Teachers: Help Your Students Cope with Disaster

Seeing the footage of the disaster in Haiti on the news these last few weeks has been difficult.  It is hard for adults to wrap their minds around such disaster, poverty and pain.  Yet I remember how much more difficult it was to watch the news during my childhood; I was a sensitive child, easily affected by the intense words and images.

There was an earthquake in California during my early childhood; misunderstanding the wreckage I saw on the news, I wrote in my school journal entry that millions of people had died.  My teacher wrote a note on the entry, explaining that in this instance, no one had died but many buildings had been destroyed.  While teachers can not offer this comfort to students in the case of the earthquake in Haiti, they can help their students deal with various kinds of tragedy.