As schools begin to re-open to more students, we will need to deal with conversations about death, bereavement and grief. In this article, teacher Zinnia Wilkinson explains how she worked with her students after the death of her daughter

As the director of pastoral care at a thriving girls’ school, I am keen to make sure that our pupils know they can talk about anything – without judgement, criticism or opinion.

We live in a world where many taboos are fast being eradicated and yet it seems to me that while we confidently address issues like gender, mental health, sexuality and disability, there is still one subject that even the bravest of us shy away from broaching: death.

The irony being that in that list of “difficult conversations”, death is the only one we can all guarantee to experience – not only as a bystander, but as the protagonist. Indeed, as we navigate the choppy waters of education in the Covid-19 crisis, this is possibly something which even more of our pupils will have first-hand experience of, thus the need to feel confident in managing conversations about death and dying appropriately.

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