Imagine being told about the death of a loved one in the middle of class.  3 classes in a row.   I have gone  through teaching sessions where one of my students had to endure the roller-coaster of emotions that comes with grief processing, and I always thought if the day comes when I have to be in the driver seat, I will be quite prepared.  

But no. How foolish of me to think I might be even remotely ready to handle the demands of class work and the demands of distraught family members.  

Dealing with one funeral is well, stressful. But to have to cope with three deaths in succession takes more than a strong heart.  It takes a village. 

And this past two weeks, my village came in the form of my fellow PBL group members.  We spoke about “Community of support”, “Where to set boundaries” and”How much of my personal/private life do I share with my students”, and the brief, albeit intense discussion gave me comfort knowing that it is ok that I DO NOT want to share and I DO NOT HAVE TO expose all of my private and personal life online for my students to see.   It is comforting to know that there are other teachers out there who also feel the need to set a clear boundary in this day and age where almost everything posted online is accessible somehow to someone somewhere.  

My key learning points in this unfortunate episode: 

1) Create a community of support online for grieving students and/or teachers.   This is especially important as we can only see the grieving individual through a sliver of the computer screen and can no longer easily discern the emotions and provide intuitive and active emotional support in a non-virtual environment.   A community of support can be in the form of a group condolences board or card or padlet or miro…. something…. to let the individual know that they are not alone and help is just one keystroke away. 

2) Closely monitor the body language, tone of voice and participation level of the grieving individual just as closely as we would in a non-virtual classroom setting, and provide support and/or interventions to prevent the individual from slipping through the cracks and falling behind in school work.