Reply to New teacher over sharing (death of newborn)

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[quote=Anonymous]I'll address it from a different perspective.  Not only do I think that OP ITA, I also think that what this teacher is doing is completely appropriate.

The children are in 7th grade, so they are 12 and 13 year olds.  They are at an age where learning about death, family loss and grief is appropropriate.  They are tweens/teens and no longer at the age where you insulate them from such real-world experiences.  The teacher sharing her loss and grief is a valuable learning experience.  Grief, death and loss are difficult to learn about when they happen in your own family and many times when it happens, the adults in the family are themselves engulfed with grief and loss and not able to provide the best teaching environment for helping their own children with coping with these complex emotions.  But, by sharing her loss, the teacher is providing them a way to understand and learn about grief and possibly learn coping mechanisms.  Since it is not in the students' families, the students can see the situation with sympathy and compassion, without experiencing the grief and loss themselves.

I remember losing a dear family member when I was about 15 and it was very hard on our family.  My parents were dealing with their own grief at the time and were not able to be as fully supportive as they normally were and not really able to help me through my grief and depression.  It took quite some time for me to adjust and cope with the loss.  Having a teacher like OP's child's teacher that shared her own grief and coping techniques and was able to share her experience with tweens and answer questions for them in a way that was less emotional for them, would have been very valuable.

And the way she is sharing it is that she's mentioned it in her life and the children have the option to come and talk to her, if they choose.  It's optional and there if they want to ask about it or learn, but not something every child needs.  I think it's very kind of her to share that with the students for those who may want or need to ask for dealing with issues in their own lives.[/quote]

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