Schools Help Children Cope With Their Worries of War

The lunchtime rally at Dorsey High School had all the trappings of a 1960s teach-in: a crowd of anxious students, speeches blaring over a bullhorn. But unlike those long-ago antiwar rallies, there was an undercurrent of sentiment that a war with Iraq would respect no boundaries.

What if the war hits Los Angeles? “I’m afraid for my life,” one student told the crowd in the center of the Dorsey campus.

In other parts of town, there were no bullhorns. But there were second- and third-graders worried about “bad Iraqi men” robbing them at home, mysterious germs that can “kill everyone” and atomic bombs ripping through their neighborhoods.

As the nation anticipates war, so do its young citizens -- and their fear and confusion have prompted school administrators and mental health professionals to intervene. The Red Cross has designed a K-12 curriculum, called Facing Fear, to help students cope with the prospect of war, terrorism and other turbulent events.

Some young people are channeling their emotions into protests such as the one at Dorsey High last week, or writing letters of support for relatives serving in the military. Others are struggling more quietly, saying they can’t shake a sense of hopelessness.

Francine Taing, a Dorsey senior, said her fear is that a war “will spiral out of control. World War III will happen. We’ll all die.”

At Mountain Avenue Elementary School in La Crescenta, students surprised their teachers in a Presidents Day exercise by seizing on the Iraq issue. They were asked to write a letter to any American president, living or dead, asking anything they wanted. Their instructors expected simple scribblings, but 6-year-old Joshua Pe’s letter to President Bush was typical:

‘Sad and Scared’

“Dear Mr. President, I am writing this letter to you because I don’t want war,” he wrote. “A lot of soldiers and people will die. America might be destroyed by the enemies. My family will be sad and scared if they bomb us.”

There are still many for whom the international drama is a distant echo. For these youngsters, routines have changed little. Their days still revolve around school, homework, soccer practice and trips to the mall.

“I don’t think it affects me,” said Allison Bloom, 13, who lives in Solon, Ohio, an affluent suburb of Cleveland. “Solon’s not that big of a city. I don’t think that something would happen here.”

But those living near military bases or potential terrorist targets cannot escape the daily barrage of news and dinner chatter about duct tape and disaster drills.

“I get scared in school because I don’t know if I am going to see my mother again or my next birthday or my family,” said fourth-grader Shanice Hinckson of PS 136 in Queens, New York, just across the river from Manhattan.

Eleven-year-old Brandy Brown tries to distract herself from worrying about her father, a Marine from Camp Pendleton who has been deployed to Kuwait. She has started jogging with her mother and spends more time playing basketball and running track -- anything to stay occupied.

“I’m sticking to sports to keep busy while he’s gone,” said Brandy, whose teachers do not raise the subject of war unless asked because they don’t want to upset the children. “That way I won’t think about it so much and start crying.”

School officials and mental health experts are scrambling to address this emotional roller coaster. The Red Cross curriculum gives students an opportunity to talk about frightening events in their lives and teaches them how to evaluate the credibility of news accounts.

In one middle-school exercise from that program, students are asked to fill out brief questionnaires to prod their thinking on the subject. “When you hear the word war, what images come to mind?” it asks. “Is it all right to destroy people’s homes, towns, etc.? If not, why not? If yes, under what circumstances?”

A unit on helping kindergartners cope with tragedy shows pictures of happy and sad faces, and instructs adults to ask the children to choose the expressions that best fit their moods. The adults then point out that even bad feelings change over time.

The Red Cross has distributed more than 40,000 copies of the lesson plans and activity booklets to schools in New York, Washington, D.C., Seattle, Denver and Los Angeles, where campuses will introduce the lessons this spring.

Teachers and parents have downloaded an additional 11,000 copies, free, from the organization’s Web site (www.redcross.org/disaster/masters/facingfear/.

Guidance counselor Lisa Risner has tapped the lessons to help her students at Brandywine Springs Elementary in Wilmington, Del., cope with three stresses: the Sept. 11 terror attacks, an impending war and high-pressure state tests being administered in schools this month.

Risner led a group of third-graders last week through an exercise called “Blow the bad feelings away.” Students were asked to breathe deeply and blow large bubbles with plastic wands. Then they visualized their angriest moments. Finally, they were told to imagine that moment blowing away and floating until it popped.

Some students said they visualized planes crashing into the World Trade Center. Risner said she expects images of war to crop up in coming weeks.

“We’re laying the groundwork for helping the children cope with anxiety and tragedy in general, regardless of how small or how great,” Risner said. “We all deal better with things when we are prepared.”

Understanding Stress

Parents, eager to help their children through turbulent times, commended the school’s efforts. “It’s important for kids to be able to talk and express their feelings and understand what stress is,” said Martha Mash, whose third-grader, Marissa, has participated in the lessons. “It’s another tool for them that is simple and easy.”

While the Red Cross curriculum gives students an outlet for their feelings, other programs are designed to help youngsters grapple with the political ramifications of armed conflict.

One program, developed by educators at Brown University, asks students to consider various policy options for dealing with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Among the choices offered in the curriculum (at www.choices.edu/iraq/index.html): Act alone to remove Hussein, work with the United Nations to eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, or reject the use of military force.

History teacher Bill Velto used the lesson with his 10th-graders at Cary Academy in Cary, N.C., last month. He split the class into several groups and asked each to make a five-minute presentation to support its policy choice. Most of his students were against a war.

“There was an evolution into deeper thinking on this subject rather than the knee-jerk yes or no response about war,” he said. “This helped them process why we are doing this and whether we should be doing this.”

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Times staff writers Hugo Martin and Hilda Munoz and researchers Anna M. Virtue and Lynette Ferdinand contributed to this report.