Violent deaths stand out in stark relief against the contemporary social climate of controlled private death and grieving. Both uncontrolled and public violent deaths call into question some of our most fundamental cultural values and prompt spontaneous rituals to publicly express individual and collective grief. We refer to these new rituals as spontaneous memorialization and to the impromptu shrines that result from this memorialization as spontaneous memorials. In this article, we introduce both concepts, delineate the characteristics of this emerging American mourning ritual and use it to illustrate our contention that death ritual is important in the contemporary United States but that it is changing form in response to the needs of a changing society.

Data from the National Institute of Education's Safe School Study Report suggested that teachers in American urban public schools are emotionally and physically victimized and that the result is heightened level of stress associated with teaching. This study, which is part of larger, longitudinal project, explores the linkages between reported experiences of victimization by 291 urban public school teachers and task‐specific stressors in the performance of the teaching role. The level of reported stress and nature and degree of victimization differ by the grade level taught and the race of the teacher. Generally, minority teachers (black and brown) are less likely to report being stressed or victimized than are white teachers, while elementary school teachers report their work to be most stressful. There is no evidence of a specific causal ordering between fear of victimization and teacher stress. Rather, each may feed upon and facilitate the other.

Using a sample of 291 respondents from a teachers' union in a large urban district, this study tested a series of hypotheses concerning the relationships among job stress associated with teaching, stress-induced illness behavior, and social support by principals and co-workers. Illness increases as job stress increases, except that teachers assigned to schools where the principal is seen as supportive are significantly less likely to report stress-induced illness behavior than teachers in schools where the principal is seen as unsupportive. Supportive co-workers have no effect upon stress-induced illness behavior, nor is there a statistical interaction effect between principals and co-workers. Policy implications for reducing illness and absenteeism are noted.

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