Managing Exam Stress in the Wake of the Michigan School Shooting: Resources for Students, Teachers and Staff

By Zainab Cheema 

As schools and colleges embark upon exam period, tragedy strikes the national news. In another punctuation in the bloodstained national nightmare of school shootings, a 15 year old school shooter in Michigan claimed the lives of four students and left seven others wounded on Tuesday, November 30. While school shootings have become tragically commonplace in the United States, they also have the effect of triggering stress and PTSD. In this blog post, I talk about how to deal with managing Finals’ stress in the college classroom in the wake of the Michigan school shooting.

School and college shootings have become a national epidemic. The Safe Schools Initiative Report also suggested that 71% of the attackers were victims of bullying and 10% of the attackers who were receiving treatment for their diagnosed mental illness failed to comply to take their prescribed psychiatric medications. According to Katie Koch, a writer for The Harvard Gazette, a student living in the United States is 13 times more likely to be killed by guns in contrast to students living in the Scandinavian countries of Finland or Sweden. The rate of school shootings has significantly increased following the loosening of pandemic lockdowns. According to Education Week, around 28 school shootings resulting in injury or death have taken place thus far in 2021, with 20 of them reported since Aug 1.

Moreover, the Michigan shooting has coincided with final exam period, pressurizing what has been an extraordinarily high stress semester. The return to in-person classes from distance learning has been a difficult adjustment for students, teachers, staff, administrators and others. Students are still affected by the trauma of COVID-19 and distance learning. According to a July 2020 study conducted by the American College Health Association, around 48 percent of college students reported moderate to severe psychological stress during their learning under the COVID-19 lockdown. Around fifty percent reported feeling lonely; and one in four had considered suicide. The approach of exams and final projects, coupled with triggering event such as the Michigan tragedy, makes self-care vitally important. Students are likely to experience some trauma-related symptoms, said Lyndsay Volpe-Bertram, a clinical psychologist with Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, a 14-hospital health system that includes Helen DeVos Children’s hospital. “It could be things like a sense of decreased safety in their environment, fear and worry about something else happening,” Volpe-Bertram said. The Michigan shooting incident coincides with the compounded stress of taking finals for an extraordinarily challenging semester.

Personal and Systemic Solutions for Stress for Students

What are some solutions for stress management in the wake of the Michigan shooting? In their online resource College Students: Coping After the Recent Shooting, The National Child Traumatic Stress Network recommends that traumatized students seek physical, emotional and social support. Even while preparation for finals demands study and preparation, students should look after themselves and keep a regular routine that incorporates proper exercise, nutrition, and sleep. It’s sounds like a no-brainer but it actually isn’t. As the NCTSN observes, “[y]outh and adults may need to be reminded that they should take care of themselves physically to be of help to loved ones, friends, and their community.” In social emotional learning modules, students must also be reminded that their reactions to stress and PTSD are normal and may decrease over time; and social support networks provided by schools, colleges, communities and families should be activated to provide social support and communication. Talk therapy can be enormously effective after such events

Unplugging from the news and social media and connecting with activities that bring joy is also an important strategy. News cycles and social media algorithms are primed towards sensationalism and shock value. As the American Counselling Association observes, media portrayals of shootings and mass deaths have been shown to cause acute stress and posttraumatic stress symptoms. The Michigan.gov website also recommends limiting television viewing after the event, striving to maintain a normal schedule; and turning to art or pet therapy. Redirecting the mind towards play with art products and support animals can offer connection and joy that significantly offsets stress. Paintings, coloring books, puzzles, board games and other problem-solving games (the tangible ones, not video games) are all effective antidotes to mental stress and PTSD. Taking out the time for self-care has the added benefit of boosting exam performance.

Finding the right system-wide solutions is still an on-going—and increasingly fraught—national conversation. In August 2021, professor and social worker and Bree Alexander published the results of her national survey of public-school teachers and administrators on trauma intervention-based approaches to dealing with school shootings. She found that public schools are following a combination of prevention and intervention approaches for dealing with school shootings. The school staff she polled reported “common prevention strategies [like] peer mentoring and anti-bullying policies and programs. Common intervention strategies included mental health services and specific trauma-informed strategies such as restorative circles.”  Alexander also observed that “anti-bullying policies and mental health services appeared to be the most popular strategies mentioned among respondents.” Indeed, the Safe Schools Initiative Report found that 71% of school shooters were victims of bullying and that 10% of the shooters were receiving treatment for their diagnosed mental illness but failed to comply with properly taking their prescribed medications.

Solutions for Stress for Teachers & Staff

An underserved population whose needs are not being met in such national tragedies are teachers. Teachers are among the occupational groups who are at the highest risk of walking away from their jobs and occupations in what has come to be known as the Great Resignation. While schools and colleges are making increasing efforts to service the mental health needs of students, there are not as many resources and services targeting the needs of teachers. Colleges and K-12 schools must flag and support teachers whose PTSD is triggered by school shootings. If not, many more teachers could make the decision to walk away from a profession that while emotionally and intellectually rewarding, seems to have of late placed their bodies and psyches at increased risk.

When researching this article, finding school shooting resources addressing the mental health needs of teachers and staff proved to be considerably more difficult. While adults are considered to be responsible for their own self-management, schools and colleges cannot reasonably expect teachers and staff to cater to students if their mental well-being is not supported. For instance, the wide array of School Shooting resourcesposted by The National Child Traumatic Stress Network offered only one handout on stress management for parents and caregivers and nothing at all for teachers and staff. Indeed, searching for resources catering to teachers only seemed to lead me to websites and material instructing teachers how to care for the well-being of their students. Not only are teachers also affected by stress and PTSD after school shootings, their emotions are additionally taxed by the added burden of care and responsibility to their students and their families. This oversight needs to be redressed in order to support teachers and other educational personnel and to nurture growth-oriented educational ecologies.

Resources for Stress Management and Exam Preparation

Here is my curated list of resources to assist students with managing stress from both final exams and the Michigan shooting. I am also including some of the few resources I found for teachers and staff who are also confronting elevated stress and PTSD without receiving adequate support.

• Federal Resources for Helping Youth Cope After a School Shooting—Look through this extensive list of resources and websites compiled by Youth.gov. I particularly recommend the Youth.gov website, Trauma Informed Approaches, on how to care for youth after a national tragedy.
• School Shooting Resources —The National Child Traumatic Stress Network has compiled an impressive set of resources that schools, colleges, parents, and communities can use to support students experiencing stress after shootings.
• Stanford Podcast on the Effect of School Shootings on Student Mental Health—this informative podcast episode is valuable for tracking not only the short time spike in stress experienced by students following school shootings but also the long term effects of these incidents.
• “Public School Trauma Intervention for School Shootings: A National Survey of School Leaders.”—Read Bree Alexander’s August 2021 article on the pre-Michigan shooting approaches being taken by public schools.
• “Becoming a Teacher in an Era of School Shootings”—Emily Wender and Alicia DeMille’s 2019 journal article provides an informative spotlight of the teacher experience.
• “How to Relieve Stress Before a Test: 25 Research Backed Tips”—We all love lists. Buzzfeed seems to make its living by them. Check out Daniel Wong’s impressive list on acing self-care and beating exam stress.
• How to Plan Exam Study Time—Check out this college student’s blog about how she organizes her time when studying. Organizational skills are key to managing stress.
• A College Girl’s Guide to Slaying the Finals—Exams can be enough to bring out the (Buffy the Vampire) Slayer from midst all of us. This student blog discusses how she organizes her day to fit in work, studying and having a good time.