Every year, educators in the public education system spend roughly 180 days and approximately around 1,000 hours with our children. For many children, the time spent with their classroom teacher accumulates to more time then the time they spend with their own parents. For many grieving children and teens in our communities today, their schools and their teachers remain the one constant in their lives.
Who are our grieving students in our schools today? They are our students impacted by experiences of not only death, but situations like divorce, parental deployment, parental incarceration and foster care placement. Many students impacted by grief and loss are not only unaware of their own grief, they find themselves struggling academically.
Grieving children have more academic barriers than their peers who are not experiencing grief.
Like the students themselves who may be unaware of their own grieving, many teachers are left in the dark about who their grieving students are. Many may not know grief and loss experiences can connect to other life experiences such as parental divorce, incarceration of a loved one, parental deployment and foster care placement. Unfortunately, due to shame and stigma that can surround the specific grief situation of a child or teen, they may not tell their teachers out of fear or embarrassment. Even when the teacher does know the situation, they might not quite know what to do to support their student.
In my research, I continue to find a scarcity of information on how to serve grieving youth impacted by grief and loss outside of death. In my opinion, death is only one aspect of a much larger issue. I realized this 13 years after my own graduation from high school when I found myself walking the halls of someone else’s high school thinking of that period of my own life that was so fraught with darkness. This time however my role was different. I was different.
As a mental health practitioner one of my roles was to prepare curriculum for an after school grief group within the high school mental health program where I worked. When one student was referred to the grief group because of her father’s military deployment, I remember initially not understanding what deployment had to do with grief and loss. That quickly changed as facilitating the after school grief group provided a whole new awareness of how different grief and loss can look for a teen.
After finishing up my role as co-facilitator of the high school grief group and as my years working in the mental health program began to accumulate, I began to realize many of the youth I was surrounded by daily were grieving. Not only were they grieving, they were hungry for acknowledgement of their loss. They wanted validation of their pain.
In my search for information, I came to the realization that all key players need to be on the same page when it comes to the many emotions youth experience in connection to grief and loss. Who are these pivotal players? Not only are they the parents and caretakers of the grieving children and teens, but also educators and other key adults in the lives of youth.
I’ve come across a series of videos on Military Kids Connect, a great resource geared toward military children, teens, parents, and educators. Although these videos are geared towards parents and caregivers of youth grieving the loss of a loved one, in my opinion, these videos also express very clearly the grief reactions of children and teens due to the effects of divorce, incarceration, and foster care placement.
In the videos Dr. Mogil, a licensed clinical psychologist and Director of Training and Intervention Development at The Nathanson Family Resilience Center, highlights grief reactions in both children and tween/teens. Also, the Dougy Center, another great resource nationally known for their work with children and grieving families offers coping strategies for children and teens.
What initially began as one grief group experience has now turned into a lifetime mission for me. My work is a result of my students, who allowed me into their space. It is through their gifts I’ve learned to be curious, to ask questions instead of pass judgments. It is through their actions and from their words I’ve learned to set the bar high, to never take “no” or “I don’t know” for an answer, and to never give up on them.
