001good evening i'm superintendent mike morris and thank you for joining us for this parent foreman forum on guiding children through times of loss and grief um yeah just want to share what tonight's event will look like i'm just going to do a brief introduction in a few minutes i'll bring on members of the team both from central office and from the middle school and from our partners at riverside trauma center to both describe what's happened this year this week in terms of how we supported students and staff as well as what students and the community may be going through and provide some resources and supports for families students and the larger community so we appreciate you joining us joining us here just couple things tonight's forum as i said is really about supporting children families
002with their grief anxiety given the tragic passing of nate squires we will focus on that tonight about supporting children and families i will share available resources as i said and we're going to respond that the last part tonight will be responding to questions of how to talk to children about this tragedy uh and other other aspects that are very challenging for them at this moment tonight's meeting we won't be explicitly focusing on on any details about the tragedy or passing of nate or any details about anyone any specific person or individual really it's about how do we support the larger community given the unthinkable tragedy that occurred over the last few days so with that i'm going to bring on the team so that you can meet some of the folks who are presenting tonight
003and why don't we just go in order so hector do you mind introducing yourself yes my name is hector santos i'm the adjustment counselor for arms and um i've been working industry for two years thank you hector diego hi my name is diego sharon and i'm the principal at arms thank you faye hi i'm faye brady and i'm director of student services for the district thank you faye and doreen good evening my name is dorian reed and i'm the assistant principal thanks doreen and sir good evening everyone sarah gere with riverside trauma center great so we brought this this group of folks together who all been working uh in the middle school um this week so the first thing as i mentioned we're going to share a bit about what's going on in the middle
004school what's been communicated and what resources and supports have been available to our middle school students so for that i'll turn over to principal sharon to get us started thank you uh yeah it's been uh a very difficult week but it's a week that the community has really come together and i think uh students and staff have been really responsive to one another and we've been guided in the way that has allowed us to be really purposeful about our response and i'm really proud of the work we've done and really proud of our students for stepping up at a very difficult time and supporting one another part of that is because of the team approach and i'm really excited and and to share a little bit about that because i think we had really important
005supports throughout the process uh and as a result we were able to be responsive and supportive to student needs in a way that that felt uh really supportive and and and helpful i'm going to ask doreen reed to talk about some of the supports that were in place and then we'll have hector santos share from a clinical view some of the things that he was noticing and seeing in general absolutely thank you diego um our student-centered approach was also extended to support our faculty as well we were greatly supported this week by the riverside trauma center in addition to that we had surrounding community school clinicians join us to help us get through this difficult time and in addition we had our own clinical staff um students were invited over the course of this week
006to come into the library and really write cards for the family and express their memories their thoughts and um their feelings to to the family that was supported with um not only you know markers and glue but also supported by uh sentence starters uh for students that were having a difficult time coming up with correct words or phrases to share what they were feeling and thinking staff were supporting this environment in the library and also our clinical staff supported the students through this process we shared sample condolence cards and were able to help students come up with how to express what they were feeling this happened throughout the course of the week students utilize this space very actively and independently as well in small as well as in small groups um mr santos yeah yes
007the through the whole week after the event we've been having available counsellors all day for the students in the library we also set tables with arts and crafts for the students also um it was very nice to see student console each other in the in the library you know in in and there was a particular incident it was very significant in which one student asked the teacher for a hug you know the students said well why could you please give me a hug in front of me it was it was very hard for me to just watch that that but at the same time it was very nice you know that that the teachers and students were you know helping each other also we we've been in crisis uh mold so to speak you know
008we are observing and checking in with the students in the morning through the whole day and also we've been consulting with the teachers on on symptoms of change of behaviors of the students uh through the whole school um sarah i i'll jump in just for a quick second so thank you so much i want to uh really thank the middle school team the people on this call but lots and lots of people who are not in this call uh for supporting and leading in whatever way they were working uh our students uh throughout a week that we would not have imagined uh to occur uh and the way that it played out and so you know i just want to share my deep appreciation for the three of you but also for the all the
009staff at the middle school um and families who were also supportive of us so i appreciate that at this point we are going to transition to sarah from riverside trauma center so the rest of pplc come off the call there will be some slides i do want to note that there is going to be an interactive part of this uh session tonight and on the bottom right hand side of your screen you'll see that there's a kind of empty box and you're able to type in questions uh they have or any comments we probably won't be able to get to them until after sarah slides but it don't have to wait till the end of the slides if something on slide number two is prompting you to ask a question or make a comment please
