As days go, I think today was a positive one.
Parents and guardians can be reassured that we, as a school, tried to make today just another Monday in the lives of our students here at the Nichols Middle School.
There were some small discussions, which occurred with some students, who asked questions mostly along the lines to help support them and explain to them that we are doing everything in our power to make sure that NMS is safe for them, but on the whole it was a pretty typical day in the life of a NMS Tiger.
Mr. McLaughlin and I were out-and-about all day long trying to get to the teachers and also stop by some classrooms to show that today was just another day. The guidance staff was on-call all day long in case any student needed to talk at anytime during the day.
From what I sent out last night, we as a school faculty and staff followed the protocol I laid out for you about what we would do as a school and this morning went over the page that discussed "What Schools Should Do" from the National Organization of School Psychologists. You can see there are 13 items and we followed these to the best of our abilities today and will try to continue during the week. The toughest one is number 2, "Maintaining structure and stability" with also balancing the students' needs. It is what we will try to do this week and beyond. Please check them out to see what we did: http://www.nasponline.org/resources/crisis_safety/terror_general.aspx
I just got a chance to write to you and also read this article I found from the New York Times which I feel discusses the difficulty of this situation and what to, and not, discuss with students. Check it out if you get a chance: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/how-not-to-talk-with-children-about-the-sandy-hook-shooting/
But other than that, I want the Nichols Middle School Community to know that today was a day of normalcy for our students, and that is what I had hoped for them. It is a place to start as the whole education world tries to make sense of Friday and begin to heal.
If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to contact me at mgeoghegan@middleboro.k12.ma.us
Thanks; have a good night,
M. R. Geoghegan
