Maui teachers focus on students' 'fire feelings' as well as academics
Oct. 23—Educators and experts say it's likely that hundreds of children and teens across Maui are going about their days with sad and frightening memories and emotions from the fires lying just below the surface.
In a packed classroom, teacher Sarah Risser is reading aloud to her first graders when she notices one tiny girl winding a strand of hair tightly around her finger. Risser asks her to stop, saying it makes her nervous that pulling the hair might stop blood flow to that body part.
Then another child speaks up : "When I get nervous, the blood stops going to my body—like when the fires happened."
Suddenly, all the children are talking anxiously and, as they do a lot these days, pouring out their fears and strong emotions—voicing what Risser calls their "fire feelings."
Risser puts down her book and, as she does a lot these days, shifts gears.
She begins drawing on the board and gently coaxing the children into a discussion of healthy ways to handle "big feelings ": "You can share your feelings with a friend. Do you have a friend you could talk to ? Because if you keep it trapped inside, it doesn't feel good, " she tells the keiki in kindly tones. "We can also run and jump and play and use our muscles ! All of that is a really good way to help us feel our feelings, too."
This is the nurturing of mental health along with academics, the pivoting to address hurting students' feelings and needs as they change from one moment to the next, that many educators at Maui Prep and schools across the Valley Isle are having to do for their emotionally wounded students in the wake of the terrifying Maui wildfires.
"When feelings like that come up, I follow their lead, " Risser said during an interview after her class at Maui Prep, a private school about 6 miles north of Lahaina town. "Sometimes their needs dictate where the curriculum goes for the day."
For about 10 children in Risser's class of 27, their homes either burned to ruins or are cut off from access, she says, and more keiki are dealing with anxiety and nightmares, some related to the fires, some to additional traumatic events.
In fact, educators and experts say it's likely that hundreds of children and teens across Maui are going about their days with sad and frightening memories and emotions from the fires lying just below the surface. They are playing and chatting with friends and going to class normally most of the time but still deeply grieving for the loss of treasured homes, belongings, schools, pets, friends, family and /or community, and coping as their families struggle with finding new jobs and homes and ways of life.
Experts have said in interviews and at public hearings that they expect about one-third of the children who survived the Maui fires to be diagnosed with psychiatric disorders from trauma, such as high anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Considering just the 3, 001 public school students originally registered in Lahaina, plus several hundred more youths in private schools, that could be over 1, 000 children and teens on Maui.
And mental health professionals say that for some of those children, the symptoms and processing of grief and trauma are only just starting.
Last week public school students returned to three campuses in Lahaina, just above the burn zone, for the first time since the fires, which was expected to trigger both joy and a new round of difficult emotions. While the state Department of Education barred media from the reopenings, officials said bringing in extra mental health professionals to support returning students and teachers was part of the preparations.
Many teachers, too, are suffering while still working. Among public school educators on Maui, at least 57 have either lost their homes entirely to the fires or suffered so much property damage that they have had to relocate, and another 44 have reported some level of property damage from the fires, according to a survey by the Hawaii State Teachers Association.
For many of these children and educators, their schools are their main, or their only, source of professional support.
Among Maui Prep's responses for fire survivors has been to enroll as many displaced children as it could fit on its diminutive campus, which served 300 children in prekindergarten through high school before the fires. After over 1, 000 students applied for an initial offering of 100 added seats, the school raised the offer to 140 spots. That has pushed up enrollment by almost 50 %, to 440.
When Lisa Zamora, who is academic dean and counselor at Maui Prep, is asked how surviving students are faring now, nearly 2-1 /2 months since the fires, she pauses for a deep breath.
"A lot of PTSD, " she says.
For instance, one night a few weeks after the wildfires, when a car accident took down a power pole and knocked the lights out in Napili, Zamora says, many parents contacted her the next day to say their keiki had been triggered emotionally, becoming distraught and unable to sleep. The blackout reminded the children of the power outages that preceded the Aug. 8 wildfires, and they feared that this outage meant that a terrible fire would follow again.
"It's all these triggering events, " Zamora said. "There's a church not that far from the school that pretty often on Friday does some barbecuing, and the kiawe smell is a trigger for some because it's this smell of smoke. And then the fire station across the street, if the sirens go off, they're immediately making the connection of, 'Is it a fire ? Is it coming our way ?'"
