For Schools

There are many books in our Peter’s Place library written to support and educate children, teens and adults. Below is a sampling of some of our favorites.

• “Coping with the Death of a Student or Staff Member”: Published by the Department of Education’s Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools Technical Assistance (REMS TA), this guide provides tips to schools regarding emergency management planning, how to respond to the death of a student or staff member, ways to handle response based on cause of death, legal implications of releasing information, and how to work with and talk to bereaved students.
• “Guidelines for Responding to the Death of a Student or School Staff”: Published by the National Center for School Crisis & Bereavement at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, this guide provides a detailed step-by-step guide to dealing with a death in your school, including what kind of support to provide students.
• “Guidelines for Schools Responding to a Death by Suicide”: Published by the National Center for School Crisis & Bereavement at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, this guide provides a detailed step-by-step guide to dealing with a death by suicide in your school community, including how to talk about suicide, providing emotional support for students dealing with this loss, how to handle funerals and memorials in this kind of death, and risk factors for students following a suicide.
• “Dealing with Death at School”: This link will take you to an article from the National Association of School Psychologists’ publication, Principal Leadership, which provides detailed instructions for those in leadership roles at schools about responding to a death in the school community.
• Template Messages and Letters to Parents, Students, and Staff: This link will take you to the website for the National Center for School Crisis & Bereavement at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, where you will find templates for letters to parents, students, and staff for a variety of death situations, as well as classroom talking points for teachers, provided in Word document format. These templates will assist you in communicating about a death in your school community.