Triage

I'm back. I've been out of commission technologically for a several days. The hiatus is over so back to the stories, and this one is well worth the wait. This happened three weeks ago.

The story actually begins the night before (Tuesday night). I'm watching the evening news before going to bed and the local broadcast reported a deadly shooting spree that occurred in the town where I work. Not only was the shooting in the town, but it also occurred in my school's neighborhood. At the very least I knew that I would have some children who would be aware of what happened, so I mentally prepared myself for doing a lot of talking the next day. I knew that one particular student, Nathan* would be preoccupied with what happened. This student has a proclivity for discussing violence, and his conversations are usually peppered with battles of good and evil and bad guys dying. The first words out of his mouth when he stepped off the bus were, "Somebody got shot!" I knew that I needed to pull him aside and talk to him immediately. I didn't need him scaring other first graders with that kind of talk. Before I could pull him aside, the bus driver informed me that there were police cars outside another student's house as she was picking him up. As I walked into the building to talk to Nathan I saw that the other student in question was talking to the principal, so I figured that she would handle that situation.

I walked Nathan to his classroom and the exchange with his teacher went like this.

"Good Morning, Nathan."

"Somebody got shot last night."

"What?"

I informed the teacher that I was there to talk to Nathan about what happened. As I was turning to walk down the hall, I saw a 6th grade teacher waving frantically at me. He yelled down the hall that he needed me. I told him that I was busy, while pointing the Nathan. By this point the teacher was closer and told me that he had a 6th grader who apparently witnessed the shooting. So then I entered triage mode. I had to handle each emergency according to severity. At that point I believed I had a 6th grader, completely traumatized and curled in the fetal position in the 6th grade hallway. So I tried to find someone to watch Nathan while I dealt with the other student. I found the principal in the conference room talking to a student. I asked her if I could drop off Nathan, she told me no because she was dealing with an issue. I asked her if it was the same one I was dealing with and she emphatically said no. She was enlisting the help of the social worker for her issue. I couldn't find any interns either. (What are their hours anyway? I swear I was constantly at school when I was an intern.) I did find a teacher to watch Nathan while I went to help the 6th grader. Imagine my surprise when I finally walked into the 6th grade wing to find the student calm, relaxed and looking at a book. Not crying, not hysterical, not in the fetal position. I was relieved that he seemed okay, but at the same time I was a little peeved at the teacher for implying that it was a critical situation. I brought the student down to the conference room to talk with me and the principal. I have to give my principal credit, there are times when she really knows how to handle a situation and knows exactly what to say. I've asked her before how she knows what to say. She said that she thinks about and emulates the social worker and the former school psychologist, who just happened to be my supervisor. I'm surrounded by good role models. Back to the story: So, we sat down with the student, Steven*, and asked him what he saw the day before. He told us that he was walking down the street with relatives that afternoon. He said that he saw a teenager walk behind this other teen and shoot him in the back of the head. Then the police showed up and arrested the shooter. The shooter was someone that Steven knew. The shooter was also a former student of my school. The story sounded credible, Steven sounded convincing, but part of me felt like something was missing. I felt that his timeline had holes in it. Boy shoots another, boy gets arrested. It seemed like there should have been fleeing in between, but what did I know? Steven was confused because he didn't know why the suspect would have shot the other teen. He also didn't know how the suspect got a gun. That was actually quite refreshing to hear since many kids are too street-smart for their own good. The fact that he didn't know how to get his hands on a handgun gave me some hope.

We finished interviewing Steven and I told him to be careful about who was near him when he spoke about the incident with classmates. I explained to him that while a 6th grader can think hypothetically and has a secure sense of timing, kindergarteners, first graders and second graders do not have this sense. They were likely to misunderstand and think that someone was at the school shooting, or planning to shoot them. He understood and agreed to refrain from discussing it within earshot of the younger students.

Meanwhile, the social worker was dealing with the student who had police cars outside his house that morning. There was a domestic violence dispute happening in his house involving his parents. Children's services were contacted and came to school to interview him.

Also, a disgruntled third grader was refusing to leave his mom's car as she was attempting to drop him off in front of the school. At one point, mom sort of shoved him out of the car and sped off, leaving him on the curb. The student slowly made his way to the flagpole, which he clung to in protest. Normally, he would have been top priority, but under the current circumstances, my principal told the receptionist to make sure that someone was at least watching him to make sure he didn't run off.

Someone else in the building reported that a first grader's home was the target of a home invasion the night before. Someone talked to the first grader and realized that he had no idea what happened, so he wasn't a major concern for the day.

There were multiple reports floating around the school all day, and it was hard to figure out what was fact and what was speculation. Children have very vivid imaginations. I ended up talking to the school psychologist at the high school and she was able to shed some light on the situation. Her perspective was completely different, yet useful. She believed that my 6th grader didn't see what he claimed. The sixth grader fingered the wrong person. But we still didn't have the facts.

During the day I remembered that I watched the news the night before and saw that they had arrested someone. His name didn't match the one that Steven said. I found the article online and shared it with my principal. The article mentioned that a 15 yr old was also arrested for the first shooting. I wondered if that was the person that Steven knew. My principal and the school psychologist at the high school were able to figure out exactly what happened. Here goes:

Steven did see someone he knew get arrested. He may have witnessed the shooting from far away. The unfortunate thing was that Steven's acquaintance and the real shooter were dressed similarly, so when the 15 yr old was arrested, Steven assumed that he witnessed him doing the shooting. The real shooter continued his shooting spree, which tipped off the police as to them having arrested the wrong person. So in the end, Steven was wrong, yet he wasn't lying. And the clincher: the 1st grader's home invasion was the police invading the home to arrest the real shooter.

Just an extraordinarily crazy day in the life of a school psychologist.

BBC