Death and Grief in the Classroom: Dangerous Discussions

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Death and Grief in the Classroom Dangerous
Discussions

• Kay Fowler
• Feb. 28, 2007

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Frail bit of good luck

• "We fail to value life as a frail bit of good
  luck in a world based on chance."
• (Arthur Frank, At the Will of the Body 128)

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Bereavement

• The state of being bereaved or deprived of
  something the objective situation of
  individuals who have experienced a loss of some
  person or thing that they valued. (Corless
  2001 qtd. Corr 209).

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Grief

• The reaction to loss.
• Can be experienced in numerous ways

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Mourning

• The processes of coping with loss and grief,
  and thus the attempt to manage those experiences
  or learn to live with them by incorporating them
  into ongoing living. (Siggins)

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Grief Manifestations

• Physical sensations
• Feelings (a wide range from sadness to anger to
  yearning to numbness, etc.) Thoughts or
  Cognitions (e.g. disbelief, preoccupation)
• Behaviors (again a wide range)
• Social Difficulties
• Spiritual searching.

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In the classroom

• Grief/trauma makes students/teacher feel out of
  control out of the norm
• Class can be a relatively safe space to try to
  find some sense of renewed control or normalcy
• Teacher not an expert here -- but a participant
  in the grief -- but is still an experienced
  facilitator

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How to Start

• Students want opportunity to process but also
  dont want to be overwhelmed -- want some return
  to familiar
• Start with statement of openness to discuss
  situation
• Set a time limit for the discussion - 30 min. or
  45 min.

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Be concrete and complete

• Give as clear, full, and concrete a description
  of the information as you know
• Make clear what you dont know or what isnt
  known at this time
• Describe what you can about efforts underway to
  get more information
• Indicate that one discussion is not going to be a
  quick fix grief/trauma does not have a timeline
  or a solution one learns to live around -- not
  get over it.

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Ground rules

• Be open and respectful
• Share your own reactions to the degree that you
  feel comfortable
• Let students know its okay to pass
• Listen carefully and reflect back what has been
  said

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Facilitating

• Validate feelings -- ask how feelings can be
  channeled positively
• Resist using cliches, quick reassurances, or
  religious or patriotic wisdom (whatever your own
  beliefs)
• When students offer these affirm their
  perspective but gently reflect that others will
  perceive things differently or hold different
  beliefs and values

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Start with writing

• Have students write for 5 minutes or so about
  their reactions/questions
• Start class discussion with question -- how did
  you learn about ?
• Invite students to share their reactions/questions
  

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Observe carefully

• Watch class for exhaustion with topic or for
  heightened anxiety
• Watch individuals for acute grief or risk signals
  of suicidal or violent responses
• Draw these students aside at break or end of class

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Hate language

• If hate langauge or revenge talk emerges toward a
  particular group help students to take apart
  where the anger is coming from, where it
  belongs and where it is being inappropriately
  generalized, and how to use anger positively
  rather than destructively

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Closing Discussion

• When time is up or when subject seems to be
  becoming overwhelming bring discussion to closure
  by
• Offering resources for help where you know them,
  Counseling Center, agencies, websites, etc.
• Suggest research, readings, and/or action steps
  to be taken. Draw suggestions from students.

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Closing discussion

• Suggest ways to tie subject into class subject
  where possible
• Promise (if appropriate) further discussion in a
  later class -- not necessarily the next class and
  tied to steps to learn more/research more before
  that discussion
• Ask students to write thoughts again for five
  minutes

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Break

• If long class take a short break before turning
  to the class work for the day
• If short class try to do some of the class work
  for the day even if only 5 or 10 minutes before
  class ends to restore sense that life and
  learning are continuing and are valuable

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Self-care

• If possible talk with someone you trust about the
  class in advance
• Definitely talk with someone you trust after the
  class -- debrief, get a hug, cry your own tears
• Write your own reaction/thoughts on the event --
  and on the class discussion
• Do something healing -- take a walk, paint a
  picture, work in your garden, etc.

