Crisis situations in schools are unpredictable—but your response doesn’t have to be. In this episode of Counselor Chat, we’re diving into Crisis Management 101: what to do before, during, and after a crisis to ensure the best possible support for your students, staff, and yourself.
From grief and loss to natural disasters and mental health emergencies, we’ll cover the key steps to handling crises with confidence.
🎧 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✅ The different types of school crises and how to navigate them
✅ The importance of having a crisis response plan before you need it
✅ How to create a strong crisis response team and clearly define roles
✅ Why communication is key—and how to avoid misinformation spreading
✅ How to take care of yourself as a crisis responder
Crisis will happen—but with the right preparation, you can handle it with confidence.
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Transcript
Carol: You're listening to the Counselor Chat podcast, a show for school counselors looking for easy to implement strategies, how to tips, collaboration, and a little spark of joy. I'm Carol Miller, your host.
I'm a full time school counselor and the face behind counseling essentials. I'm all about creating simplified systems, data driven practices, and using creative approaches to engage students. If you're looking for a little inspiration to help you make a big impact on student growth and success, you're in the right place.
Because we're better together. Ready to chat. Let's dive in.
Carol: Hey there school counselors. Welcome back to another episode of Counselor Chat. I'm your host, Carol Miller. And today we are talking about a topic that isn't always fun to think about, but it's absolutely necessary and That's Crisis Management 101.
Preparing for the unexpected.
Now let's be honest. When we signed up to be school counselors, we thought we would be helping students with their social skills, maybe some college applications, self esteem.
But crisis management, that's a whole different ballgame. And yet here we are, often serving as the front line of defense and some of the most difficult moments a school can face.
For myself personally, over the years I have dealt with crises that they totally didn't teach us about in grad school and I never in a million years expected to have to deal with them.
From the kid who when I first started had his throat slit from basically ear to ear and was left alone to die and had to deal with that situation.
Or having the windows of a local school blown out from a tornado that passed through town and the kids were in the cafeteria at the time and a lot of little kids were hurt and being called to help out in that school district.
There were other times where in my district that I'm at right now, we had, or we had a flood and an entire school building, in fact our largest elementary school, the building closed and 600 students, staff and and administrators were rerouted to other buildings three days before school started.
Or the tornado that happened this past summer that in central New York no one is expecting to live through, no one is expecting to have come to their neighborhood. Yet it did.
And we had people once again displaced.
Or when we had a teacher die, he was a high school coach, had gone with his team to like a championship play and during the middle of the night he passed away totally unexpectedly to a teacher that had kids in our building who died of a brain tumor.
We had to explain that to our kids as well as to the staff members There are so many crisis that happen all the time.
We also had a fire in a convenience store across, directly across the street from the school and it totaled. I mean, it burned down to the ground. There was nothing left.
But the amount of smoke that was coming from the building entered our building. And we had to release our kids early. We had to get them out safely because it's, you know, a major kind of road in between our building and the other building.
And we had police and firemen and ambulances and you name it. We had to also keep the street kind of clear.
So there's losses and there's crisis happening all the time.
Think about the things that have happened in other schools recently, whether it's been shootings or hurricanes or fires. We just never know when grief is going to strike, when a trauma is going to strike, when a crisis is going to hit.
So my friends grab your coffee or whatever keeps you going and let's talk about really how to be ready for anything.
Because we never know when a crisis is going to hit.
One minute we're organizing Career Day and the next, well, we're helping a student through a personal loss. We're responding to that school wide trauma, or we're supporting a student in a mental health crisis.
And the key to handling all crises well is preparation.
Because let's face it, when we're in a crisis, there is no time to Google, what should I do?
If a student is experiencing a panic attack, there's just no time. You need to have a plan and you need to be able to trust it.
And there are different types of school crisis.
Let's break it down. There are different kinds of crises that you might encounter and each one really requires a slightly different approach.
So if it's grief and loss, whether it's the loss of a student, a teacher, or someone in the community, grief can shake a school to its core.
But the first steps, you need to acknowledge the lost. You need to be present for the students.
You need to provide spaces to talk.
You don't need to have the perfect words, you just need to show up.
And the best practice for that is to really partner with an outside support like grief counselors or community organizations. Because don't forget, staff need support too, and so do you.
But there are also the trauma and the school wide tragedies. Maybe it's the natural disaster, maybe it's a violent incident, or maybe it's just something deeply unsettling. These situations impact our kids differently.
And your role is to create safety, both physical and emotional.
But what's help establishing those predictable routines to check in on the students regularly and remind them that their feelings are valid.
And a quick tip. Don't assume students will process trauma at the same speed.
