Overcoming adversity from large-scale crises and disasters

Abstract

This chapter focuses on how schools help their students, families, and wider communities respond to and recover from large-scale crises and disasters. Examples are drawn from the author’s decade of research into large-scale events in and around the Asia-Pacific, from earthquakes in New Zealand and Nepal, or tsunami in Japan and Samoa, to the COVID-19 pandemic. This chapter will focus on four ways that schools contribute to supporting children through adverse disaster events: (a) schools as community hubs; (b) principals as crisis leaders; (c) teachers as trauma workers; and (d) children as active participants.