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In Memoriam... |
           
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During the week following the chicks' deaths, our class was involved in a multi-faceted grief management program. The following describes what we did...
I told my students that this was not just about our cranes; that 20 people died and 1,500 homes were destroyed by the same storm that claimed the lives of our beloved birds. I told the students that we needed to feel empathy for each other and for those who have lost even more than we did, in the storm.
2. Outreach -- From the very beginning, I taught my students that we need to comfort others, even when we are in the midst of pain. I never let my students simply wallow in their own grief. I asked them to support classmates who were hurting. I also asked them to reach out and comfort our "extended family" at Operation Migration, who lost not only their 2006 "babies" but also a year of their work, and who were very concerned about how this loss was going to affect all the children.
3. Balance
-- There were two aspects to this life lesson: We can't just sit around feeling sad all day. We spent an hour and a half, on each of the first two days back at school, talking about what happened, crying over, and making cards for our cranes.* After our morning grief sessions, we always returned to routine for the remainder of the day. On the Wednesday and Thursday, immediately following the cranes' deaths, we didn't do any grief work. We just carried on with routine and let things settle. By the Friday, I felt students were ready to refocus on the positive, so we revisited the cranes, for the purpose of celebrating what we loved most about our migration project and the fact that 615 is still alive. * This process was
only supposed to take one morning but, because of inclement weather bus
cancellations, more than half of my students didn't come to school until
the Tuesday following the cranes' deaths. On the Friday, even though students were still hurting over the loss of their cranes, we taped a video about how much we enjoyed our project, to send to the team at Operation Migration. After we finished taping our video, we watched the NBC news footage, from the previous Sunday, announcing that 615 was still alive. Some of my students had a hard time watching the segment, which I had told them was a "good news" story, because it mentioned that seventeen cranes had died. To enable students to find balance, and see the good in the NBC story, I talked about Operation Migration field workers, Bev and Brooke, who appeared in the piece embracing with joy over the fact that one of their eighteen birds had escaped death. I explained to the children that Bev and Brooke were in great mourning when the NBC segment was taped because, just two days previously, they had been told that all the birds their team had worked with, over the past ten months, had died. I asked my students to follow Bev and Brooks’s example by embracing 615, in spite of their continuing sadness.
(a) I taught my students to express their feelings in a variety of ways. I gave my students not only an opportunity to talk, cry and be reflective, but also to express their grief through writing, art and symbolic acts, like attaching a tag with his/her bird’s number to the stem of a flower, and placing that flower in a vase. Here are some of the tributes our class created, for their beloved crane chicks:
(b) I taught my students to turn tragedy into good, by doing something concrete, in memory of their chicks. To me, the goal of the grief process is not to "get over" something. To me, the goal is to allow tragedy to become a catalyst for personal growth and change. As an extension of this principle, in the case of death, I also think it is important to find ways to bring good out of tragedy, by continuing the legacy of the deceased, on his/her behalf. My students and I contributed to the fund that Operation Migration created, in honour of the cranes.
Our Class' Remembrance Fund Donation Operation
Migration suggested donating one dollar
We made cards and letters for Operation Migration and, as previously mentioned, we also made a video tape, for them, in which students explained what they loved most about the migration monitoring project.
Finally, we resolved not to let this tragedy keep us from supporting the Whooping Crane reintroduction effort. When, during the taping of our video, I asked the students if they would like to participate in monitoring future ultralight-led migrations, the answer was unanimous. In spite of the grief, every single student said he/she would love to participate in this type of project all over again!
Epilogue: At the end of the week, my students surprised me by teaching me what it is to be gracious. Students who had experienced the loss of "their birds” decided to give 615's Valentine cards to the one student who didn't lose his bird in this tragedy... to the boy who had adopted 615, and cheered him along throughout the migration. Some of the students even congratulated this young man, on his great fortune. (In retrospect, I now realize that envy and animosity never did raise their ugly heads, this week. That is partly due to the fact that 615's "cheerleader" remained quiet and empathic all week... but I also have to give credit to my other students for simply choosing not to go there!) These are some of the Valentine cards we made to celebrate the fact that 615 is still alive:
The following is a note one of Mrs. Black's students wrote, a week after the cranes died. 607 is the bird Mrs. Black "adopted."
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