GUILDERLAND — The past week has been a difficult one for Guilderland Elementary School. Students and staff have had to deal with the murder of two students — brothers in the second and fifth grades — yet they have found solace in helping one another.

Principal Allan Lockwood has described the brothers — 7-year-old Eddy Chen and 10-year-old Anthony Chen — as kind, gentle, and joyful boys, quiet by nature, who clearly loved each other. Eddy liked to write stories about doing things with his family like bowling. Anthony liked to draw and took good care of the school’s therapy dog. Both boys enjoyed being part of the school’s Garden Club.

News of the murder of the boys and their parents — their mother, Hai Yan Li, 38, and their father, Jin Feng Chen, 39 — at their home at 1846 Western Avenue is emerging slowly as investigators from multiple police agencies piece together motives and seek a suspect. (See related story on past Guilderland murders.)

In the meantime, media accounts have alleged everything from connections with human trafficking to a Chinese mafia, and various means of murder — though not substantiated by police.

“We’ve introduced the word ‘rumor,’” said Heidi Cutler, a social worker at Guilderland Elementary School. Staff members are getting students to “focus on the facts...sticking to what we do know,” she said.

This is because students’ fear for their own safety is one of the biggest problems in the aftermath of learning about the murders.

Kirsten Eidle-Barkman, the school psychologist, agreed. “We’ve had conversations on watching the news,” she said, and urged that children stay away from that. “We’ve let them know some of the safety plans we have in place,” she said.

Lockwood said he “very much” believes students have to be protected from the effects of rumors and media speculation.

“We’re confronting rumors with truth,” he said. “If they want to talk about their friends, that’s natural,” he said. “We ask them to talk to an adult.”

He also said, “We always encourage parents to keep a close eye on their children’s use of technology. Social media can be problematic in spreading rumors or untruths.”

Some students are being counseled individually, Lockwood said, and, if there are clustered concerns, class meetings are held.

“We’re trying to validate their feelings,” said Lockwood. “We want to be honest but not too open with details.”

He concluded, “It’s been a terribly difficult week. We have an amazing group of staff members and student body.” If it can’t be understood, he said of the deaths, the goal is “at least to accept this tragedy.”

The week unfolds

On Wednesday, Oct. 8, police received a call about dead people in the home at 1846 Western Avenue, which is less than a mile from the elementary school on Guilderland’s busiest thoroughfare. That afternoon, Guilderland Police said there had been a “quadruple homicide” but gave no further details.

“On Wednesday night, we had a pretty good indication something bad happened at the home of one of our families,” Lockwood told The Enterprise as he reviewed the events of the week. The school’s crisis team as well as the district office team was called Wednesday night and a “crisis management” meeting was held at 6:30 a.m. Thursday morning.

All of the school’s staff was called in for a 7 a.m. meeting Thursday morning; staff usually arrive at 7:40.

It was the first time such meetings had been called at the school. “We knew very little except the news of a quadruple homicide at the address of one of our families,” said Lockwood. “We were bracing for the worst…We had no idea what to expect for our students…We planned to have enough people.”

Social workers and psychologists were called on from across the district.

“We talked about what they could say as students came in if they had concerns,” he said.

What were students told?

“That we know something bad happened. We have questions as well. You are safe here. The police have told us Guilderland is safe.”

At 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Captain Curtis Cox of the Guilderland Police told press that had assembled near the scene, “We don’t have any reason to believe anybody would be in danger.” He also said there was “a language barrier.”

“A lot of the unknown nature made students upset and scared, very anxious,” Lockwood said this week. “We maintained our business as usual.”

On Thursday morning, a press conference was held at Guilderland Town Hall where the genders and ages of the four victims were released but not their names. Albany County District Attorney David Soares would not comment on motive, a murder weapon, or how long the victims had been deceased at the time police arrived on Wednesday afternoon.

He also said police thought at first that relatives of the victims were speaking Cantonese, and then the language was identified as Mandarin but later interpreters indicated it might be an entirely separate dialect, with components of Cantonese.

Further, Soares said, “Preliminary findings indicate that this is not an incidence where neighbors should live in fear...You have the collective wisdom and knowledge of 50 or so law enforcement officers telling you not to worry.”

Soares concluded, “Regardless of culture, we want justice.”

Names of the adult victims were released by police on Friday afternoon with no further details.

School leaders and staff members were concerned about the spread of rumors and, with them, fear.

There is always a concern about what could be said on school buses, Lockwood noted, where there is less adult supervision than in a classroom. A teacher suggested that staff members ride the school buses with the students, and teachers and teaching assistants and other staffers “universally volunteered,” said Lockwood.

“Everyone wanted to do what they could to help,” he said.

Teachers started riding buses on the Thursday afternoon runs home and continued each morning and afternoon through this Tuesday morning.

When more information was released by police about who had been killed, “It helped a lot,” said Lockwood. “Students could start to process this tragedy, being able to talk about the students and confirm it” although he conceded, “It was painful and difficult.”

Another staff meeting was held on Thursday afternoon where class meetings were planned for Friday. Children in the primary classes — kindergarten and first grade — “thank goodness had no awareness,” said Lockwood.

In second through fifth grades, class meetings were held where the classroom teachers alongside a social worker or psychologist guided the discussion.

“We’ve had an amazing response from the whole district,” said Lockwood, commending the custodial staff that readied meeting space, the bus staff that calmed students, the support staff and the teachers that thoughtfully answered questions and concerns.

