‘We still don’t want to believe it’: Schools respond to widespread student grief over Kobe’s death
This wasn’t the way the week was supposed to work for students at Southern California schools.
Friday was supposed be “Character/Cosplay Day” — you know, dress up as a beloved anime or comic character of your choice. That was the plan at Daniel Pearl Magnet Elementary School in the San Fernando Valley.
Instead, it became “Kobe Bryant” Day — and it was anything but comical — as the school offered a solemn tribute to a superstar’s amazing life, which ended way too fast at the beginning of the week on a Calabasas hillside, with the lives of eight others.
During a week of mourning at Pearl and schools from L.A. to San Bernardino, young people took to signing well-wishes on posters, setting up open mics, engaging in quiet contemplation and huddling with crisis counselors.
Kobe Day was a kind of culmination of school leaders’ response to news that many students didn’t want to believe at first, and are still having a hard time comprehending.
The whole week was a kind of healing process, school officials and students said this week.
That healing took many forms.
For Pearl student Christopher Sarenana, 17, that form was writing a story for his school’s newspaper, the Pearl Post.
At Hunt Elementary School in San Bernardino, Friday was about tying the loss of Kobe to a larger theme.
In one sense, “it was just a way to give them an outlet,” said Hunt Principal Kristin Kolling. But “We’re trying to teach our students empathy and compassion. We were glad to see the students coming up and giving us ideas. They were very impacted by the death of Kobe, because they looked up to him. He was to them a role model in the athletic world.”
So when a student suggested they replaced the school’s scheduled “Kindness Week” with a Kobe day — to show compassion for Bryant’s family and the families of those lost in the tragedy — teachers, counselors, swiftly embraced the suggestion.
When the news erupted on Sunday, stunning the Southland and fans around the nation and world, administrators and teachers braced for a difficult Monday at schools across the region.
Earlier in the week, in Bryan’ts hometown of Newport Beach, schools worked to have crisis counselors available at Mariner’s Elementary School, Ensign Intermediate School, Harbor High School, Harbor View Elementary and Harbor Day. St. Margaret’s in San Juan Capistrano also had counselors available.
At LA Unified, Pia Escudero, the district’s executive director for student health and human services, scrambled to dispatch resources and assess what resources campuses would need.
“It definitely impacted us,” she said. “Our students. Our adults. Our athletic teams. Our teachers. It’s been felt across the district.”
The district made extra counselors available to students, and on-campus teams were activiated, applying district mental-health protocols to deal with what officials called a “traumatic grief” situation.
Ultimately, she said, it was about giving students outlets, and the ability to feel free to express themselves. Particularly vital, she added, was helping the district’s vulnerable populations — students who may have already been greiving a traumatic loss, or who are dealing with a chronic illness in their own lives.
Escudero was also concerned about many of the district’s young female athletes. They may not have grown up seeing the scope of Kobe’s NBA career, but many girls were impacted by the loss of Kobe’s daughter, Gianna.
The tragedy of losing budding basketball player “Gigi,” as well as other young female athletes Alyssa Altobelli and Payton Chester — all of them just 13 — was especially tough on students tuned in to the sport.
Back at Pearl, for Principal Pia Damonte a week that began with emailing teachers and mental health teams ended with Kobe Bryant Day. And it wasn’t just for students, she said. She had to respond to the needs of her teachers — as well as her own.
“It was devastating for me,” she said, as it was for many educators on her campus, too.
The pain will take time to ease, she said.
“It’s weird,” she said, “The week is still kind of quiet that way. There’s this continued sadness.”
As the week ended, Christopher Sarenana, the Pearl Post’s new-media editor who wrote the story for the school’s publication, was still processing it all.
“It’s definitely a challenge to get a grasp on the whole situation,” he said, “because we still don’t want to believe it.”
from https://ift.tt/3b0Bo3M Orange County Register https://ift.tt/2vI6opn
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