that the police had arrested someone.

“Most of the students were afraid that they were in danger, too,” Taylor said. “And we had to dispel any myths or rumors about people out to get little children. We had to tell them that safety measures are being taken to make sure they are safe.”

Taylor said that the younger students were told only that Paul had died, while the older students were told more about what happened without including any of the actual details.

Taylor and several other psychologists held mini-group therapy sessions in the school auditorium while another group of psychologists and teachers went from classroom to classroom talking to the children who knew Paul.

“One of the biggest problems after something like what happened to Paul is rumor control,” Taylor said. Many of the children believed that whoever killed Paul was still lurking around the school yard, she said. “When the children are so young, they are very fearful and they believe there is still a danger to them.”

The crisis team members encourage the children to express their feelings through play-acting or drawing techniques. At Darby Street School, the children were told to get into a Magic Circle, something teachers use with the children during regular learning sessions.

“The Magic Circle is something the children already know about,” Taylor said. “It has a certain structure that the children are familiar with.”

In the Magic Circle, children sit in a small group and the leader gives them a topic to discuss. One at a time, the children get an opportunity to share their thoughts about the topic while the other children listen quietly and then comment afterward.

“In a case like this, we needed to tell the children that people have their own ways of dealing with death and sometimes our parents or our friends will be angry,” Taylor said. “We tell them that it’s OK to be angry or sad or afraid but that we need to talk about those feelings.”

It is important for children to participate in something structured and familiar after suffering a traumatic shock such as the death of a classmate, Aronin said. It is equally important that adults dealing with the children appear calm and in control, with a plan of action.

“Their little world is falling apart and the thing they need most is to know that something is like it was before, something makes sense,” Aronin said. “It’s important not just for students but for their parents as well, depending on the situation.”

Psychologists met with parents who were angry and fearful over Paul’s death, many of whom were fearful for their own children’s safety and others who felt they needed help from psychologists in explaining the nature of Paul’s death to their children. The psychologists have set aside 7 p.m. Thursday nights in the school library to meet with parents about Paul’s death.

“The parents will continue to meet with the psychologists about this incident until there is no longer a need,” Yukelson said.

The crisis team is also in charge of identifying children who may need additional counseling from an outside agency. In the wake of Paul’s death at least one inconsolable and extremely frightened child was referred to an outside psychologist for one-on-one counseling.

The Darby Street students wrote messages to Paul and placed them in helium balloons that were released at the boy’s funeral March 28. Friends and classmates of the other recent victims were encouraged to dedicate a yearbook page in their memory, plant a tree or install a plaque.

“Kids need to know that their friend or classmate will be remembered,” Aronin said. “It is a very important part of the healing process.”

HELPING CHILDREN WITH A CRISIS

Parents can play a key role in helping their children deal with traumatic events, such as the death of a school mate, say members of the psychological services staff of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Here are some positive actions that parents can take:

* Talk with children and provide simple, accurate information to questions. Allow them to tell their stories about what happened.

* Tell them about your own feelings.

* Listen to your children for signs of fear, anxiety or insecurity.

* Reassure your child by telling him: “We are together” or “We will take care of you.”

* Respond to repeated questions. You may need to repeat information and reassurances many times.

* Hold and comfort the child.

* Spend extra time putting children to bed, talking to them and reassuring them.

* Observe your child at play. Frequently children express feelings of fear or anger while playing with dolls, trucks or friends.

* Provide play experiences to relieve tension. Work with Play Dough, paint or play in water.