Westerville South High School has received a $500 Grief-Sensitive Grant from the New York Life Foundation, which will be used for building grief initiatives and student support.
For several years, the New York Life Foundation, in partnership with National Center of School Crisis and Bereavement, has been working with the leading K-12 education professional organizations to form the Coalition to Support Grieving Students. They have developed a set of materials and a website, www.grievingstudents.org, to help teachers, counselors, and other people in the school community to provide comfort and guidance to bereaved students.
The Coalition found, through a survey, that just seven percent of schoolteachers feel adequately prepared to help grieving students when they return to the classroom, even though 70 percent of them have a grieving student in their classroom at any given time. And studies show that a child’s unresolved grief can have a social and emotional impact on him or her, leading to behavioral issues and poor performance in school.