Grief is already in our classrooms. It arrives with students who have lost a grandparent, a parent, a friend, or a home, a culture, an identity, a language, a version of themselves. For third culture kids and internationally mobile communities, grief often takes forms that go unnamed: the grief of transition, of displacement, of belonging somewhere between worlds. And yet schools rarely prepare educators to recognize, hold, or respond to grief in its many forms, leaving both students and the adults who teach them to carry it alone.

This workshop moves beyond broad well-being language to engage with grief as a distinct, clearly defined area of educational practice. Drawing on current research in developmental neuroscience, social-emotional learning, and grief-informed care, including Mary Helen Immordino-Yang’s landmark findings on how young people who are given space to process difficult emotional experiences show measurable brain growth and stronger identity development, participants will leave with a practical, research-grounded framework for recognizing and responding to grief in their school communities.

We will explore grief not only as loss through death, but in its full range: grief as transition, as identity disruption, as the loss of belonging. We will examine what dignity looks like in a grieving student, and what it looks like to give it. We will hold the dual truth that educators are not only support providers but human beings who grieve too, and that sustainable care for students begins with honest care for ourselves.

Participants will leave with:

• A clear, inclusive framework for understanding grief across development and culture
• Practical, classroom-ready language and responses for supporting grieving students with dignity and presence
• Strategies for building grief-literate school cultures that honor the full range of student experience
• Tools for recognizing and tending to their own grief as educators

This session is designed for educators, counselors, and school leaders at all levels, and is grounded in both research and lived experience.