Feb 19, 2008 5:22 pm US/Central
Teachers Return To NIU, Train To Help Students
DE KALB, Ill. (CBS) ―
Teachers at Northern Illinois University return to the campus on Tuesday for the first time since the massacre last week.
All faculty members will receive four days of training on how to help students cope with the aftermath of the shooting.
Faculty, graduate assistants and some staff will meet in groups of 50 to talk about last week's shooting spree that killed five students. Gunman Steven Kazmierczak -- a former NIU student -- later turned the gun on himself.
The training will continue all week while classes are canceled.
NIU faculty and staff were told to expect confusion, anger, and depression, and they were instructed to show compassion.
Micky Sharma is director of NIU's counseling and student development center. He says the training will help faculty cope with the shooting and also coach them on how to deal with grieving students when classes resume on Monday.
"We should be almost ready to expect anything and be as flexible as we can," said NIU music Professor Pat Hatmaker.
"Basically get them back in the regimen of what they're here to do, which is learn, and do our best job at not being afraid to talk about it," said NIU music professor Ron Carter.
Leading the training are counselors with personal experience. John Perry was at NIU from the University of Arkansas, where a grad student killed his advisor on the first day of classes in 2000, and more Dr. Christopher Flynn was there from Virginia Tech, where 31 students were murdered last year.
Counselors told the staff they must be aware of the connections between the students and the victims.
"They'll be friends, lovers, fraternity brothers and sisters, cousins of these students, and so we want people to be sensitive to that," Flynn said.
"They're certainly going to have to pay attention to those students who want to continue, but are finding themselves challenged the intensity of their emotions and their reactions to the situation," Perry said.
Counselors also warned faculty to be aware of their own emotions. Some admit they have apprehension about returning to the classroom.
"I think it's the unknown. I think there's one side of it that we know, the sooner we get to work the sooner we'll heal, but we don't know how we'll react to things," said NIU theater professor Alex Gelman.
About 300 volunteer counselors will come to campus next week and many will be paired with professors and work in classrooms. A mental health counselor will be assigned to every classroom for classes on Monday and Tuesday of next week.
CBS 2's Dorothy Tucker and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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