A Phenomenological Study: Understanding Teacher Experiences with Grief in the Classroom

Teachers entering the classroom along with teachers who have been in the classroom for a long time often find themselves dealing with grieving students. Grief is something that everyone is familiar with, especially when dealing with a death. Often what is not so familiar are other events that can cause a grief response. Teachers spend a lot of time in training and being trained on many facets of education, emergency drills, and many things they may or may not encounter. Yet, a student expressing some type of grief is something nearly every teacher has encountered but has not been trained to handle. The purpose of this study was to gain insight into teacher experiences when dealing with grief in the classroom, to understand how teachers are trained to handle grief in the classroom and understand the support systems in place to support teachers in this endeavor. The study revealed teacher experiences that included grief triggering events and showed a lack of training for teachers to handle these grieving students. In addition to the lack of training, the study confirmed that there is no clear process to implement or support training for teachers to deal with grief in the classroom. The study also showed there is a lack of communication to assist teachers in dealing with grieving students and, in some cases, even recognizing grieving students. This study brings to the forefront the importance of training teachers to handle grief in the classroom along with the effectiveness of having a support system for the implementation of the training to produce positive outcomes