How teachers should handle the death of a student
Human feelings are complicated; sorrow or death is one of the most intense and mind bugging feelings. The act of processing grief, getting led off emotions and learning to move on after experiencing the loss of a loved one is a difficult task for almost everyone. The same applies to teachers and students after the death of a follow student. The recurring trend of death in schools has continued to raise concerns on how teachers should handle such situations in a manner that ensures a psychologically balance among grieving students.
How long it takes for students and a school in general to adjust to a students’ death varies. As such, appropriate mechanisms should be put in place with immediate and long term action plans.
Responding to the death of a student in a school setting:
Intervention of the school crisis team
When a death occurs, teachers should activate the school crisis team and plan to address the loss immediately. The crisis team needs to work swiftly by adhering to the following guidelines.
• Verify the information first
The crisis team needs to confirm the fact that a student is dead before making any announcement. This information can be obtained from members of the family or the local authority.
• Decide on which information to disclose
The crisis team, which generally comprises of a group of teachers, must reach out to the deceased family to get information already in public and be aware of details that are still private.
• Notify the whole school
After the death is confirmed, the information should be made available to all teaching and non-teaching staff and the entire student community. It's essential to note that notification must need to be based on facts, particularly from parents.
How to break the news to students that one of theirs has died.
A school is the best environment to provide support services to other students once a student dies. The reason for this is because the school offers a familiar environment for students. A larger group of students can be served at a go and close monitoring of psychologically affected students and those who need support is relatively easier. Teachers must be creative when notifying students of such incidents.
• Write down a statement for students
Grownups struggle to break the news concerning the death of a person. Breaking news to students should happen in small groups that occur naturally, preferably in a classroom. It’s essential to let the teacher who is too close to students, particularly the class teacher break the news. Large gatherings or assemblies must be avoided at all cost when breaking the news. The aim of having small groups is to ensure similar information is given to students across the whole school as verbal narration may distort the intended message.
How to handle grieving students
After students learn of the death of their fellow mate, chances of experiencing emotional distress are very high. Due to this, teachers need to formulate the best approach to deal with such crises.
• Support students to maintain class attendance and learning
Teachers need to address the incidence of grieving students directly and make them understand they have no control over nature. In spite of the efforts, students will still end up expressing different emotions and feelings; but the aim of a teacher should be to ensure such expressions do not affect their overall performance.
• Help students fight negative feelings
The death of fellow students would make other students regret, especially if they had wronged the deceased before. As a teacher, you should try to make them realize they did nothing wrong and that no one owes them blames.
Conclusion
Generally, when such news is made available to students, every student must be monitored. The staff counseling team must be very active to handle any emerging psychological case. It's vital to note that giving students a chance to mourn their colleague helps reduce the feeling or sorrow and increase acceptance to the fact that a friend is no more.
