Session Information
Paper Session
Contribution
My aim in this paper is to discuss the impact of youth work in the aftercare of school schootings in Jokela and analyse the reasons why the local youth house proved out to be an important site for mourning and recovering from the crisis for the young people. In order to do this one has to analyse the inter-generational relationships in different life worlds which are meaningful for young people. My paper touches the issue of school violence but the main focus is on analyzing what were the main reasons why the local youth house was able to work as an official crisis centre.
Jokela school shooting took place on 7th of November in 2007 in the town of Tuusula, in Southern Finland. It was the second school shooting in Finland (first being the Raumanmeri school shooting in 1989). Shooter killed eight members of the school community and committed suicide afterwards. This was a tremendous shock for the whole Jokela which is a relatively tight community that has roughly 6100 inhabitants. It affected the lives of young people in particular.
Firstly, young people spend six years of their formative years in the same school building. Violence in general, and school shootings in particular, reforms public spaces. For the young people, the meaning of school building changed dramatically. Secondly, shooter was ‘one of us’, a person who was known to almost everybody. School shootings also affected their sense of community. They had to cope with the fact that the imagined community of Jokela was not what they had thought. Thirdly, after the crisis Jokela was full of adults wich were not part of the community. Police, crisis workers, media and many others occupied the space. Fourthly, wide news covering created an image of Jokela which still affects the lives of young people. After their sense of community and space was shaken the media spectacle created an image which differed from their perspective. They had to deal with that fact and negotiate their relationship to the changed situation.
After the shooting incident there was a great need to provide help for shocked students and all the adult members in the whole community of Jokela. Crisis plans did not provide help on how to organize help in the case of school rampages. What resulted was more or less impromptu acts on providing help for people. As a consequence of this, two crisis centres were put to use. One was a main centre in the church of Jokela, another one was in ‘Monari’ (local youth club near the high school where the shooting occurred). Monari provided shelter for young people. However, since the youth club was intended for the young, the young and their parents their separated. Peer groups proved to be important way of dealing with sorrow and trying to realize the extent and impact of school violence in their community. Leisure time activies such as youth club provided an important source for crisis help which was not part of official crisis management.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
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