Goal:
To introduce end-of-life issues to school age children through a variety of media.
Suggested timing: July, August and September
Suggested Action Steps:
Contact schools (principals and teachers) about taking advantage of the Finding Our Way newspaper series to help young people deal with end-of-life issues.
What Junior High (Or Middle Schools) And High Schools Can Do:
Invite a palliative care physician, funeral director or hospice social worker who deals with end-of-life issues to speak to the class and answer questions. Topics they might cover include:
- How to talk to their parents about a grandparent’s or other loved one’s advanced illness and coming death
- Diversity in funeral rites within the United States and throughout the world
- The importance of grieving and communicating grief
- The impact of suicide, car accidents that result in death, or other violent death on the community
- What to do and say when a friend has lost a parent or grandparent
- How to be a good friend to someone who has lost a loved one
- What to expect when visiting someone who is seriously ill
- How to help younger siblings understand what’s happening
- Conversations near the end of life—what young people might do to build and share memories with someone who is dying
- Why do we die
Point teachers to the Finding Our Way website
(www.findingourway.net) to preview (not print) copies of the
Finding Our Way newspaper articles and suggest that they use the articles as discussion topics. Ask your local librarian to put together a list of age-appropriate books that students can find at the library if and when they want to “read more about it.”
What Elementary School Teachers Or Counselors Can Do:
- Use The Fall of Freddie the Leaf by Leo F. Buscaglia or Good-bye, Mousie by Robie Harris (to be published in September 2001) to open a discussion about dying, funeral rites, and grieving.
- Encourage the students to talk about a grandparent who doesn’t remember them (due to Alzheimers Disease) or who is sick in the hospital.
- Have students draw/color/paint their experiences and feelings about a pet that has died.
- Ask them if they would want to be told if someone they love was dying.
- Ask them to write a poem about what it means to be
dead.
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