GREENFIELD – Greenfield-Central School’s counselors, social workers and school-based psychologists spent Tuesday and Wednesday learning crisis management techniques from someone who knows first hand just how scary a school-based crisis can be.
In 2018 Michelle Clarke was the the counseling director at Noblesville High School when a 13-year-old student opened fire in a classroom at Noblesville West Middle School, injuring a teacher and student before the teacher wrestled him to the ground.
On Wednesday, Clark shared her insights with the Greenfield-Central staff members which make up the district’s Crisis Team.
Throughout the day she walked them through what it looks like to PREPaRE, which is an acronym for the following steps:
P—Prevent and prepare for crises
R—Reaffirm physical health & welfare, and perceptions of safety & security
E—Evaluate psychological trauma risk
P—Provide interventions
a—and
R—Respond to mental health needs
E—Examine the effectiveness of crisis preparedness
Being a certified PREPaRE trainer is part of Clarke’s job as Director of Student, School and Family Engagement for the Indiana Department of Education.
The training is being promoted nationwide by the National Association of School Psychologists.
Robin LeClaire, Greenfield-Central’s Director of Student Services, said the PREPaRE model has been adopted in school districts in multiple countries and all 50 of the United States.
The training is designed to prepare the crisis response teams within each school district to effectively respond to any type of crisis, which could include a variety of things like a student or teacher death, school violence or a community event that touches student lives.
In the Greenfield-Central schools, the crisis response team consists of school-based mental health professionals including counselors, social workers and school psychologists.
In the event of a crisis, LeClaire said team members are prepared to work together to assist students district wide, helping to first navigate the crisis as it unfolds, then address the resulting mental health needs.
“Each school has at least one school employee that, if the need arises, can mobilize others from the team to assist,” said LeClaire.
Kimberly Hunt, the counselor at Greenfield Intermediate School, said that kind of teamwork can prove essential in addressing the needs of students.
“We want to be able to support students to the best of our ability,” she said, especially since such a large portion of students’ lives is spent in school.
On Wednesday, Clarke walked the crisis team through multiple scenarios that would require action on their part. While none of them were scenarios anyone likes to imagine, Clarke said talking and walking through them is necessary to ensure that local crisis team members are prepared for anything.
A big part of that preparation involves working with school resource officers and local law enforcement to make sure protocols are clear, she said, and acting on those protocols swiftly in the event of a crisis.
Hunt said the PREPaRE training helps crisis team members learn to think through all the steps necessary to respond to a crisis and its aftermath.
“Having those (responses) scripted out and ready to go, and knowing who’s in charge of what, helps us not make mistakes or overlook things that need to be addressed or done,” she said.
In the event of school violence like that which occurred in Noblesville, each school’s crisis team is trained to not only assist with the possible evacuation and reunification of students, but to help them process and recover from the event after the fact.
LeClaire said school crisis team members are charged with not only assisting students during and after a crisis, but in proactively sharing personal safety and mental health resources with students they feel may at risk or need extra support.
