State Supports for School Responding to Critical Incidents: What Every Leader Should KnowBy Chad Harnisch, Principal, Sauk Prairie High School Having watched my first principal mentor respond to a multi-fatality car accident early in my teaching career, I knew there were some things which school leaders COULD handle, but that they could handle better if they had some help. I have strongly believed ever since, that Wisconsin needs a robust support system for school leaders responding to critical incidents, preferably with that support coming from outside the the impacted school community. In Februrary 2022, after a discussion on this concern, when Jim Lynch suggested, “The Office of School Safety is developing regional teams that would be available to districts” post crisis, I felt like I had to follow up. I was honestly a little embarrassed that I had missed the OSS announcement of the formation of these teams. As I began to look into the creation of these CIR (Critical Incident Response) Teams, I was interested. When asked for more information about the kind of “critical incidents” these teams would be trained to respond to, Kelly Dejonge, the OSS Critical Incident Response coordinator said, “Schools (will) request support, assistance, and resources for any type of critical incident that they experience. Some examples of critical incidents may include (not an inclusive list): Threats or acts of violence, Hate Crimes, Intruders, Suicide, Missing Students/Staff, Vandalism, Community Turmoil, Service Injuries, Fatalities, and Weather-related Disasters.” In August, I took part in one of the four CIR team trainings provided around the state this summer. Prior to the training, with over 25 years of experience responding to crisis situations, I incorrectly felt it was unlikely I would learn anything new, but I was excited for the formation of the teams and looked forward to creating a support system for school leaders. The training appropriately challenged me to think in new ways, to dive deeply into the best research available for prevention, response and recovery after critical events. It provided me with dozens of new tools which I have already had small scale opportunities to practice in my school setting. Furthermore, the knowledge that people from a dozen such teams were being similarly trained around the state provided the reassurance that finally a resource was available to help schools, school staff, and school leaders appropriately respond to critical incidents with support. In describing the purpose of the CIR teams, Trish Kilpin, Executive Director of the Office of School Safety, said, “While we work to prevent crisis events from occurring, we cannot prevent them all. When youth are impacted by traumatic events, we have a powerful opportunity to guide their recovery. To do so, we must respond quickly, effectively, and with intention. Our primary goals of this CIR project are to promote recovery and reduce the post traumatic trauma symptoms experienced by youth. By building the collective capacity of volunteers across WI to engage in this work effectively, we are providing the support and assistance that youth and school staff need and deserve.” Having personally experienced the expertise the staff of the OSS provided in the summer CIR team training, I have every confidence in the ability of these teams to support your school level leadership during critical incident response. While we all hope their assistance is never needed in our schools, should you need the support you can access it in the following ways:
The team in the Office of School Safety will work with the impacted school to learn the needs of the educational community, and provide a right sized, solutions-oriented approach to crisis response and recovery best practices that “do no harm”. And I hope you pay better attention than I did to the OSS monthly newsletters in the months to come….because it turns out that those folks are really trying hard to be of use to us. |