010do so um there's no need to wait till the end even if we won't get to it until a little bit later but at this point i'm going to ask sarah to start sharing her slides and i'll bring those up for us and there they are so sarah you're you're all set and uh i think we're ready for you so thank you again for being here and thanks for your work all week with us it's been incredibly uh important to have the outside experts uh supporting us and guiding us through many many decisions thank you so much mr morris and to all of the staff at amherst we have um really been honored so often these things happen and communities shut in and that's not what we've seen at amherst we've seen amherst be really
011willing to do whatever it takes to provide the best support to their staff and their students and that's a wonderful thing to see in such a hard time my name is sarah gere i am the senior team leader for mass support network mass support network is a fema funded crisis counseling program responding to covid19 throughout the state of massachusetts and i am also a trauma responder with the trauma center just want to tell you a little bit about the trauma center and the work that we do we help communities recover from overwhelming stress caused by potentially traumatic events providing community outreach and counseling we also provide education to communities and organizations about suicide prevention psychological trauma and the emotional needs of returning veterans we work with schools communities organizations workplaces and individuals we are also
012funded through the department of public health and the department of mental health here in massachusetts we are very fortunate to have a state that provides us with this funding so that we can give these services at no additional expense to our local communities and we have been doing this work since 1990. i myself have not been but we at riverside trauma center.org have been so you might ask yourself is there a need for postvention in a community after there's been a traumatic and sudden loss we believe that there is our role is to assist the community in coping so they're able to continue the important tasks such as education we also know that it increases the likelihood of early intervention for individuals who may be experiencing an acute trauma response it also helps to reduce
013negative coping mechanisms such as alcohol use or substance misuse and in cases of violence we believe that postpension can reduce the likelihood of retaliation and in cases of suicide we know that it reduces the risk for contagion so you might say to yourself my child wasn't necessarily a very close friend or didn't even know the person who has passed away but we know when there's been a sudden loss that the ripple effect can be very very wide the people we look at most closely of course are those folks in the inner circle friends uh family especially immediate family siblings then we get out to that a little bit further and we're looking at friends um you know teammates or co-workers but also we're looking at other vulnerable students maybe it's people who have had recent
014losses themselves or have been impacted by trauma in their lifetime and then that outer circle that we're looking at is people who may identify with the person who's passed away it could be folks who are friends with that person on social media or in the same grade but don't know the individual so what's important about this is it's not about what we believe is a close relationship with someone it's about how that person uh or that student feels about their connection to the individual who has been lost so some of the domains you know people know that folks are impacted emotionally by sudden loss and acute grief but there's lots of ways actually that folks can be impacted and especially when we talk about young people so it's the emotional peace of course the shock
015the sorrow the anger sometimes feelings of guilt i wish i had reached out to my friend more often or i wish i had spent more time with them we also see that irritability just overall grouchiness frustration but we can see that people are impacted not only emotionally but also in their cognitive abilities they may be feeling confused having a lot of intrusive thoughts they may be having difficulty concentrating with students we sometimes see a decline in their academic performance maybe they're not keeping their room as clean as they normally do so so oftentimes their brain can get overwhelmed um by all of the distress they're experiencing and then social and behavioral we could see things like a withdrawal crying or fighting and then one of the most important things especially with young people is to
016be looking at the physical impact that they may be experiencing it's really common for younger folks to have difficulty and let's be honest sometimes even adults have difficulty putting their feelings into words but oftentimes it actually plays out for them physically so they may be feeling really tired having stomach aches or headaches muscle tension overall aches and pains or an increased startle response and then we have the ways in which trauma and acute grief can affect relationships we can see that withdrawal fighting with each other a fear of being alone especially when we're talking about little people sometimes we see over dependence where they become really afraid of being away from their parents or other safe people in their life and then there's the spiritual and meaning making sometimes we see that people feel like
017nothing matters or why would god do this to us sometimes they start to question why they do the work that they do or why they try so hard to be a good friend all of these things should be taken at at face value on one hand but also to understand that you know there's a very good chance that what's underlying that is this trauma response and or the acute grief that the person is experiencing and we know that grief following a sudden death can be more complicated you know in many cases in our lives most of us have had experiences with loss in many cases though we've had the opportunity to anticipate it we've had time to prepare for losing that person but when we have a situation where death was sudden and unpredictable we
