When a student dies: organizing the school's response.

Principals, teachers, and guidance counselors feel ill-prepared to address a student’s death. Often the death is not anticipated, comes as a shock, and has many reverberations in the school itself and in the broader community. The principal and others in the school may be called upon to serve as leaders in this sudden crisis and have broad responsibilities to their school community that may seem overwhelming in the face of their own grief and reactions to the loss.