Angela Bridges Quotations

If a student comes in my office and doesn't want to talk me, they just might want to sit still, be alone. That's fine. Sometimes we'll say, who's your best friend? Let me get your best friend down here with you.

Grieving is a process. There's a process of the shock, the anger, and then coping with the situation. You have to experience all of those levels to move forward, and sometimes you need help in that.

First of all, students have to actually grieve to get over it. They cannot just ignore the situation. If they ignore it and push it aside, they never really grieve.

Sometimes with the initial shock, you have to have some down time as far as crying, grieving and sometimes go home and be by yourself or with parents. If they do go home, we meet with them and discuss some things that they can do when they do go home - whether it be journal writing, writing a letter to that person telling them what they meant. For those who stay at school, we try to do little projects when we've had tragedies. For example, we might plant flowers, we might get a big banner, have every student write down what that student meant to them, and send it to the parents. There are various things that we do.

Students wear everything on their shoulders - I mean you usually know it, friends can know, even people who don't know that person know it. The person becomes very sullen, they display their emotions. It's easy to spot.