“Death is part of life.” How do we as teachers teach this to our students?
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Staying Past Wednesday (Helping Kids Deal with Death and Loss)
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When I was growing up, death was ever on my mind. When my grandfather past away, I never felt as sad as my mother and father did. As I became a teenager death still wasn’t a big deal to me, I felt that only old people would die. But, my friend “Joe” who was only 1 year older than I suddenly pass away. “Wow” that’s when I realized death can happen to anyone, young and old.
While reading Staying Past Wednesday, this statement: “Death – like sex, AIDS, genocide, racism, and poverty – is silenced in the elementary school. That silence sends a strong message to children: This may be your reality but it is not the truth that we honor in this institution.”
Made me realized it’s true! The school that I work at don’t have any teaching lesson on death. I think we should have some lesson on this matter. When an opportunity comes up we as teachers should talk about it with our students.
As a teacher, Kate Lyman talked about death: “She have often included a unit of several weeks on death and loss in her curriculum. Some years, especially when she taught kindergarten, the unit was precipitated by the death of a classroom guinea pig or by a robin found dead on the play ground.” These are the opportunity we should look for to talk to our students about death.
So, here’s my question: “How do we as teachers teach our students about death?”
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Unwrapping the Holidays – (Reflections on a Difficult First Year)
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While reading this story, I had to think about how my first year might be, once I become a teacher. It’s such a sad experience that Dale Weiss had to go through.
“A teacher piped up that she had taught for 20 years – in comparison to my two-and-a- months-and she felt no need at all to have to explain her curriculum to me. She ended by reminding me to check things out before jumping to conclusions about the way things are done at our school.
Misunderstandings – Prior to the faculty committee meeting, I had not realized the extent of misunderstanding and anger that existed. I felt scared and continued to search my mind for who might have put the ANONYMOUS letter in my mailbox. Up until the prior week I had looked forward to each day of teaching with great eagerness and pleasure. I now dreaded coming to school.”
I hope there’s a support group for teachers who is just starting in this field. I remember my first day, working at an elementary school as a Para-Professional Tutor and how nervous I was. I did experience some teachers who just wasn’t nice to anyone including me. I would smile and say good morning and there were no responds. “Wow?!” I told myself “why are they in this field?” If they don’t like their job, quit and get out!
Here’s my question: “How do we work with teachers like that?”
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Be Sad and Succeed - (ExchangeEveryDay / February 25, 2010)
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Here’s what this topic was talking about: “"Each study found that people in a bad mood performed tasks better than those in a good mood. Grumpy people paid closer attention to details, showed less gullibility, were less prone to errors of judgment and formed higher-quality persuasive arguments than their happy counterparts. One study even supports the notion that those who show signs of either fear, anger, disgust or sadness -- the four basic negative emotions -- achieve stronger eyewitness recall while virtually eliminating the effects of misinformation."
“ARE YOU KIDDING ME!” I don’t believe this at all. The people I met who is in a bad mood doesn’t perform good work ethics. So how can this be? Please someone tell me something different.
How do we overcome our own values and fears about concepts such as death and help children develop an understanding about said concepts? Death is such a sensitive topic. I shared the same attitude that you did about death, thinking that it's never going to happen, especially to someone I love. That is until I heard about my grandmother passing. She seriously raised me while my mother worked in Hawaii and became a second mother. So, when I found out that she had passed away, it was like I had lost a mother. I didn't talk about it, obviously, since I didn't have anyone that I could relay such information to. It became more difficult to talk about these topics when others seemed to share the same attitute - no one wanted to talk about it because it's too touchy. I remember just mentioning that a bird we saw in the playground died and another teaching hushing me when I mentioned the D-word. I mean, if we can't even talk about it, how can we expect children to know anything about it?
ReplyDeleteHi Gary,
ReplyDeleteI think you should read an article by Jonathan Silin - What Aids Teaches us about the Education of Children. He also has a wonderful text called Sex, Death, and the Education of Young Children (available in the library). Silin's writing challenges us to trust children to have hard conversations with children about subjects like death.
Should the expected role of the teacher be challenged in order to create classrooms which offer safe spaces for these discussion? What might need to change in teaching and learning? Does it relate to power, control, and our views of children?
Jeanne
Hi Gary,
ReplyDeleteYou've asked about death curriculum. This is one area where I think many teachers will disagree. I for one think that death is a part of living. I offer death observations when our plants die, when insects die and when pets die. Do you think our own discomforts and insecurities are displaced to the children? Jeanne offered a book to read. I think books, especially children's books, on death is a great place to start when looking for words to say or how to begin a conversation on death with a child.
Does shielding a child from hearing death stories help them to deal with death as an adult?
You mentioned not being sad when your grandfather passed away. I lost my grandmother and grandfather during my teenage years and felt the same sort of disconnection from their deaths as you described. For some reason, I just wasn't sad and I could never figure out why. I wasn't close to them but they were involved in my life. I always wondered if the bad relationship between my father and his parents played a role in my disconnect but now you have me also wondering if teenage development and psychological stages played a stronger role. Does it involve development? I would like to know. You also disagreed with the notion that sad, grumpy people are more productive at work. I think in a lot of cases, this may be true though. The front desk clerk at my job is usually very happy and when she is in a good mood, she is very talkative with staff and the families that use our center. When she is in a talkative mood, less work gets done. When she is having a bad day, I have noticed she gets more done because she is more focused on the work that needs to get done. I find this is true for myself as well. Can you relate?
ReplyDeleteHow do you personally approach the of death when working with children. I think that it is hard to assume that their should be a right and wrong way to approach death and I also think that every situation is different when it comes to the children that we work with. I do think that death is an important subject to talk about with the children however it needs to be approached with sensitivity and caution. You may not want to give children to much information on it but you may not want to give them not enough information on it either.
ReplyDelete