Two days after the attack, the Raul Brasil state school, in Suzano, opened its doors to receive a task force. Education and medical professionals from public universities in São Paulo, including Unicamp, joined the teams coordinated by the State Department of Education for an emergency meeting. The idea was to plan day by day how staff and students who lived through that day of horror would be welcomed. Professor Telma Vinha, from the Faculty of Education (FE) and psychiatrist Karina Diniz Oliveira, professor at the Faculty of Medical Sciences (FCM) set foot at the school for the first time. They are among the Unicamp professionals invited to work with the school community and families.
“The biggest discussion was deciding whether the school should be reopened or not. There were some employees there and also a student. They are still in a state of shock and ask us what we can do for them”, says Karina. After the meeting, a WhatsApp group called “Atendimento Suzano” was created with a series of contacts from a work and solidarity network that is consolidating after the tragedy. Unicamp is contributing to the work of researchers and postgraduate students who have returned to school whenever necessary. Sappe, specialized in psychological and psychiatric assistance for Unicamp students, is also expected to participate.
If the violence was established in the blink of an eye, the reaction of the professionals involved in returning a bit of normality to that school and also the others in the São Paulo network was also very quick. Gepem Unicamp “Group of Studies and Research in Moral Education”, which has Telma as one of the coordinators, published the following post on its Facebook the following day: “Today and in the coming days, teachers from all over Brazil will receive in their classrooms class impressed and anxious students, affected by this violent event. To help them elaborate on what happened, it is very important to provide listening and welcoming spaces at school so that they can speak, express their points of view and express their feelings.”
The page of gepem shared the “Intervention Protocol after cases of harsh violence in schools”, (see here) prepared by members of the group who are dedicated to investigating bullying and other forms of violence, developing intervention proposals to improve the quality of coexistence. Created at the end of last year due to the episode that occurred in Jardim Regina in Campinas, close to Escola Municipal Doutor João Alves dos Santos, when a teenager shot a colleague, the protocol was quickly adapted to the case of extreme, or “hard” violence. .
The seven steps of the protocol propose activities that encourage the expression of feelings, empathetic listening and reflection on actions that could prevent action. Gepem researchers are categorical in stating that as important as teaching mathematics or Portuguese is for the school to develop work that values the quality of coexistence.
“We want to contribute to making the school increasingly humanizing. There are concrete actions that are conflict mediation, methods to interfere in bullying situations, collective dialogue procedures between students, creation of help teams that support colleagues, it is only necessary to offer this type of training to teachers”, says Telma. Changing the culture of a school that is increasingly concerned with content and less with issues of coexistence is essential.
“We have projects in which we work over two years in teacher training and a series of procedures that make the quality of coexistence better. This interferes with learning, with the perception of how I feel at school”, highlights Telma. The teacher remembers that it was to school that Suzano's attackers returned and not to any other place. “School for them had a bad meaning and this is something that can be changed in students so that they feel more belonging and supported, so that they live in an environment that they like to be in”.
Telma refutes the argument of those who claim that academia only knows things in theory. “We are in the academy, but our interventions are in public schools. We have procedures that have been implemented and are ongoing.” One example was the agreement with Campinas City Hall that ended last year. “We introduced a subject that in some schools is called 'ethical experience' and which consists of 100 minutes a week in elementary schools for students to build anti-bullying projects, expression of feelings or assertive language.” There are fortnightly assemblies in which students discuss their problems.
Open school
Prevention activities are not a guarantee that new cases of extreme violence will not occur. However, the feeling of discomfort felt by some students can be minimized and taken care of. “Open schools are a characteristic of democratic society. Creating fortresses or spreading the idea of weapons, as the United States does, will not work. See that it is the country that has the highest number of attacks. The lethality of the weapon is what makes the situation worse.”
The idea of implementing a military school model in the country scares the researcher. “We need to work on developing skills for a democratic society, the plan for militarized schools with more repression and control is the opposite of what we are proposing.”
The teacher adds that the work currently carried out in schools is often not effective. Lectures on bullying, for example, may not have an effect on the well-being and ethical training of students. “Schools need to study other strategies to deal more efficiently with the problem of violence and not just act as firefighters.”
The Suzano school does not differ in any way from other schools in the State, Telma emphasizes. It is even well placed in the Basic Education Development Index (Ideb). The attack drew attention to the need to adopt policies that favor good coexistence on a large scale, reaching all schools. This is also Gepem's purpose in seeking partnerships to make the actions viable.
Long term
“The students who experienced the attack were chased by predators. We are not prey and when this happens there is a break in the existence of the individual who will need to rebuild their existence with the new world they have known”, explains psychiatrist Karina Diniz, from FCM.
She highlights that some reactions to the attack will emerge up to six or eight months later. Therefore, the idea of Unicamp professionals is to accompany the school community for around two years. “There may be cases of people who are now well, calm, but over time, they may develop anxiety attacks, have nightmares, may not be able to do things as they used to do, a panic attack and a feeling of helplessness may arise” .
Karina is linked to the Department of Medical Psychology and Psychiatry at FCM Unicamp. The head of the department, Renata Azevedo, highlights that psychiatrists are in Suzano working in the care of post-traumatic stress. “But we don’t know who will evolve into this, whether our action at school will be to care for a healthier environment or for people in particular.”
Professionals are committed to observing groups of adolescents, adults and also the families of the aggressors. “There is a possibility of discussing with all of them something that will be very important for the mental health of students, which is knowing that some people have certain weaknesses, that each one’s suffering needs to be taken into account.”
The production of empathy is also highlighted by psychiatrists as a solution to the problem of violence in schools. And it starts with the professionals involved in the support network. “We are not going as experts because we don't have that experience, but it is an opportunity to learn and teach things”, says Karina.
