For this Discussion, you reflect on a crisis or traumatic event that has affected students, a school, or a community. You explore the school counseling professional’s role during and after crises, disasters, and other trauma-causing events.Description of a critical incident and its impact on students, a school, or a community. Explain the responsibilities of a school counselor in addressing this event in relation to intervention and prevention. Briefly describe strategies you need in the measures to intervene and prevent crises at schools. Justify your rationale.

Deadly shootings, natural disasters, and other traumatic events (e.g., suicide, abuse, many types of loss) are incidents that cause crises in schools. These events are detrimental to the academic growth and achievement of students. Are you well prepared to manage or prevent a crisis at your school? What skills do you need in order to prevent and manage crises? How does crisis intervention fit in typical school counseling practice?

Crises vary both in scope and intensity. A crisis directly or indirectly affects a single student, a family, or the entire school and community. Crises might happen before, during, or after school and on or off school campuses. Despite efforts aimed at prevention, crises continue to occur. Timely response and efficient intervention, however, can mitigate complications and minimize the likelihood of future physical, emotional, and social deterioration.

In recent times, there has been a heightened emphasis on crisis response in schools. School counselors are in a unique position to have the opportunity to play a critical action-oriented role in planning and implementing crisis response in schools. However, many school counseling professionals are lacking skills or are not adequately trained as crisis interventionists (Allen et al., 2002).