School Crisis Recovery and Renewal

As of June 1, 2025, SCRR is no longer funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration or a National Child Traumatic Stress Network Category II site. Learn more

 5 Years Since COVID-19: Embracing Our Lives After Loss

5 Years Since COVID-19: Embracing Our Lives After Loss

A Practice of Shared Witnessing and Meaning Making for Educators, School Providers, and Leaders

February 27 and March 6, 2025

12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. PT/ 2:00 p.m.  – 4:00 p.m. CT/ 3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. ET

This event has passed.

What is this?

For some, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic seems like it was ages ago, and for others, it has felt like a slow-going nightmare that will never end (especially for you battling Long Haul COVID, you who are grieving, or you who have broken trust from harm during COVID response). Our experiences are varied and based on our proximity to loss and access to resources that have helped us navigate these conditions. 

On the 5th anniversary of this now endemic, we can agree, however, that experiencing loss was universal and is still very present. As we navigate the ongoing impact of grief and the societal challenges shaped by systemic inequities, this gathering offers a space for educators, school mental health providers and school crisis leaders to connect, share, and heal together.

How might this feel?

A brave and compassionate space in which, we will:

  • Acknowledge Our Losses: honor the profound grief many have felt and continue to face in our lives.
  • Find Comfort in Community: Share our stories and experiences, fostering a sense of connection that helps us feel less alone.
  • Explore Renewal: Engage in opportunities to uncover unexpected moments of renewal and joy that have emerged amidst our struggles through shared meaning making.
  • Support One Another: Offer and receive comfort, strength, and new perspectives as we navigate our healing journeys together.

Based on SCRR & The Dinner Party’s Life After Loss Tables: Educator’s Edition, this offering includes two virtual gatherings (“tables”) designed to explore the above.

Table 1 – 2/27/25 –  12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. PT/ 2:00 p.m.  – 4:00 p.m. CT/ 3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. ET

Bringing our Crisis Response Experience Closer – This two-hour session will support participants in exploring the multifaceted impact of the last 5 years and what our crisis response has been. We will uplift and name the intersectional experiences of our communities to identify the unexpected blooms and healing that we have not yet named since March 2020. 

Table 2 –  3/6/25 – 12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. PT/ 2:00 p.m.  – 4:00 p.m. CT/ 3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. ET

Our Evolving Relationships to Loss – We will explore the ways our relationship to ‘loss’ and our adaptations to loss have developed and morphed as we have navigated the many shared and individual losses that have come over the last 5 years. After group discussion, we will break out into role-alike affinity spaces to discuss ways loss moves us to adapt (willingly or unwillingly) and how our collective experience of loss impacts the contexts of our workspaces and informs the ways we support each other in our communities now.

Intended Audience 

Any educators (current or former), school mental health providers and school crisis leaders who would like to explore the losses experienced in the and want to be in community to make meaning of that experience and how it impacts long-term professional and personal identities.

Facilitators

Oriana Ides, MA, APCC, PPS (she/her)

SCRR Field Coach

Oriana Ides is the School Mental Health Training Specialist at CARS, who approaches healing the wounds of trauma and oppression as core elements of social justice.  She has worked with young people across life course from elementary school to college, and has served as teacher-leader, school counselor, classroom educator and program director.  She is committed to generating equity within school structures and policies by focusing on evidence-based mental health techniques and institutional design. Her work to forge a more just world is motivated by and dedicated to Amilca Ysabel Mouton Fuentes.

Mary Pauline Diaz-Frasene, MA (she/her)

Executive Director, The Dinner Party

Mary Pauline (or MP) grew up in a Pilipinx immigrant family with that “Did you eat yet?” kind of love, where hospitality is forefront and tangible, where the labor that nourishes us is never just for ourselves. She leads our Workplace Resilience offerings and supports other TDP Labs partnerships. Prior to TDP Labs, her work included developing and leading staff care resources for the largest social services non-profit in Washington state; supporting patients, their communities, and staff as a hospital chaplain during the first year of COVID-19; direct services roles with people experiencing homelessness; and local community organizing. She has a Master of Arts in Theology & Culture, where her culminating work explored grief as a practice in collective resistance to unjust and dehumanizing systems.

Team

Leora Wolf-Prusan Ed.D, (she/her)

SCRR Project Director

Leora Wolf-Prusan serves as the Project Director for the School Crisis Recovery & Renewal project and as the School Mental Health field director for the Pacific Southwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center (MHTTC), in addition to many other facilitation projects. Leora is dedicated to work focused on educator mental health, wellness, and trauma-informed approaches to education and operates through a framework in which public health, social work, and education intersect. Her research examined the impact of student death on teachers, what factors contribute to teachers building resiliency, and what supports teachers need from the school system in the event of a student homicide or other traumas. She received a BA in international relations and a BA in Spanish with a minor in Social & Ethnic Relations from the University of California, Davis; a teaching credential from Mills College; and an EdD in educational leadership from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Lennon Flowers, BA (she/her)

Co-Founder, The Dinner Party

Founder & Executive Director of Trust Labs

Lennon lost her mom during her senior year of college, following a four-year fight with lung cancer. Three years later, she hitched up her wagon and headed West. Three-thousand miles away from home, she found she no longer had anyone with whom she could talk about her mom, and explore the way in which her life, death, and absence continued to affect her. When Carla, a friend, colleague, and soon-to-be roommate, invited her over for dinner, it was a no-brainer. In January 2017, she, together with partners at Faith Matters Network and Hollaback!, launched The People’s Supper: a nationwide effort to create healing spaces that strengthen our individual and collective resilience and wellbeing, and to repair the breach in our interpersonal relationships across political, ideological, and identity differences. Lennon previously served as Community Director for Ashoka’s Start Empathy Initiative. She has written for CNN, Fast Company, YES!, Forbes, Open Democracy, and others. She is an Ashoka Fellow and an Aspen Ideas Scholar, and a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill. 

Niki Magtoto, MA (she/her)

SCRR Senior Project Manager

Niki Magtoto is the Senior Project Manager for the School Crisis Recovery & Renewal Project. She has a background in supporting public school districts through equity-centered and antiracist facilitation. She has worked in policy implementation as well as design and improvement projects focused on engaging all levels of stakeholders to transform systems. She is dedicated to building new realities for young people. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Vassar College and a Master of Arts in Education: Equity & Social Justice from San Francisco State University. 

Her work in school crisis recovery and renewal is motivated by and dedicated to Andréa, Matthew & Kendrick.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • What do you mean by “educator”? We define “educators” as anyone tending to the well-being of students in school-based settings, serving and supporting school-aged youth. You might be an afterschool service provider, a state, district, or county school administrator, a school-based clinician, a principal, a teacher, a bus driver, a coach, or a professor, or someone working in advocacy who used to teach K-12. Whatever your present-day role, you, too, are welcome here.
  • Is this a grief support group, or a form of therapy? No. These gatherings may be therapeutic, but they’re not therapy. We’re not interested in professionalizing anything, but in humanizing everything. If you yourself are a counselor or school-based social worker, remember that this is a chance to take off that hat for 90 minutes and to show up as peers, not professionals.
  • Is this program eligible for Continuing Education Hours (CEH)? No.
  • Will this offering be recorded? No. Resources shared during each session will be sent to participants only. 
  • Do I need to attend both sessions? No
  • Who can I contact if I have additional questions? Email us at scrr [at] cars-rp.org with “5 Years Since COVID-19-Life After Loss” in the subject line.

Resources for Extended Learning

SCRR Resources

Network and Field Resources