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Teaching through trauma • The TRiiBE [1]

['Dave Stieber']

Date: 2023-02-07 17:08:58+00:00

In my 16 years teaching in Chicago Public Schools (CPS), I have lost more students than years I have taught. During my teacher programs in college, I had fears surrounding how to create engaging lesson plans, how to make connections with students and how to help students who needed more support. I learned the basics of how to be a teacher in my college classes and then learned even more during student teaching (a.k.a. teaching internship) from experienced educators. My mom was an educator in Michigan, so I knew that teaching would be extremely rewarding and also extremely frustrating. The one thing I never learned, or was even remotely prepared for, was what to do when a student dies.

Everyone that I know and respect who works in school buildings always goes above and beyond for the students. We want to give our students every great school experience that we can. We try not to, but we think about lesson plans, grading and how to better connect with our students when we aren’t even at school, on weeknights and weekends. We dwell on that one kid who we haven’t been able to reach yet and think of ways to connect with them, to engage them in our class.

So how does an educator even begin to cope when a desk that was once filled by a student that we knew and built relationships with goes empty because that young person is no longer alive. How do we cope when we taught and mentored a student and saw them graduate only to see on social media that their life is over?

These are things that we are never taught and there is no support for in our school systems across the country. In Chicago, our schools are already criminally short on social workers and counselors. We went on strike in 2019 for eleven days in part so we could make sure every Chicago Public School had a social worker by 2024. The National Association of Social Workers says schools that are experiencing high levels of trauma should have one social worker for every 50 students.

In Chicago, because of the 2019 strike we have one social worker for every 520 students! Chicago Public Schools has four crisis counselors for over 340,000 students. As I have learned through the deaths of my own students, these four crisis counselors go to a school to try to help the students dealing with the loss of a classmate and friend. The crisis counselors come for a day and then leave, but that school’s staff is supposed to pick up the pieces after that, with no additional sustained support.

The first student I ever lost passed away on a cold January night in 2011. My assistant principal called me early the next morning to tell me that Trevell was killed. I taught him as a freshman in 2007; the first ever class of students that I taught.

I remember Trevell giving a speech in my class about the need for Black-owned businesses in Woodlawn and Englewood. When Trevell was killed as a senior, he was preparing to head to college. I remember going to school and worrying more about my students and how to make sure they were okay. I — and every adult in the building — tried to be their therapist and support while ignoring our own pain. That is a cycle that is repeated time and time again in school buildings across this city, every time a student dies.

Since then, I keep a list of students’ names in my phone who I taught that have died. That list continues to grow. It’s now at 22. These are the students I taught and talked to daily, who I cared for, was playfully annoyed by and loved deeply.

These students are no longer here because of intra-communal violence, police violence and tragic accidents. In my head, when the number of students on the list on my phone would climb, I would start to get anxious. As it approached ten student deaths, I said to myself, “I am not sure how I will react if I ever have ten students die.” Ten deaths came, nothing changed; students, staff and families still grieved, but the trauma of loss compounded.

For the past 16 years, I’ve honestly tried not to think about these losses, let alone talk about them, because if I bring them up, the emotions overwhelm me. It is like a fog rests on my brain. After many losses and much encouragement, I hesitantly started seeing a therapist because of student loss. I sat for an hour not wanting to tell my therapist about why I was even there because it was so painful.

I’ve also been hesitant to talk about student loss publicly because I didn’t feel worthy of the deep pain I felt for them; these students had families and loved ones that were experiencing the loss much more profoundly than I was. I also worried about people commenting horrible things about my students if I shared my grief for them publicly. I have grown used to criticism and trolls hating on teachers, but when people blame my students for their own deaths, that hits different.

The cycle of violence and trauma continues, prayers are given and children are blamed. Children are blamed for being with the wrong people or making the wrong choices. There are no “good” or “bad” kids. They are just kids. We must break the habit of trying to justify how sad we should feel when a student dies, depending on their goodness level. It is as if when a kid who has all the support that they need dies, then we should feel sadder than when a kid who should be getting more support dies. It is as if a child’s struggle absolves us of the same level of sadness. Violence and tragedy have become so normalized in our city and society that many immediately try to determine if the life that was lost essentially “deserved” it.

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[1] Url: https://thetriibe.com/2023/02/perspective-teaching-through-trauma/

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