018see that people can experience shock and also there can be that intense search for the reasons why sometimes we see that there's police investigations and media involvement which can increase people's distress there's that question of could this death have been prevented sometimes even could i have prevented that death in many cases with sudden death we see that there's an element of violence or trauma in that death which can also really heighten the amount of distress people experience sometimes that can lead to people feeling fearful of their own self-destructive impulses and fear of behavior of other people so they start to worry a lot more for example some parents may say you know i wasn't worried about my child a week ago but now i'm thinking about it all the time and i'm feeling a lot
019of anxiety about it we also know in some cases there can be long delays in receiving information about what happened and not listed here but a really common thing that we see is that oftentimes many different narratives or stories start to form about what happened and you know in many of the cases a lot of that information is not correct you all remember that old game of telephone where the story started off with one thing at the beginning and then it shifted and it changed and was entirely different by the time we get to the end it's really important in situations like this especially involving young people that we recognize that just because our child heard something at school or on the bus or on social media doesn't mean that that's the truth and helping
020kids to to be able to parse some of that out and sometimes we see people respond with anger at the person who died uh and scapegoating or blaming people for what's happened so it's really important to recognize these reactions as part of a trauma reaction or a brief reaction and just to challenge some of the griefs uh the myths excuse me about grief you know there used to be this idea that grief happens in stages and so you know today you cry and then tomorrow you're angry and then in three weeks things are better but we actually think of grief as being more like waves at the beach so sometimes those waves are little ripples and then sometimes they're big huge waves that knock us over and of course right now being in the early
021stage most people are in those big wave stages but as time goes on that really changes different people have different waves so recognizing that people respond very differently you know and also oftentimes families get distressed because sometimes with children they may feel really distressed right now and then in a couple of hours they might be out playing on the playground it's important to understand that for children that play time can be really important and so we don't want to force kids into our idea of grieving we want to allow them to go through their process you know and this idea that time heals all wounds most people will say that that's not true that it there's no time frame that we can put on on the pain that we feel and also this idea that
022grief involves saying goodbye sure for some people it does and for some people it doesn't so we want to really respect that different people whether it's staff or its children or it's ourselves are going to have different reactions and different needs one thing i do want to just identify is that sometimes what we see is this acute grief wears off and we may see that some people start to experience some depression so i want to just talk quickly about what that could look like it doesn't mean that everyone will or that your child will it just means it's something for us to stay aware of what that could look like is frequent sadness or crying a decreased interest and this is one i really do want to watch if you have a child who is
023really involved in sports or really involved in um playing games with friends and all of a sudden you find that they're not really wanting to do any of those things anymore that's definitely something we would want to pay attention to and then that persistent boredom and low energy and of course for all of you who have parents of teenagers you know that sounds like many of them and also that's something we would want to watch out for we also want to pay attention to that low self-esteem and guilt if our children are saying things like i'm just not good at anything or nobody really likes me you know that does give us insight that this is a kiddo who might be might be really having a hard time or in fact probably is again i
024want to just circle back to that frequent complaints of physical illnesses if we have a child who's going to the nurse's office often and there but there doesn't seem to be anything wrong it doesn't mean that they're faking what it means is that they may be carrying their stress and or their depression in their bodies so we want to make sure that we really pay attention to that couple other things extreme sensitivity to rejection or failure let's be honest nobody likes being rejected or feeling they failed well what i'm talking about is somebody who's going to respond in a really kind of extreme way from what they normally would or what you think is appropriate to that situation also having difficulty with relationships difficulty with friends difficulty with siblings those are things we would want
025to look for again back to that cognitive impact that poor concentration and we definitely want to change take notice of any major change in eating behaviors or sleeping patterns so if you have a child who used to eat well at meals and now they're not eating at all or they appear to barely be picking or a child who is not sleeping well or appears to be sleeping too much we definitely want to be paying attention to those those signs and again this is not common but it is our experience that it's really important to just you know educate people on what to look for for youth who may be facing some sort of crisis feelings of hopelessness anxiety agitation again that trouble sleeping or sleeping all the time if we hear feelings of being trapped
026saying things like there's no way out increased substance use or misuse or concerns about it a withdrawal from friends or family or their community you're certainly going to be looking at that rage or uncontrolled anger expressions of wanting to seek revenge on other people and then reckless behavior or risky activities uh we want to pay attention to and definitely the somatic mood change so if some of these things is something that's not been uncommon we should still pay attention to it but where we're really um going to take notice is if it appears that there's a change uh in in mood and certainly if we hear a child making suicidal statements uh we want to inquire about that uh and not be dismissive and so here's the advice that we have for you as families
