The first time I ever saw lice hopping from curl to curl on a small child's head was over 15 years ago. The critters were so small and quick (the lice that is) that I had to blink twice before I could process what I was seeing. And when the realization finally struck me, I felt compelled to shift my weight, to scratch my scalp . . . and quite honestly to exit quickly.

To make matters worse, one of the other teachers who had also never seen lice but who believed that "such things only inflicted impoverished people" had systematically checked the heads of 22 children with the same comb. By the end of the week, the school was involved in a lice crisis of major proportions. Teachers, staff, children, and families had been afflicted and the local pharmacist had become wealthy.

I am pleased to report that the out-break claimed no long term casualties; everyone did survive. In sub-sequent times and other places amidst a lice event, I have been more able to act effectively. I now am actually beginning to control my head scratching. You might say that I am learning from lice, or at least from their presence in early childhood programs.

With this in mind, how can administrators learn to manage this and other crises constructively and to use these as opportunities for learning?

Best Kept Crisis Secrets

• Crises happen.

Crises are a predictable part of life, and therefore a predictable part of child care programming. Quality programming is not necessarily characterized by absence of crisis, instead it is identified by presence of effective crisis management. Accepting that crises will and do occur is the first step in dealing with them well.

Another important part of crisis management is understanding how crisis happens - this can be accomplished by actually charting crisis events. In doing this, a director can develop a crisis pattern or profile for a program. Such a profile typically consists of five W's: what, when, where, who, and why.

What. Understanding the what of a crisis can be deceptively simple. This is particularly true when crisis is interpersonal rather than programmatic in nature. A cook who walks off the job 30 minutes before lunch or a child with a broken finger is a clearly recognizable crisis. But a group of parents who collectively decide not to support a teacher or a staff person who burns out is less specifically pinpointed.

Really understanding what happens in a crisis entails separating facts from interpretation. For example, "The cook left the building at 11:30 am today and said she was never coming back" is a fact. "The cook stomped out of the kitchen and quit because she was angry at everyone" is an interpretation. Both bits of information are useful, but in different ways. Collecting facts over time about programmatic crises enables a director to chart events and sometimes to predict and head off disaster before it strikes.

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