School counselor recalls first day back at school following Marshall Fire
Molly Kobus remembers the first day back to school after the Marshall Fire like it was yesterday. An elementary school so filled with grief you could practically feel it.
"I just remember the feeling walking up to school. There were tears. Staff members are crying. We were all really impacted. Just seeing our students even go through this; just the trauma and sitting in the extreme grief. It was almost not manageable," said Kobus, the counselor at Fireside Elementary School in Louisville.
Kobus and other mental health providers with the school knew they needed to do more. Not only to help the students but the teachers also during this tragedy.
A program that was already being implemented at other Boulder Valley School District schools was brought in for Fireside.
Resilience in Schools & Educators, or RISE, is a program developed at the University of Colorado Boulder. The idea trains teachers and gives them resources to not only help themselves but also their students.
"It educates staff around what trauma looks like and how do we respond to this," Kobus said. "One of the most important things we can do is just connect with kids. They don't have that connection they're not going to access the curriculum. They're not going to feel safe."
"RISE is really there to provide a space to not only build skills in being able to interact with students in really healthy ways, but also to regulate ourselves and feel a sense of connection and belonging to this place we work in," said MaryErin Mueller, a Mental Health Advocate at BVSD.
"We have to actually bring out own experiences into the workplace, but we can learn to regulate them and work with them. And that serves as a model for our students as well. That life is hard sometimes and we have to keep showing up. and we can manage what's happening inside ourselves in really healthy ways," she said.
The impact at Fireside has almost been immediate since the fire.
"We've heard things from teachers like I wouldn't have been able to get through this year without RISE. It allowed me to focus on myself. It allowed me to connect with others. It gave me a space to be okay, not being OK," Mueller said.
