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Provides learning opportunities and support for educators along with advocacy for bereaved children and their families.
Consultation & Referral
The Grief in School Staff:
- Discuss with teachers and/or counseling staff appropriate classroom activities or interventions for bereaved children and peers.
- Problem-solve with educators about death/grief-related issues they are experiencing within the school.
- Provide information on community resources serving bereaved children and their families.
- Provide information on death/grief-related educational materials, current publications, and sources of materials for educators.
- Provide classroom presentations on teen grief, loss, suicide prevention, and health career choices.
Education
Staff are knowledgeable on how to respond to bereaved children and peers, and what activities may be beneficial to them. Currently we offer four programs:
Children’s Grief Responses
Establishing Grief Support Groups
Developing Classroom Activities
School/Community Crisis Response
Children’s Grief Responses
This two-hour workshop is offered in 3 formats, designed for teachers/guidance staff at the elementary, middle school or high school level:
- Impact of grief on learning and behavior
- Working with bereaved children within the classroom.
Establishing Grief Support Groups
This one-hour workshop provides tools for guidance staff to:
- Identify children appropriate for grief groups
- Develop group methodology
- Assess children’s coping skills.
Developing Classroom Activities
This one-hour workshop provides tools for teachers to:
- Source or develop death/grief-related classroom activities
- Implement death/grief-related reading, discussion, story-telling, music and expressive projects within the classroom.
School/Community Crisis Response
This one-hour workshop provides an overview for the development of a crisis response plan:
- Sharing the news and participation in funeral/memorial ritual
- Immediate intervention and long-term support.
All staff development programs include packets of support materials. For more information on the Good Mourning Grief in School Program contact:
Vicki Scalzitti, Good Mourning Coordinator
Rainbow Hospice
444 N. Northwest Highway
Park Ridge, IL 60068
(847) 685-9900 Ext. 3005
Fax (847) 685-6390
Purpose
The Grief in School Program provides a critically important resource for educators within the community who are dealing with children impacted by the loss, through death, of significant people in their lives - within families, their peer groups, the schools or the community at large.
When teachers stand with children facing grief, they stand at the brink of a profoundly teachable moment. We hope to empower educators to journey with children through these most difficult experiences, with greater confidence, competence and compassion.
The Grief in School Liaison is available to professionals within the school systems to provide education, consultation, resources and referrals.
Learning to grieve is a life skill.
Children experiencing loss at an early age establish patterns of grieving that they may repeat for the rest of their lives. Bereaved children need adults in very specific ways. They need us to model for them that death, although difficult, is a normal part of life. They need to know that their questions will always be taken seriously.
Children need us to demonstrate that talking about the person who died is appropriate and that memories are important. They need to know that talking about the tough feelings – anger, guilt, sadness - will be accepted and affirmed.
Finally, we recognize children as resilient beings who will grieve and play and move on. Often, just when it seems this experience is over for them, children return to their grief. They ask us to be present while they sort it out and feel it again, in a new way that reflects how they are growing and changing. Their agenda is growth, their horizon is hope.
This is the journey we can share.
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