TCR staff member Colleen Shannon, LICSW shares her story of beginning a peer support group in a local high school and her new, exciting role at The Children’s Room. This feature story is the first in a series that will highlight staff at TCR.
Colleen Shannon, LICSW
Three years ago today, I sat in the guidance office of Lexington High School with a bowl full of stones, 15 nametags and a handful of markers. The bell rang to signal the change of classes. I took a deep breath.
We began planning for a high school peer support group the year before. TCR’s Teen Troupe performed at Lexington High, we offered training for guidance staff, and we presented an information night for parents. The stage was set to welcome students into our first peer support group, on high school turf. I wondered if anyone would show. Questions ran through my mind… would this group work? Would it be too vulnerable for high school students to talk about such personal and painful experiences in the middle of a school day? The bell rang again, interrupting my thoughts. Three students arrived, positioning themselves cautiously, yet nonchalantly, as far as could be from where I sat with my co-facilitators.
Mr. Farnham, the school social worker and one of the co-facilitators of this group, thought we might get a few more takers. Sure enough, the door opened and in popped another student, “Hey, Mr. Farnham, is this the place for the group thing?” Mr. Farnham nodded and more students filed in.
For the next few minutes, water was poured, name tags were made, snacks were distributed… and then we began.
Throughout the school year, to my amazement, the group swelled to 20 students. Students with losses as recent as a few months and as long ago as 15 years. Some had experienced the death of a parent to an illness, while others had experienced the death of a sibling, or siblings, to violence. Yet, their stories contained a unifying thread. They wanted to be heard, and to know that they were not alone. The students wanted a place where they could actually speak about their loved one without making other people feel uncomfortable or sorry for them. They spoke of anniversary days being hard, what it felt like to have parents dating or remarrying, and even seemingly small instances like having their aunt mistaken for their deceased mom.
Students in Lexington High School peer support group
The support and respect that the students had for one another was awe-inspiring. We wrapped up our year together in the spring of 2011 with a viewing of the TCR Teen Troupe video and a lunch together. They spoke words of appreciation and gratitude for the safe space we had all helped to create within their school walls, the same kind of space that we cherish so dearly within the walls of our Arlington center.
Since that first day at Lexington High, and through the growth of our graduate internship program and the dedication of all of our staff here at TCR, we have been able to start additional groups in other schools. Last year, we offered groups in two middle schools (in Dorchester and Arlington) and two high schools (Needham and Lexington). At each new school, I was amazed to find what I had first discovered at Lexington: students wanted a space like this, they wanted a safe space to come together.
Many students told us about the barriers they faced when trying to come to a group here at our Arlington center: the difficulty in getting here from Boston or Dorchester made our group unavailable to some students; others spoke of the increased pressure of school, sports and extra-curricular activities that filled their evenings, making it impossible for them to attend family groups; and others spoke of single parents who had wanted to come to TCR, but who now found schlepping all the way to Arlington near impossible, no matter how much they wanted to be here.
This fall, with the addition of new staff, I’m thrilled to say that we’re in a position to serve even more families in schools and in community settings that are more accessible to the children who need support right where they live and attend school.
I’m even more thrilled to have the opportunity to take the lead in this area of growth and development at TCR. It is my hope that by bringing our philosophy and model into more schools and communities, we will help plant new seeds of compassion and understanding that can grow and flourish in new environments.
As we launch this phase of growth beyond the walls of our Arlington center, I’m excited to share that we are working with the Boys and Girls Club in Chelsea to offer an after-school peer support group to students there. My early conversations with the social worker there underscore what I have heard in many other schools and community settings over the past 3 years:
“These students have never had anyone support them around their losses.”
“People don’t know what to do with or for them, what to say to them.”
“The best we have done up until now is to keep them distracted and try to keep them focused on other things… but their grief is still there.”
Yes, their grief is “still there.” As many of us in the TCR community know, grief does not end, nor does our relationship to the person who has died. Yet neither of these are troublesome things.
We have more work to do to educate and inform others of this so that children may find caring support wherever they may be – in schools, community centers, and beyond. And I am so excited to help TCR lead the way.
