The overwhelming response to my last blog post, Tragedy in the Classroom, has been yet another reminder of the kindness and empathy so many people around the country have extended to our school and community as we work to heal from our recent tragedy. From your responses, all of us at the Teaching Channel realized that it could be helpful to offer resources to teachers who may be facing similar situations in their classrooms.
So, I’m trying my hand at podcasting as a way to quickly get information to you. I had the opportunity this week to talk with one of the leading adolescent suicidal behavior experts in the country, Dr. James Mazza from the University of Washington.
We broke our conversation into two main areas. First, we focused on how we, as teachers, can identify suicidal behavior in students and what to do about it if we see something troubling. The podcast is about 12 minutes long and you can listen right here or download it and take it with you.
Dr. Mazzi also provided us with a downloadable presentation that reinforces and expands on our conversation.
And, here are links to two important organizations that can help:
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
American Association of Suicidology
We focused our second conversation on how to manage a classroom crisis in the event of a student death. Dr. Mazza provides valuable “do’s and don’ts” for teachers and administrators.
I’ll have that podcast, Classroom Crisis: An Effective Post-vention Plan, for you to download in my blog post tomorrow.