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Viewpoint

on their own and with others.
Death by suicide is something altogether different. The age of the child and the gender of the parent
dying and the child surviving all affect their reactions. Very young children may not understand the concept
of suicide, let alone death; older children may know what suicide means but cannot accept that a parent
would take his or her own life. The loss of a father by a male child takes on special meaning as a role model
disappears, leaving the child with only a female role model in the form of their mother. Female children
who lose their mothers struggle with finding female role models, as they only have a male role model to
guide them—including on sensitive issues that are gender related, such as sexuality and menstruation.
• Fourth, the sandbag never disappears . . . although we may assume it does. There is always a wee
bit of sand in it—sand grains stay around. Not to trivialize this, but those of us who have lived near a beach
know that sand goes everywhere and is impossible to eliminate completely from the cracks and crevices
where it has lodged. Thus, the sandbag and at least some of its contents are never completely gone.
• Fifth, the sandbag’s presence in our life can be changed over time. We can paint the sandbag. We
can add color to it. We can decorate it. We can move it into new places and spaces. We can give it a home,
a comfortable place to rest— literally and figuratively. Imagine the sandbag as a piece of evolving art. We
can give the sandbag a place in our contemporary lives.
• Sixth, what happens to all the sand that spills out of the sandbag over time? Does it just sit there?
Do we sweep it away? Do we turn it into beaches in our minds? We can’t just let the sand pile up. We need
to find a place not just for the sandbag but also for the sand.

Schools and Sandbags

Reading Maya’s memoir and the struggles of her children made me think about the experiences of
trauma that abound in and around education and
the students we serve. There are many examples
of this, both within the United States and abroad.
In the United States, we can reflect on the
number of lockdowns that students and educators
experience just through “swatting” incidents—
those fake calls to 911 saying there is an active
shooter at a particular school. These aren’t actual
emergencies to be sure, but they appear real when
they are occurring. When one is on a lockdown, it
feels like what it is: a lockdown. Whether students
and educators are locked in classrooms or closets
or closing shades or ducking under tables and
maintaining silence, their autonomic nervous
systems are activated. Seeing police cars and swat
teams and weapons are visuals that get etched into
one’s mind.
A Washington Post (Rich & Cox, 2018) investigation estimated that more than 4 million students
experienced lockdowns that were not “for real” events during the 2017–2018 school year. That number
has only risen since then, given the widely reported rise in the number of swatting incidents. Then add
in the number of students and educators who have experienced real lockdowns given the plethora of
shootings within and near schools.
In other nations, with natural disasters abounding, including earthquakes, floods, and fires as well
as the spread of disease, large numbers of students have also been exposed to traumatic events. And
those numbers do not include students who are in war-torn nations. In 2023, the Global Collaboration

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