In the current days, schools all over the world are experiencing crises on an increasing level. One example can be given of the case where there was a schoolyard shooting in Stockton, a largely “Southeast Asian Community” (Silver & Klotz, 2007, p.11). At that time, the school officials encountered hardships in communicating with the students’ parents since these parents did not speak much English. Consequently, the police officers as well as the medical experts carried students who had not been identified to the hospital. This brought in unnecessary anxiety and confusion for the parents and they had become very much terrified (Silver & Klotz, 2007). The parents were made to wait for a very long time before getting to know the state of their children and also to know in which hospitals these children 1: had been taken (Silver & Klotz, 2007). Culture has great influence in regard to determining the kind of occurrence that can be considered as being traumatic, and how people can undertake the interpretation of crisis means, and how people respond to the crisis (Silver & Klotz, 2007, p.11).
An effective intervention strategy to such a crisis in the school is to incorporate cultural competence into the school’s general crisis plans as well as preparations (Allen, 2007). These plans are supposed to identify and also deal with the needs in the school community that are diverse. More specifically, there is a need to put the cultural composition of the school into consideration which includes languages, sex, age, and religion among others. There is a need to engage in identifying specific needs, that are culture-related, to the community like having access to religious leaders and interpreters among other relevant parties (Allen, 2007).
References
Allen, M., et al. (2007). Providing effective crisis intervention for students and families from diverse backgrounds. Paper presented at the National Association of School Psychologists Annual Convention, Dallas, TX.
Silver, A. & Klotz, M. B. (2007). Culturally competent crisis response. Student Counselling, 1(1), 11 – 15.