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Coping Lessons
Program helps pupils find calm after storm
Global group offers guidance
By Christine L. Bordelon, Kenner bureau
As it appeared in Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
December 18, 2005
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They were asked by school counselor Dorothy Trocquet to draw what they thought would happen to their homes in Metairie as they were evacuating from Hurricane Katrina.
In no time, kindergarten pupils at St. Benilde Elementary in Metairie were vigorously drawing ominous clouds surrounding their homes, waves crashing over rooftops and even holes in roofs.
"I'm drawing my house," one 5-year-old said. "I thought it was going to get a hole in it, and then it would rain in my house." She drew a house with a hole in the roof, adding that she now has a FEMA blue roof on her home.
These kindergarteners were on the seventh session of a 15-session, classroom-based psychosocial intervention program designed to help children deal emotionally with difficult experiences.
Sponsored by Save the Children , an international organization, the program first was used with youth gang members in the Boston area and has since helped children in Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami, in the Middle East and in Nepal . In Louisiana, the program was tailored to help children cope with Hurricane Katrina.
Each lesson has four components -- a beginning circle, a central activity that could include storytelling, drama or drawing, a cooperative game and an ending circle where the session's lesson is reinforced.
Trocquet asks the kindergarteners to draw hurricane and rain images because drawing is a powerful recovery tool for students at any age who may or may not want to verbalize their experiences.
"These pictures that you are drawing make sense because the storms have a lot of power," Trocquet said to the younger pupils, asking questions about each and every picture. Working with pupils up to eighth grade, Trocquet said older pupils more graphically illustrate their experiences through art and the drama games. All ages of students benefit from the program.
"By the time you finish the 15 sessions, you are drawing what you think an ideal community is," said Pauline Thomas, coordinator for the Title IV Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities Act in Jefferson Parish. "It's very structured."
The program made its way to Jefferson Parish public schools when Superintendent Diane Roussel met with a representative from Save the Children while in Washington, D.C., after the hurricane. Save the Children agreed to bring the program to Louisiana, said Carol Mancuso, director of School Safety and Discipline for Jefferson Parish public schools, and provides all training and materials.
Representatives from 88 public and nonpublic (private and parochial) schools in Jefferson Parish now have been trained, said Jennifer Obadia, a psycho-social trainer with Save the Children. The organization will work with Jefferson Parish through June.
"It was offered to every kindergarten- through eighth-grade student in every (public) elementary and middle school, and Catholic (and private) schools with Title IV (Safe and Drug-Free Schools ) participation," Mancuso said, adding that 34 nonpublic schools were invited. Children who are identified through the sessions as distressed and needing additional counseling are referred to Jefferson Human Services, she said.
Four representatives from Save the Children have conducted three training sessions since Oct. 19, Mancuso said. Those who completed the sessions were charged to return to their respective schools to either conduct the 15-session program or train additional people.
"I think it's going to work, given the devastation everyone has gone through," said Sheila Baskin, who will be a program leader at Cherbonnier Elementary in Waggaman. "We are going to interact with students and build self-esteem and teach them to share and give, to get rid of the anger. There is so much of it (anger) going on now. It teaches us (teachers) to be better listeners to understand what everyone has gone through."
"When I went through it, it showed me that you survived," Mancuso said. "No, everything is not the same, emotionally you are not the same, but you feel you are not alone, and you have to build on what you want together (cooperatively with others in the community)."
The program now is being implemented throughout Jefferson, Washington and East Baton Rouge parishes (to hurricane displaced students) and in Hancock, Jackson and Harrison counties in Mississippi . Obadia says she also is working with Orleans Parish (the charter schools) to start the program there. Save the Children is offering free training to child-care providers, teachers, volunteers and others. Call (225) 930-6022.
Donate to the Gulf Coast Hurricanes Recovery Fund for Children