"We're so vulnerable right now. We're so fragile, " Head of School Miguel Solis said in a separate interview. On most days, in most hours, "there is a general sense of normalcy, there's so much to do, we're moving on. But sometimes ... you kind of check in on them (the students ). We have parents telling us that the kids have nightmares. We know this is going to be a long haul."
During a recent Honolulu Star-Advertiser visit to the campus, Solis, who is also Zamora's husband, quietly related stories of young survivors on the Maui Prep campus : That girl lost both her grandparents to the flames. That boy lost his house. This boy in a blue polka dot tie has taken to wearing a tie to school every day since the fires because a handful of ties were among the few things he managed to grab when he and his family fled for their lives.
Solis and Zamora's 7-year-old son, Noah, has had nightmares of the fires himself.
Maui Prep has mounted major to help fire survivors several times over now. Starting on the night of the Lahaina fire, it opened as makeshift emergency shelter with only minutes' notice, taking in about 700 people, many of them frightened and injured. A few days later the school transformed again, into an improvised distribution center handing out disaster supplies.
Today, packed rows of castoff shoes, and masses of backpacks crowding walls where more hooks had to be hurriedly hung when the added children arrived in August, testify to the school's swollen rolls. In Risser's class the 27 children are almost double the more typical capacity of her classroom of 12 to 15.
Zamora and an outside mental health counselor who comes in twice a week are in constant motion, talking with and supporting students, families and teachers. The need has been so great that at one point shortly after the fires, Maui Prep was providing as many as six counselors daily.
Still, Maui Prep is embracing its dramatically expanded size and services, Solis said, and many teachers actually urged the school to take in even more displaced keiki who are on a waitlist. "We're limited by our fishbowl, " he said, or else they would have taken in more.
The larger enrollment comes with costs, though. Maui Prep needs more classroom furniture, and sports and playground equipment, and has added numerous staff, so it has increased its fundraising efforts. Zamora said the school is in discussions about whether in subsequent years incoming classes will keep the school at its expanded size or gradually bring it back to its original enrollment of 300.
But for now, Maui Prep officials say, helping create some version of normalcy for current students and teachers, and the wider community, is job one.
On Sept. 30, Maui Prep helped to distribute 9, 000 donated pairs of shoes to West Maui residents in need. It will host a "Trunk or Treat " event for Halloween night on campus.
Solis delights in the way sports games are now pulling in full houses from the broader community at the school's Bozich Center. He fairly bubbles over describing his ideas for more community offerings : possibly a fishing tournament, maybe a soapbox derby. "We've got this great hill right as you drive in, " he says and grins.
In the music room, Vania Jerome, Maui Prep's director of arts, is running choir rehearsals. The high voices of about two dozen children ring out with "Hakuna Matata "—"no worries "—with smiles and pure cheer, no irony. The boy with the polka-dot tie sings here, too.
Jerome's students are preparing for a November production of "Beauty and the Beast, " which has been on the calendar since well before the fires. When Maui Prep lost about two weeks of school to the disaster, Jerome said, she thought about canceling but decided to press on. "If anything, I think the kids need it, " she said. "I think we really need to do it, because it'll be the first big community performance with the kids."
The school's efforts to promote community healing are already bearing fruit and drawing in more supporters.
Brian Richard volunteers at the campus constantly. He lent a hand when the school served as a disaster shelter and as an emergency distribution center. The man whom the kids know as "Captain Turtle " now stocks the bathrooms, speaks to classes, provides security and more. His is the first sunny smile visitors encounter at the school gate.
The Lahaina fire claimed one of the boats belonging to Richard's company and burned down the private where his younger son attended, he said, and Maui Prep officials "were super sweet and took in my younger son, and so I just want to help out as much as I can." His wife is an art teacher and his older son is an alumnus, and the school is like a home, like family, he says.
He fights back tears when explaining why he volunteers more time than ever now at the school.
"This is a special place. We've raised our kids together, " Richard says. "And these are amazing kids. They are the future of Lahaina. You know, all these kids, they're some of the smartest people I know. And they're the ones who are gonna rebuild Lahaina."