Some may seem fine initially, but they're going to struggle later on.
Sometimes when we're in the midst of a disaster, we are just struggling with the very basics like where I'm going to sleep or what is my house gonna look like or are they gonna find my my dog that ran away that we can't think of all the other things because we're so tunnel visioned as to what we're thinking.
But as the day to day starts to pass and then we're seeing the bigger picture of things it might be, that's when we need to have some counseling, but that's when we need to have the supports.
So think about the scope and the depth to which you might need to provide supports.
There's also mental health emergencies. I mean you already know the signs. A student in distress, maybe a mention of self harm or some behaviors that really just set off the red flags.
Step one, stay calm because your demeanor sets the tone.
Step two, assess the situation.
Does the student need immediate intervention? Can they be safely supported at school or do they need more help? And step three, follow protocol. You have to know your district's policy on suicide risk assessments, parental notifications and referrals.
You don't have to navigate this alone. You have to lean on your crisis team.
But here's the thing. All of these things need to be set up ahead of time and you need to set them up when you are not in the middle of any type of emergency or crisis or tragedy.
So it's really important, my friends, to build a crisis response team.
You have to have a go to crisis team because once again, you should never handle a crisis alone. You need to know who's on the school's crisis response team and the clear role that everyone has.
You need to know who contacts parents, who notifies administration, who supports staff. And you have to have these conversations ready before the crisis happens. You also need to to know your resources.
So if you don't have one, keep a list of local mental health providers, some crisis hotlines, and your emergency contacts. If you are brand spanking new to your school, your district, or maybe even the area that you live in, don't be afraid to reach out to your local counseling organization.
If you don't know of one, contact some of your neighbor schools and see what they're doing. Don't be afraid to ask for help in putting all this stuff together because when a crisis happens, you don't want to be scrambling to find support.
And as you are building this crisis response plan and you create your team, you really sad to say, you need to practice scenarios.
Now I know no one likes role playing crisis scenarios, but trust me, it helps. And when we run through the different situations as a team, it really makes sure that everyone knows the role when the real deal happens.
We also have to communicate clearly because in a crisis, misinformation spreads fast. It spreads fast. So you have to work with your admin to really make sure that the right information is being shared and that everyone knows where to turn for updates.
From my experiences, it's always been super helpful for the team to create a script before we start giving out any information or dealing with anything. We create a script of what we're going to say and we even try to think of what are the most frequent questions that we might be asked so that we can be ready for those too.
And with our admin, we also want to make sure that the admin are notifying parents and what's in that email or that alert that's being sent home.
And it's important to make sure that we know what self care is going to be there for our responders.
And when I'm talking about the self care for the crisis responders, we have to know what is in there for all of the people on the team that are responding.
What kind of care is there for us?
Here's a little secret.
You matter too. And crisis response takes an emotional toll. And after a difficult day, you need to take the time to debrief, to lean on your colleagues and please don't skip your lunch break.
When our coach died, he was a friend of mine. I mean, we started in the district together. We actually started coaching together. He had the boys and I had the girls team for soccer.
And so there was a lot of overlap. Even though he was in BE and I was in counseling, but there still was a lot of overlap. And so his passing, it was a great burden.
I knew his family, I knew his kids and his kids were. I had moved to the middle school at the time, but his kids were in my building and that's a heavy load.
And so I had to remember that I also had a grieve and that was okay.
And so we called in grief counselors, we called in hospice and they were fantastic.
But my friends, you can't forget about you.
So here are my final thoughts.
Crisis is they're going to happen.
But when you have a solid plan in place, you don't have to face them with fear.
Instead, you can approach them with confidence, knowing that you're prepared to help your students when they need it the most.
I thought this episode, I thought a lot about what I wanted to talk about and how I was going to respond to some of these things that were just going around that were going on in the news.
And it seems like we're responding a lot to crises, and so many people are like, I don't know what to do. I thought it was really important to share this, to share that we have to be ready and we have to do it ahead of time.
So, my friends, that's it. That's today's episode of Counselor Chat. I hope that this episode helps you feel a little more prepared, and I hope it gives you a little confidence boost to start planning when things are calm.
Until next time, my friends, take care of yourself.
Keep making a difference, one student at a time. You're doing amazing work. I know you are.
So until next time, have a great week. Bye for now.
Carol: Thanks for listening to today's episode of Counselor Chat. All of the links I talked about can be found in the show notes and at counselingessentials.org
podcast. Be sure to hit follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast player. And if you would be so kind to leave a review, I'd really appreciate it. Want to connect?
Send me a DM on Facebook or Instagram at Counseling Essentials. Until next time. Can't wait till we chat. Bye for now.