027taking care of these young people if you think something's wrong the only way to find out is to ask them it's really important that we open up these these pathways of conversation with these young people and that we teach them that it's okay for them to identify if they're sad or they're angry or they're even feeling hopeless that we're people that they can trust that we're gonna listen to them we're gonna try to help them um find whatever supports that they need we also want to make sure that they know that we're going to be trustworthy and and supportive people who are going to help them get to whatever help they may need we're not going to blow off what they tell us in some cases we may want to seek counseling for young people
028if you're really concerned i would not hesitate to contact your local crisis team and we always want to notify the school of concerns you have about a young person um schools spend or our kids spend a lot of time at school and i know people are really worried but i can tell you from my own experiences working in many schools that these schools are not just there to make sure your kids pass the grades but they also want to make sure that they're healthy and safe and so they can't do that if they're not made aware if there's concerns about a young person also want you to know that if you're really concerned the national suicide prevention lifeline is always available 24 hours a day seven days a week and just so you know you
029don't have to be worried about suicide to call the national suicide prevention lifeline i understand the name gives that impression but the truth is if you're really worried about a young person you can always call them and they will offer you um support and guidance through the counselors who are available and obviously if you're very worried about a child's safety we're not going to leave them alone we're going to make sure that we get the help that they need in these moments so what can you do as a family member who says you know i'm not worried that things are at this this level which will be true for most of you but i'm still worried because this is my young person and they've just experienced a really significant loss and a traumatic and unexpected
030one for some kids so what do we want to do we want to encourage an atmosphere that allows them to express all of their reactions it's okay for them to be mad it's okay for them to be sad we want to let them them talk about that and try for us to stay a really calming presence with them so that we're not going to feed their anger but we're going to respect it um and try to help them be able to to recognize that that anger is often a reaction to their bereavement we want to communicate facts clearly it's really important for all of us to feel like we understand the information as best as possible so we want to be as honest as and transparent as we can be with information we also want
031to initiate conversations about the person who's lost we hear from lost survivors all the time how important it is that we say their loved one or their friend's name so it's okay to talk to them about me and to use nate's name when you talk to them and also to help support them in creating artwork or collages or writing in their journal another thing we know can be really helpful for anybody kids or adults is physical activity in fact there's some amazing research about the power of cardiovascular exercise as a natural antidepressant it does not take away the need sometimes for medication but it does prove to be really effective in helping to increase and improve people's moods and we want to encourage peer activities oftentimes people including us as adults we are reluctant or
032resistant to spending time because it requires energy we might feel we don't have but the truth is once we get out there and we get around people oftentimes being around our peers is the greatest support that we can have we also want to resume routines sometimes people want to have everything stop and you know it's okay to have moments of letting things stop but it's also important to resume routines first of all not everybody responds the same way so what could be really helpful for one person might actually be harmful to another so we want to try to have as much flexibility as we can but we do want to have routines resumed back we also want to support an opportunity for rituals for the person that's been lost if there's an opportunity to go
033to the services but for some people it's about being able to have some sort of event at their home with their family or a prayer at the dinner table so engaging our young people and asking them what type of rituals would be helpful and meaningful to them we also want to make sure that there's uh opportunity to leave our staff members and even our parents because all of this it's not just impacting the young people it's also impacting the grown people um both who perhaps knew nate and also those who care about the kids who they now see struggling so we want to make sure that we give people that opportunity some tips and for families in schools try to be aware please of how much time our students are spending on social media sites
034we know that they're drawn to it especially when they're not at school because it can feel like a social connection but we also know that there's often pretty concerning material that can be there on social media that we really don't want kids spending lots and lots of time in we want to make sure that that our students aren't isolating and that they're continuing to be involved in school activities and interacting with others or other types of activities and we want to encourage and support other ways for them to grieve we also want to remind them that it's okay and it's important for them to talk with others and let them know how they're doing please keep in mind sometimes people find it helpful to conduct different types of prevention workshops sometimes we respond at riverside
035trauma center to gang violence or to suicide deaths and sometimes for survivors getting involved in prevention can be really meaningful and help them feel empowered in a moment where they feel really out of control we also want to make sure that students and families know about outside resources such as helplines or online chat services that are available and please keep in mind you might need to have support yourself so we want to encourage people to talk with peers find outside help and also to call that local helpline for yourself if you're feeling overwhelmed and i am going to focus on this because for so many of us especially i think people who work in the mental health field or as nurses we're really good at taking care of everybody else and we're not always really