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Grieving Hurts
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6 Rs of Grieving

• Recognize the loss (acknowledge and understand
  the death)
• React to the separation (e. g. feel the pain,
  express, identify and mourn secondary losses)
• Recollect and re-experience the deceased and the
  relationship (review and remember realistically,
  revive and re-experience feelings) (Rando)

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6 Rs continued

• 4. Relinquish the old attachments to the
  deceased and the old assumptive world
• Readjust to move adaptively into the new world
  without forgetting the old (develop a new
  relationship with the deceased, adopt new ways of
  being in the world)
• Reinvest.
• (Rando)

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Factors affecting grief

• A. Psychological Factors
• 1. characteristics and meaning of the lost
  relationship (e.g. lost roles and functions,
  unfinished business, etc.)
• 2. your personal characteristics (e.g. coping
  behaviors, accumulation of or simultaneous other
  stresses, etc.)
• 3. specific circumstances of the death (location,
  type, timeliness, sense of preventability
  etc.)
• 4. Corr adds developmental situation of the
  bereaved person (child, adolescent, adult or
  elderly person)
• (Rando Corr)

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Social Factors

• B. Social Factors
• 1. Social support system
• 2. sociocultural, ethnic, religious/philosophical
  backgrounds/values
• 3. educational, economic, and occupational status
• 4. funerary rituals
• 5. social recognition of the loss, the
  relationship, the grief
• (Rando 1988)

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Physical Factors

• C. Physical Factors
• 1. Drugs and sedatives
• 2. Nutrition
• 3. Rest and sleep
• 4. Physical health
• 5. Exercise
• (Rando)

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Complicated Grief

• There is a pain -- so utter --

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Bone by Bone

• There is a pain -- so utter --
• It swallows substances up--
• Then covers the Abyss with trance
• So Memory can step
• Around--across-upon it--
• As one within a swoon
• Goes safely--where an open eye--
• Would drop him -- Bone by Bone
• Emily Dickinson

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Complicated Grief Reactions

• Chronic prolonged no real sense of progress
  toward readjusting to life without the lost
• Delayed Grief is inhibited, suppressed, or
  postponed -- can surface later in an excessive
  reaction

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Or

• Exaggerated Excessive and disabling. May lead
  to phobia, physical or psychiatric symptons or
  aberrant or maladaptive behavior
• Masked Individuals experience symptoms or
  behaviors (including complete absence of grief)
  that cause them difficulty but that they do not
  recognize as related to the loss.

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Disenfranchised Grief

• Grief is exacerbated when it is
  disenfranchised.
• Ken Doka notes 3 primary ways grief can be
  disenfranchised either the relationship or the
  loss or the griever is not recognized. (Doka
  1989b)

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Complicating factors

• Relationship not recognized
• Invisibility
• Hypervisibility
• Exacerbated trauma
• Rejection/Denial

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Community Bereavement

• Both a positive (as losses are shared and mourned
  together) and an extra dimension to personal loss
  -- as the community itself is diminished by
  multiple losses and strained under chronic
  grief

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Chronic Mourning Multiple, ongoing losses
and traumas experienced by an individual or a
community with the expectation of more to come
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Such as

• hate crimes against a particular group, war
  zones, environmentally damaged areas, public
  health disasters, familial health patterns,
  locales where violent crime is frequent

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Need for Social Support
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Complicating Grief

• The very nature of disenfranchised grief creates
  additional problems for grief, while removing or
  minimizing sources of support (Doka)

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Exacerbated Grief

• Studies document that a deficit in social
  support has been associated with poor outcomes in
  bereavement as measured by the persons health in
  the first year after the loss of a loved one, and
  that an absence of social support is directly
  related to continued high distress two years
  after the death of a significant other.
  (Shernoff)

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Resilience

• continued social, political, and cultural
  activity appears to foster resilience and help
  the community fend off feelings of despair and
  helplessness. (Dworkin Kaufer)

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What Can We Do?

• Learn Listen Aggressively
• Validate, Accept, Honor
• Hug
• Participate in the rituals and in the political
  activism