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Sep 21, 2009, 11:04 PM
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Member Since: Jul 2009
Location: Phoenix, AZ, USA
Posts: 2,779
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I just talked with my son tonight. Some of you may know he is living with his father, attending high school in Kansas. It is a medium size town, around 50k people. His half-sister's husband is an English teacher at the high school he attends.
Last school year, one of his brother-in-law's students was displaying some signs of being depressed and his school work was also suffering. The teacher knew these signs. The teachers had no formal instructions on what to do if they noticed this kind of thing going on with a student. So, the teacher took it upon himself to call the student's parents and tell them that the student's work was suffering but he was more concerned about the student's behavior and he thought that they should have him evaluated.
When school started this year, my son and his brother-in-law learned that over the summer, the student committed suicide. They both were stunned. My son was not friends with this student but he knew who he was and he had never known someone who had taken their own life. The teacher was devastated. The school has now (of course) developed policies on what to do in cases like this when a teacher notices specific behaviors. Too little, too late.
I am horrified by this, I can't sleep. I lived in that town for 16 years. I don't understand how they could not have appropriate response plans in place. It simply doesn't make sense. Why did they think it wouldn't happen there? 
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 Vickie
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