How do you talk to children whose classmates have died? That’s the impossible task facing some school staff members in the Bronx after this weekend’s deadly fire.

“The loss of so many lives — and children, whose lives are just beginning — is just tragic. And you know, there's no words to really say, when we have to tell children that their classmates, that seat that they've sat in since September, that, ‘Sorry, they're not coming back to that seat because they are no longer with us.’ There's no easy way to deliver that kind of news,” Dr. Roger Ball, the Education Department’s supervisor of school social workers for the Bronx, said.

He’s been leading the effort to mobilize social workers, crisis intervention staff and other clinical support to schools that served children killed or displaced by the fire.

What You Need To Know

  • Eight children were killed in this weekend's fire in the Bronx, and many attended public schools

  • The city has sent extra social workers and other mental health professionals to help schools cope with the loss

  • That includes allowing students the time and space to talk about their losses

“Children, when they walk in our buildings, they need to know, and we are ensuring that they know that they are not alone, that during this awful time, that they are not alone,” he said.

That involves creating community among everyone in the school building, and with community members outside the schools, who have flooded them with donations. 

“That's what we do, right?” Dr. Ball said. “When our neighbors suffer loss, when our children are in mourning, we show up, and that's what's happening right now.”

Inside the schools, clinicians are available to talk to students. They're also helping teachers work through their own grief, while at the same time, preparing them to help their students.

“The teachers in those classrooms, whom those children have seen day in and day out, those children are going to look to the teachers for support as well,” he said. “In a way, they become first responders. The kids know them, they know the children.”

The fire comes as children are still dealing with losses from the pandemic, and that compounded trauma requires a lot of attention from school staff and parents.

“Are they sleeping? Are they eating? Are there changes in behavioral patterns? Do they seem withdrawn and melancholy? And in those cases, there really needs all hands on deck, all of the community to support all of our children to get them through this extraordinarily difficult time,” he said.

One thing that will help, Dr. Ball says, is keeping up with their routines.

"What we know about children is that part of their recovery from trauma is to maintain normalcy,” he said. “If they need to go to the playground and shoot some hoops and jump some Double Dutch, that's what they should do. They need to get to their math, that's what they should do. And if they need to remove themselves from the classroom, to go talk to a counselor to really tell a story about their friends who perished, then they need to have that space as well,” he said.

And that makes schools more important for these children than ever.