036good at taking care of ourselves and it's important that when we're supporting the kids that we do the very best we can to take good care of ourselves because otherwise we're going to have some of those signs and symptoms of depression and exhaustion and frustration we may end up being more reactive towards our young people than we mean to be so we have to really think about what self-care do we need and educate ourselves educate ourselves on the experiences and the grief of our children but also how to help support them and try to find people who get it and understand you and what you've been going through and it's okay to experiment with healing it's okay if you go to a service and it doesn't feel like it was enough and you want to
037do something else like make a donation um so it's okay to try to find ways for you and um your children to heal and try to engage in activities that honor your loved one please be patient with yourself understand that healing takes time for you and for our little people and have faith in our own resilience one of the things that i really like people ask me all the time how do you do this work and yes it is difficult of course but how i do it is because while i do have to see all the sad things that happen i also get to see the incredible resilience of human beings the ways in which they can come together as a community and choose to take good care of each other the ways that they
038can support one another and come together to take good care of their young people so with that said i have a slide here for questions i'm going to skip right over that although i do really like this little guy uh and i'm gonna go to just reminding you my name is sarah gare i am with riverside trauma center uh and i am going to turn this over back to superintendent north all right see there we go so thank you so much and thanks for presenting those slides um one of the things i'm going to put in the chat just for people who weren't able to come tonight we know it's a busy time of year it's just the link this is a self-recording video so if people do want to share this with others they
039think it might be valuable or useful for others the same link you're on but i'll just put in the chat will work indefinitely because i think there's a lot of incredibly valuable pieces to what sarah shared so at this point really um it is open for feedback comments questions you can type them in the chat a couple people couldn't come tonight but they sent me questions in advance so i thought i'd start with them the first is uh from a family who said my child i expected my child to be much more deeply affected right now they're not looking any different than they did last week at this time and it was concerning to the family that they're not seeing more of a reaction uh from their middle school student based on the tragedy that
040happened and it's open to anyone sorry don't feel like you're the only person who who can answer this but uh you're certainly welcome to but just any thought you'd have for our family who expected to see and the student doesn't really want to talk about it but you know it is not exhibiting sort of any differences behavior not really the desire to talk about it with the family so i don't know if any advice that anyone on the call would be able to give to to that family yeah fake go ahead yes so i'm happy to jump in there and then you know would welcome other people's thoughts so um i think that um what we know about our um young people and it applies to adults as well is that different experiences impact us
041at different times and so it may be that somebody is just taking a longer time to really process and have this what what has happened in the loss of um their classmate impact them and right now they may seem fine they're coping very well and that something may trigger that at another time they may read something they may watch something somebody else may say something and they respond in a kind of a much sharper way so it could be a delayed response and it is also okay that the trauma from this and the tragedy of this doesn't it's not a bad thing that it's not having a big impact on everybody um everybody um has different things that go on their life in their lives that trigger them in different ways and this may not
042be something that is profoundly impactful for every young person thank you face anyone else want to jump in to add to what faye shared you know i would just offer that that being in the middle school this week i've had the opportunity to see students all over the spectrum in terms of their responses to this and i and you know and one of the things i've learned is that everything is normal you know when you're dealing in a community like that and i think what's been uh noteworthy is just that within all those responses that people have been having in the building there's been a general support and respect for everyone in their process they're going through individually and i think that's to the credit of the community thank you i note that uh debus
043moreland is in the chat putting a number of resources um both in our area and on the national hotlines and things like that for families another parent another family member emailed me and they said that they know their child's being affected they know they're texting about it with their friends but they do not want to talk to the family in this case the parents at all about it so they know what's on the student's mind they know it's affecting uh their child but they feel very boxed out or locked out of any discussion about that um you know and so just any thoughts again any of our panelists would have on um the parental response to that um that scenario i think uh yeah i think that one of the things that we could do
044is acknowledge uh the the student that he doesn't want to talk to the parents you know say you know i understand you don't want to talk to us but i think it's important that you talk to somebody you know some adults you know you could talk to your teachers in school you can talk to your counselor or school and and if you need any help you know we will here to help you but i think it's important that you process this because maybe you don't think but it's affecting you and consciously thank you hector any other thoughts people would like to share or add on to what hector said i think yes i agree with everything hector said uh you know the one thing that i might add to it is that it's okay to
