What you dread the most as a teacher

Today was a terrible day.  One of our students committed suicide.  She was
in Year 10.  I was her form teacher last year.  Like many others, I’m
finding it is hard to escape a sense of guilt and responsibility.  You
keep thinking that maybe if you had noticed something, said something or
if she had come to talk to you then maybe, she might not have done it.

I don’t have a great deal of experience in the issue of teenage suicide.
Thankfully it hasn’t happened before in my time as a teacher.  In my time
at high school there was never a suicide in my year group.  I don’t know
what I thought a likely student to commit suicide would be like but she
really didn’t seem like a person that would.

She was an incredibly bright and vivacious person.  She was cheerful and
friendly and would always pop in and chat or call out to you when she saw
you.  She achieved good grades, played sports and was a talented dancer
and singer. 

I feel like I’m going to be sick when I think about how much potential she
had and how she could have really done anything with her life that she
wanted to.

The school seems to be coping with it well considering.  There are special
counsellors who have come in – the Traumatic Incident Team (TIT?).  We
were pretty thoroughly briefed and had a set notice to read to our class
period 1.  Because I had a Year 10 with several students who were her
friends I got the support of having a counsellor in class to help deal
with immediate reactions.

It turns out I needed the support.

I planned to follow Matt’s advice (his school went through this last year)
and model a suitably calm and respectful response to the tragedy.  I
didn’t want to encourage a mass hysteria or anything.  I got through to
about the 2 line of the notice and started crying.  I tried to hand over
the job of reading the notice but the counsellor made me keep going.  I
had to read a doubled sided notice whilst shaking and crying (reading
through tears and with wobbly voice probably doesn’t make for the best
clarity but I assume they could understand me).  I did feel better once I
had done it but it was probably one of the hardest things I’ve done as a
teacher.  The students were incredibly sweet about it.  The came over and
hugged me and asked if I was OK and took good care of each other.  We had
special cards to sign out any students who needed to go to the Whare
Awhina for grief counselling.   Many teary students had to leave (having a
bawling teacher probably set off some of them who might have otherwise
been OK).  With only a hand full of slightly shaken students left, we
decided to just play a quiet game.  It kind of broke the tension and kept
everyone focused without taking huge amount of mind power or being too
loud.  I was exhausted by the end of it and it was only 9.55.  I’d
forgotten how tiring grief can be.

The other thing that makes the day seem extra surreal is that we have
started really stringent absence procedures.  Rolls are taken at the
beginning of every class and any absences have to be immediately run over
to the office to make sure no has fled school or locked themselves crying
in the toilets or worse.

It kind of feels like we are in a bizarre lockdown.

I spend lunchtime over with form class and their teacher at the marae
which as become a bit of a haven of those close to her.  It is a beautiful
and quiet part of the school – away from the general noise of lunchtime.
Some kids were writing cards and letters for the family, a boy strummed
away on the guitar and we just talked irregularly.  There were a lot of
times when there was a sad but comfortable silence.  Some times people
shared their thoughts that were sad about losing her, other times we
laughed as we remembered some of the fun times from earlier this year or
last year.  It is a little odd but I felt more at ease with the students
than I did earlier in the staff room.  I guess it just felt like it was a
more natural and genuine, though inconsistent way of dealing with grief
than the polite discussion and sensible procedures that a professional
organisation has to have.

Gossip and discussion seems to be rife after lunch of what her reasons
might have been but I doubt I or anyone else will ever really be able to
comprehend why she did such an inexplicable thing.