Photography by Sid Hastings, courtesy of AP Photo/Sid Hastings
When Kevin Hampton, a teacher at McCluer North High School, heard about the shooting of Michael Brown, he was saddened, both for Brown’s family and for the region. “In North County, we have to be defensive because there is this perception—that is so wrong—that it’s dangerous,” he says. “I thought, ‘OK, now we’re going to be on the defensive again.’”
At the same time, Ferguson-Florissant School District faced a logistical problem: With seven of the district’s 23 schools located in Ferguson, its bus routes ran right through the civil unrest. In the end, Ferguson-Florissant students missed seven days of classes—far more than other area districts. “It was frustrating,” says Hampton, “but I knew the last thing that any of us would want would be for something to happen to a student on his or her way to school.”
During the delay, school officials organized a daylong training session for the district’s 2,000 employees to learn to identify signs of distress in students. “We wanted all staff to have the tools needed to provide a willing ear and to know how to help students in need connect with appropriate community resources,” says Tamara Cox, a guidance counselor at Bermuda Elementary School.
On the first day of school, August 25, the district brought in an additional 35 counselors from Great Circle. “It was a good decision,” says Toni Walker, a senior at McCluer North, who was down the street at a dance recital when Brown was killed. “I know some people who were close to or related to [Brown] or knew him. And some people were just traumatized by the situation and needed to get their feelings out.”
For other students, just attending classes was enough. “When a community is so deeply affected by a tragic event and its aftermath,” Cox says, “school can be a place of refuge, where students can experience normalcy and be comforted by familiar routines.”
