‘Psychological first aid’: How volunteers helped students recover after LA fires

In a classroom that smelled like a campfire, a student at Pasadena Unified’s Sierra Madre Elementary School broke down when he saw a student-made stuffed rabbit that had X’s for eyes.

His art teacher called for help from Tanya Ward, a project director for the mental health and school counseling unit at the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

Ward arrived immediately and pulled the student aside.

“That’s a dead bunny. That’s a dead bunny,” the student repeated, sobbing.

“What does that make you feel?” Ward asked him. “What do you think about that bunny with X eyes? Could it be something else?”

The student began to breathe and seemed less agitated. He started talking haltingly about how the stuffed rabbit — in reality, a sock wrapped around a rice-filled balloon — made him feel.

Sad. And scared.

“Then he was able to go back,” Ward said. “I sat with him for a little bit longer, just to help him get going with his project… The other students didn’t tease him or make fun of him. They just embraced him."

Ward is one of roughly 100 volunteers from the Los Angeles County Office of Education, or LACOE, and beyond, who have provided mental health support at Pasadena Unified School District school sites and enabled hundreds of students to get back on track in the months following the Eaton Fire, which displaced about 10,000 of the district’s 14,000 students.

“We’ve always been ready. But to be able to be welcomed and ushered into this work — and be able to have solutions — and to know that you have people who’ve got your back, it’s pretty unbelievable,” said Julianne Reynoso, Pasadena Unified’s assistant superintendent of student wellness and support services. “I would never have imagined this level of support.”

Supporting families

Shortly after the Eaton fire burned more than 14,000 acres, John Lynch, a community schools initiative coordinator for LACOE, started making phone calls to check in on families and find out what support they needed, from economic needs requiring gift cards to housing.

He called 100 about families at Altadena’s Eliot Arts Magnet alone — all while dealing with his own long-term displacement from the region.

“It was a way for me to really know, to be in community with other people who live in my community, and we’re kind of going through something similar, even though we’ve all experienced this differently,” Lynch said.

“Families that are displaced, I think they — we — … have maybe felt a little bit forgotten, as the rest of the world kind of goes back to their everyday life,” he added. “People are just like, “Wow! Thank you for calling, and for remembering that we’re kind of going through this tragedy.”

Supporting students

When students returned to school after the fire, many had been separated from their peers for months.

“Some hadn’t even really come back from Christmas break. And then the fires closed down their school, so they had not seen peers, their friends, for several weeks,” said Anna Heinbuch, a school counseling coordinator at LACOE.

“A lot of our students were just happy to be in a space where they were with their peers and able just to talk about something other than the fires.”

Within weeks of the fires, Heinbuch facilitated a “psychological first aid” session in the gym of Marshall Fundamental Secondary School — gauging students’ wellness, helping them through whatever they were dealing with and providing them with suggestions for next steps, such as access to a school social worker.

She brought coloring books to help comfort the students and taught them breathing exercises they could do by themselves. She asked whether they had been sleeping well and eating properly.

The initial period of assessing students’ needs lasted a few weeks, and then the effort rolled back. But Kim Griffin Esperon, a LACOE project director of mental health and school counseling, who organized the volunteer effort, began hearing from principals who expressed an increased need for longer-term support.

And Griffin Esperon worked to bring in longer-term support, which lasted until the end of March.

Volunteers said students’ grief had started to deepen. Some longed for their lost pets and missed the other animals that made Altadena home. Others, whose homes survived, felt survivor’s guilt.

Some students began to act out in the classroom. Others felt less engaged academically. Many struggled when they were away from their parents or siblings.

“This is going to take a long time for some of these kids to work their way through,” Griffin Esperon said. “There’s no rushing back to normal for these students because their lives will not probably feel normal to them for quite a while.”

The road ahead

More transitions lie ahead for some students — from potential housing changes to friends who may move elsewhere.

And with the volunteer effort having achieved as much as it can for now, Reynoso said the goal is to connect students who need it with longer-term care and support.

Pasadena Unified is continuing to monitor students’ well-being, Griffin Esperon said, and has recently received funding to hire two crisis counselors. The district will also rely on parents who have health insurance to provide support for their children, she added.

“Despite what crisis or trauma they’ve been through, we want (students) to feel connected,” Reynoso said. “We’re definitely seeing the need … for long-term care, and we’re looking at every opportunity we possibly can.”