<div>SCOTT SIMON, HOST:Many schools in western North Carolina have yet to resume normal operations because of extensive damage that Hurricane Helene caused three weeks ago. Some places, though, educators and volunteers have been working with youngsters to try to return a sense of normalcy. Amy Diaz with member station WFDD has more.CLAIRE JENSEN: All right, friends. Let me see.AMY DIAZ, BYLINE: Inside a classroom at Hardin Park Elementary School in Boone, school counselor Claire Jensen is teaching a small group of kids how to make paper journals.JENSEN: So when you untie your journal, you're going to turn to your first page, and you're going to set it down, and then you're going to draw your pictures in there of how you're feeling or what you're thinking.DIAZ: She wants the kids to use them at home to express themselves and process their emotions. This school is operating as a much-needed child care center while regular classes are canceled. But the teachers and staff here are doing more than just giving parents a break. Jensen says they're helping these kids process the trauma of Helene.JENSEN: We are trying to give them some strategies to help them with their big emotions and feelings. One of the first days, we did, like, an activity where they drew a picture and what they were doing during the hurricane and how it impacted them.DIAZ: Some drew their houses full of water, others trees down in their neighborhoods. The class also made fidget beads, which are like lanyards with beads you can slide up and down while taking deep breaths or repeating positive affirmations. Six-year-old Keeley Neely says she's been using it at home. She says the last couple of weeks have been horrible.KEELEY NEELY: My fidget, it will help me calming down. And I play with it a lot. I practiced it yesterday, and it got even better and better.DIAZ: Many of her classmates, like Arley Reppard, say they're feeling the same way.ARLEY REPPARD: A little bad 'cause my Aunt Janelle and Uncle Brian's house live next to me, and I got scared because trees snapped, and one got in the garage, and Uncle Brian almost got hit by it.DIAZ: These kids have seen and heard some scary things. Their usual routines have been totally disrupted, whether they're not going to school or they've been displaced from their homes. Tripp Ake is a psychologist with Duke University who specializes in child trauma. He says disasters like Helene fall under the category of acute trauma, which refers to a single incident that can have a big and lasting impact.TRIPP AKE: Any life-threatening event, for most of us - our brains are built for survival. And so you hear things like people have responses like flight, fight, freeze.DIAZ: So it's normal for these kids to feel stressed, anxious and scared for a while because they're still facing some real problems.AKE: For right now, I think it's a matter of helping to teach calming, helping to teach coping skills.DIAZ: The National Child Traumatic Stress Network released a whole host of resources after Helene hit. The tips include creating predictable schedules and having conversations to answer questions and discuss feelings.AKE: That will be a recipe for healing if we can make that happen.DIAZ: It sounds a lot like what's happening at Hardin Park. In the field outside of the school, older kids are running around, playing kickball and volleyball. There's music, Italian ice cream and bounce houses. The event was organized by school staff who knew their students needed to see some familiar faces and have some time to just play. Trevor Owens, the assistant after-school director, says there's no sugarcoating what happened.TREVOR OWENS: There's real families that really lost their homes, and there's families that have lost a lot of possessions. So that's been hard, but at least between 9 and 4 o'clock, we can provide them a safe, normal space where they can be kids and have fun.DIAZ: It could be weeks before students here go back to school, and when they do, there will be some who can't return to their old buildings due to flood damage. They might be missing some teachers and classmates who have moved. Even on the bus ride, they'll see reminders of the damage and how their community has changed. But they might remember, too, the way their community came together.For NPR News, I'm Amy Diaz in Boone, North Carolina.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.</div>

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School counselors are using creative ways to help kids cope with the trauma of floods

Many schools in western North Carolina have yet to resume normal operations because of extensive damage that Hurricane Helene caused three weeks ago. Some places, though, educators and volunteers have been working with youngsters to try to return a sense of normalcy. Amy Diaz with member station WFDD has more.