Dealing with death
Amid the flurry of school activities and excitement over the next big, project, many times school dominates a student's days and nights. Unfortunately, there are some instances where sad, real-life events overcome school priorities such as when a child faces the loss of a loved one. While most adults have dealt with loss on more than one occasion, children rarely have established the coping skills necessary to help them resolve the feelings of abandonment and sadness that follow the loss of someone close to them.
While schools were not established to step in and resolve all of society's problems, they provide the most consistent and abundant respite for children during the school year. Many times children dealing with loss turn to teachers or counselors or even administrators to help them make sense of a complicated world, where death rarely calls its victims with any rhyme or reason. It is in their in loco parentis capacity that these educators, time and time again, rise to the occasion to comfort and console their students who may find solace in few other places.
Further the ramifications of loss to a student often have life-long consequences. Where loss for an adult may causes one to grieve for the absence of that individual and the life and interactions they shared, loss for a child is often exponentially more powerful. If the loss is of a parent or primary caregiver, the child may find himself with uncertainty regarding his home environment, his lifestyle, his support network, and all that he has considered safe and reliable in his past. This stress of the unknown, paired with the raw emotions of loss may cause a child to act out in his behavior, frustrated with the new conditions with which he is forced to manage without his formerly established network. Other children may become withdrawn from all relationships and seek to hide their emotions from others in an attempt prevent further situations where they could get hurt emotionally. Both of these types of responses are to be expected and must be understood in order to be managed with empathy and encouragement to both nurture the child's psyche as well as to support his continued, academic development.
According to a 2013 article from www. education.udel.edu entitled GRIEF: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR HELPING STUDENTS WHO HAVE EXPERIENCED A SIGNIFICANT LOSS, the following recommendations are useful for educators when working with grieving students.
* Be extra nurturing and attentive during this fearful time.
* Remember that these feelings do not have quick cures.
* Allow them to talk about their particular experience or trauma.
* See the child as an individual, realizing that each experience is unique.
* Be prepared to answer classmate's questions.
While students initially come to school expecting to learn about a variety of academic subjects, many times that institution evolves into a second home where they find solace and peace, support and understanding, provided by caring adults who recognize that in order to learn, one must feel safe, supported, and understood. It is these adults who, together, with families, must work to assure children that although frightening and unexpected things may happen, that there is reliability, consistency and support to be found in both their home and academic families. It is during such difficult times that one can truly recognize those who were called to teach and those who call themselves teachers. Perhaps Barbara Colorose put it best when she said, “If kids come to us from strong, healthy functioning families, it makes our job easier. If they do not come to us from strong, healthy, functioning families, it makes our job more important.”