Lockwood said that parents, too, have been helpful, offering support “in a respectful way.”

“I was bracing myself for a lot of traffic on Thursday,” he said. Instead, he went on, “People gave us space and time.”

Help offered

Many of the Chens’ classmates are dealing with the death of a friend for the first time.

Cutler advises parents to ask their children what they have heard and then “to be very factual and developmentally appropriate.”

For younger children, this could just mean recognizing there was a loss. Older students, Cutler said, “are more informed and you can be more specific.”

In talking about how the children died, she said, a good answer might be, “It was related to a crime.”

She advised “telling the truth” and stressed, “We can’t speculate about all the things in the media — it may have been this; it may have been that.”

“Try to find a good book about what death means,” advised the school’s librarian and media specialist, Meg Seinberg-Hughes. “That will get the conversation started,” she said, and can lead to a discussion about “all the wonderful things we remember.”

Seinberg-Hughes has created a resource list over the years of books that may be helpful to children and their parents in a crisis; it is available online at http://goo.gl/gHcoQk.

Asked for two she’d most recommend for children dealing with the death of the Chen brothers, Seinberg-Hughes named The Invisible String by Patrice Karst and Lifetimes by Bryan Mellonie.

Karst’s book, with whimsical illustrations by Geoff Stevenson — including a cutout heart, dangling from a string — is “about how love keeps us connected,” said Seinberg-Hughes. The story tells of two twins who are concerned when their mother isn’t nearby; their mother tells them an invisible string connects people who love each other and they can always feel her love.

Lifetimes, with large naturalistic illustrations by Robert Ingpen, tells about beginnings and endings, and living in between. “It talks about the cycle of life in a beautiful way,” said Seinberg-Hughes.

Eidle-Barkman recommended that parents “maintain a level of routine for kids” with their regular daily activities. “Kids find comfort in routine,” she said.

Cutler noted that resources for parents are being posted on the district website: guilderlandschools.org.

Asked if there is a need for closure in order for students to move on and what might bring closure, Eidle-Barkman said, “That’s something we’re still in the process of helping students and staff work through.”

Dealing with a murdered family is new ground for everyone. The staff is mourning along with the students.  “I don’t think any of us have had to deal with a situation like this,” said Lockwood. “We have tremendous expertise in the district and a lot of people have reached out to us for guidance. We’re in the process of figuring out appropriate steps. We can’t wrap this up and have closure in the next week.”

Community support, said Cutler, has been “truly profound for us.” The support has come in the form of cards and emails, some from other schools. “These are genuine and helpful,” she said.

“It has been devastating for the entire community,” said Lockwood. “We are all talking together.”

Program has mushroomed for English-language learners

GUILDERLAND —Eddy and Anthony Chen were among a growing number of foreign students at Guilderland Elementary School. They were part of the English as a Second Language program.

When Allan Lockwood started as principal at Guilderland Elementary seven years ago, there was one ESL teacher; now there are three-and-a-half on the staff. The school currently has 82 ESL students, which is a little more than 14 percent of all the students enrolled, said Lockwood. Sixteen different countries are represented with China being the best represented.

In a report to the Guilderland School Board in 2013, Marcia Ranieri said that, a decade ago, about 30 students were learning English as they attended Guilderland schools; in 2013, there were 173. Ranieri is the instructional administrator for the ESL program and is also the supervisor for the district’s World Languages and Cultures. The languages spoken in the homes of Guilderland students include Chinese, Korean, many Indian dialects, French, Bengali, Vietnamese, and Hebrew.

The students come to Guilderland because of jobs in the region, Ranieri said. “Many families are also coming to the U.S. to be closer to their relatives and escape dangerous conditions within their home countries,” she wrote in a 31-page report, evaluating the program for the board.

Guilderland, she said, ranked third in the region, behind Albany and Schenectady, with the number of English-language learners.

“We think word is traveling, our students are meeting with success,” Ranieri said, stating that friends of families who have been in the ESL program are coming to Guilderland.

The largest concentration of English language learners is at Guilderland Elementary, which had 77 in 2013, followed by Westmere Elementary, which had 26, Ranieri reported; the high school had 22 and the middle school had 18.

Ranieri surveyed ESL students, their parents, and graduates, most all of whom had positive responses to the program.

“ESL made me feel comfortable living in America and going to an American school,” wrote one graduate. “The ESL teacher was also kind and generous so she made me happy to go to American school.”

A student who spent two years in the program wrote, “It was the most important and beautiful memory I had in my life in America.”

ESL at GES

Lockwood described how the ESL program works at Guilderland Elementary School. Any child who is not a native English speaker is assessed when he or she enters the school; the children are grouped as beginner, intermediate, or advanced in their English skills and services are provided accordingly.

All of the children are mainstreamed into regular classes and then pulled out of class for extra help.

The ESL teachers serve as ambassadors, not only instructing the children in English but also working with their families to help them understand American culture.

With children speaking over 30 different dialects, the ESL teachers must teach English without knowing the children’s native languages.

“It’s a challenge for some of the students and staff,” said Lockwood of having children in classrooms that don’t know English well. But, he went on, “It’s amazing the growth they make in just a few months.”

He also said of the diverse cultures represented at the school, “It’s a fabulous experience for all of our students. Our non-native English speakers quickly transition and learn the language and culture here. Our native speaking students learn about many countries. It is not at all unusual to sit next to someone from India on one side and someone from China on the other,” he said. “Our students are living in a wonderful environment of diversity.”