045keep asking um you know we don't wanna you all know how preteens and teens are so we don't wanna hover over them and uh make them dislike us even more than they might at that age but it's okay to keep going back and saying you know i just i just want to check in with you i know that this happened and i want you to know you can talk to me about it too sometimes sometimes they have to be asked a bunch of times right in some ways you know my own thought and i'm less skilled and versed than everyone else in this panel is that for middle school student for the pre-adolescent i'm not going to put in middle school for pre-adolescent adolescent students they may be sort of managing this the way they
046manage lots and lots of things which is not running to tell their parents at the first glance and while continuing to ask as you suggest sarah is is undoubtedly the right thing there may not always merit a wonderful response but that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep doing it so i think that's really helpful um another one another family member contacted me and they said you know with school lasting only one more week they're concerned about just um the lack of structure for summer uh given that um you know uh seven days from now uh less than seven days from now at this point uh students will be headed off for uh less in this case anyway uh less structure in their summer experience and there's a little concern about how do they kind of understand
047and know how their child's doing if if there's not counselors like hector and and other folks in their lives on a daily basis so i don't know if anyone had thoughts on that that concern that was expressed so i'm happy to jump in again on that and then hear what other people have to say so um i think it is um a a summer that is a big change for for many of our our youth who have been socially isolated for about a year and a half and are really um we see this in school every day now kids are so happy to be with each other right now so i think there is you know that has a kind of a big part of the experience in in the context of um this tragic
048loss as well so kids are going to want to be with each other they want to play they want to have fun um and as a as a parent or as an adult in their lives i think watching and listening and really trying to kind of stay tuned in to anything that seems unexpected anything that seems atypical for your child um you know if you're driving your child someplace and they have their friends in the car that is always a great time to listen kids seem to sometimes forget that the adults in the car can hear what they're they're saying and so really listening and paying attention to that and trying to plan sometimes that you are in close proximity maybe doing a family activity but if not just in close proximity so you can
049do that routine check-in and just say just want to check in how's it going you know how's summer going how's it feel being out of school um and just keeping kind of yourself tuned in to your child and what they're experiencing and certainly if anything seems you have a question a concern just a wondering all those resources that are in the chat those are the places to call and say i just not sure can you help me think through this thank you faye diego and i also just wanted to offer that uh the summer school is going to have a summer vela program uh that could support families who are looking for a place to have the kids and it's going to be from uh july 6 through the 24th uh and there's going to
050be lots of really engaging activities opportunities for students to hang out together and it's been a lot of students have communicated to me that they've really felt met by the return to in-person learning and i think a lot of them have also expressed that there's some disappointment that the school year was so abridged this year in terms of the in-person opportunities and so i would encourage uh you to look into that program if you're looking for some structure for your uh students in the summer and also just endorse that i know the people who are involved in making that program work and i'm really impressed by by the you know the work they do great thank you faith thank you diego um i'm not seeing natural questions come up through the chat but i'm glad
051people emailed me and and again a number of people it's a busy time of year and i know some people can make it tonight um but i think i'll just close by saying you know appreciate you coming to the farm tonight again my appreciation for middle school staff sarah and faye for uh your work uh at a more global level and then some on the ground as well as the week played out and that we're looking at this is not uh something in terms of supporting families that ends with the end of the school year that we are looking at both short-term what we're implementing now but also medium and long-term plan we know this year has been a challenge as it relates to mental health and support for our students whether they ended up
052coming in where they ended up staying remote and we are really actively talking fan i spent a couple about an hour this afternoon talking about uh not just at the middle school but across all of our schools how do we continue to offer social emotional and well-being support for all students uh given the year they've had the year and a half they've had and the unknowns about the future while things are tracking very well right now um you know it's you know i can't say quite we'll be back to normal i can't guarantee we'll be back to whatever normal is and and for many ways we don't want to be there we've learned a lot this year about supporting the wellness of students and we want to implement that uh as we go more towards
053a full return in the fall so we appreciate everyone for being here and please do share this resource thanks for the kind comment in the chat and we hope you have a lovely three day weekend and celebration of juneteenth this weekend and we'll be planning for a great last week of school um and trying to make sure that we mix in the celebrations that come at the end of the school year along with recollection acknowledgement and supporting the students needs as we head as this tragedy goes into week two of supporting students and families so we'll try to get that balance right we appreciate all you do and your support of the school system and again i hope you enjoy the the sun and the not hot just pleasant weather that we're finally having in
054in this uh odd new england spring uh have a good night everyone thank you