Speakout Columns
Grieving in the classroom
Oct 5, 2006 5:37 PM
My mother died of breast cancer in November 2004. I returned to my middle school classroom a week later knowing that grieving in front of adolescents, who look to teachers not only for content knowledge but also for ideas about how to be an adult, would make my grief uniquely public.
I knew this was a “teachable moment”: a chance to model healthy coping for my students and a reference point to build relationships. But I didn’t want to share too much of my experience. I wanted to maintain professional boundaries and worried about burdening my students, many of whom have experienced trauma and loss in their personal histories, with my grief. I was acutely aware that my students would watch me grieve and learn lessons about death, family, grieving and coping. What I didn’t know was how much my students would teach me and help me through the process.
My students welcomed me back to school literally with open arms. They had cleaned my room and made me “welcome back” cards. One gave particular insight into a student’s familiarity with losing adults in her life. Her card said, “I worried you’d be so sad you wouldn’t come back.” I dove back into the routine of teaching and trying to catch my students up for the time they’d lost while I was away. I was constantly tired, but otherwise my grief didn’t enter my classroom.
By May, however, my all-girls advisory period was falling apart. The girls were reluctant to do any of the activities I planned and discussions seemed shallow. One girl in particular made her annoyance quite clear. “This advisory sucks,” she announced one day, and started talking with her friends instead of trying the activity I’d planned. I tried to ignore her, but the students didn’t. They balked at the activity, too. Defeated, I shared my frustration with my principal and she agreed to speak to my vocal student.
The student had lots of ideas, but one stood out: She said that advisory hadn’t been as fun since my mom died. Amazingly, until then, I hadn’t thought about my grief affecting my practice. I was confident that my demeanor hadn’t changed much, and certainly not as drastically as this student claimed. Sure I was more tired, and perhaps a little less bubbly, but I still loved my job and my students and I worked hard to develop relevant, varied activities for the group. But the message was clear: My students were viewing me as someone who’d lost her mom, even if I didn’t see myself that way. They were using their own grief-filled world views to try to understand a part of my life because I wasn’t giving them other information to work with.
It was time to bring my grief into advisory. I understood the process of grieving: denial, bargaining, anger, sadness, acceptance. As I was grieving I could identify these steps and felt a little less crazy knowing that what I was feeling was normal. I wanted my students to have that same knowledge for when they face a similar situation, so I planned a session on the stages of grief.
The attention of my advisees was rapt as I described my own experiences, then gave them a chance to share their own stories. They knew I was being honest with them, and they responded with great respect to me being real. I think that was the main issue for the advisory: Adolescents hate fakers and they knew I wasn’t being straight with them. They also don’t like feeling left out of anything, and so they wanted to be included in how I was feeling. When I let them in, they could start trusting me again. I also think some of my advisees were begging for a role model to help them know how to grieve. My advisory made it very clear that they needed this teachable moment, so they didn’t let me skip over it.
With this positive experience behind me, I felt ready for a broader teachable moment. I asked the social worker to co-host a lunch before Mother’s Day for students for whom Mother’s Day might be difficult. I thought they might be more willing to open up about their feelings, and feel more supported, if I could model talking about my feelings.
Even as I invited students and planned activities, I worried. What would I say? And the question I’d been avoiding: What if I were to cry in front of the students? I wanted to be honest and model dealing with emotions, yet I didn’t want to be vulnerable.
When I did cry at the lunch, several of the dozen or so students (and the social worker) teared up, too. Then a special education student, who’d shared about her mom getting locked up on an earlier Mother’s Day, called out, “Get the woman a tissue!” I could only laugh at her response — and so did everyone else. Then the conversation moved on. I realized my students’ capacity for compassion and their appreciation for the opportunity to demonstrate it.
By crying, I sent them a message of “It’s OK to have emotions.” I also sent them a message about compartmentalizing to be successful. Both my experiences with my advisory and the Mother’s Day lunch helped me realize my students were craving a chance to have an honest conversation about their feelings with a caring adult. I’m grateful I was able to be that adult, both for the compassion I was able to witness, and for the self-reflection it forced me to do.
Morgan Hall, who started as a Teaching Fellow, is in her fifth year of teaching. She now teaches global studies at the Henry Street School for International Studies and is a Metlife Fellow, part of the Teachers Network Leadership Institute.
