Teaching about grief is not as formulaic as using a math chart, yet there are many tools teachers can use when grief sweeps into the classroom.

While teaching health to a class of teacher education students, State University of New York at Potsdam's Ada Santaferra realized her curriculum requirements lacked instruction in how to deal with the delicate subject of grief.

She asked Mary Jones, director of family support services and a grief educator with Hospice and Palliative Care of St. Lawrence Valley, to talk with students.

The reaction to the lecture was so strong the pair now team-teach a mandatory grief module incorporated into the health curriculum.

"With everything else in the classroom, they (students) never thought about how to deal with the death of a student, or of a student's family member," said Santaferra, a member of United University Professions, the NYSUT affiliate representing SUNY faculty and staff.

"How do children grieve?" Jones asked. "One death changes them forever."

And for the teachers, she asked, "It's in your face. What do you do?"

Sometimes the angst teachers can face is pared down to the practical.

"What do you do with the desk of a student who dies?" Santaferra asked.

"You leave it as a "sacred place," said Jones. "It's a way for kids to process. They can draw pictures and leave notes on it."

Let students know when the desk is going to be removed — say, during a school break — so they can have closure.

When a student in a local school committed suicide late last year, Jones was called in as part of hospice's outreach programs to schools.

Students wrote notes on a large, blank banner in the hallway. Some simply left their thumbprints or footprints. The banner was given to the family.

Suicide, according to Santaferra, is the third leading cause of death for 10-year-olds.

Jones also has students make "healing stones" fashioned from sculpting clay, usually into a small oval or round shape, with a design etched into the clay in pencil, then black ink.

A turtle, for example, symbolizes love, healing and protection. The clay is covered with an acrylic glaze, then baked for 10 minutes.

The pair recommend using specific language when talking with students about death.

Young ones, especially, get confused when told, "I hear you lost your grandfather." They may think he's missing.

It is important to specify what took a loved one's life, rather than just saying someone got sick and died. Otherwise children may think they will die next time they get sick.

Teachers can help children learn what a funeral will be like — sights, sounds and smells — and how to write a condolence card.

Helping students learn about how other cultures deal with death can be helpful as well.

Many storybooks are available to read to a class to help explain death and understand grief, such as I Know I Made it Happen by Lynn Bennett Blackburn, Sunflowers and Rainbows for Tia by Alesia Alexander Greene or Babka's Serenade by Marianne Zebrowski.

Subjects such as music can help students understand grief; songs can bring out feelings.

Jones wants to educate teachers and then have them teach School-Related Professionals, such as the cafeteria worker or the bus driver. A culture of health grievers throughout the school works best, she said.

For further information, check out the Web site of the Hospice and Palliative Care Association of New York at http://www.hpcanys.org, or Jones at mjones@hospiceslv.org.

— Liza Frenette