By Jenna Fournel, Chief Curiosity Officer
Listen to this week’s Hooray For Monday podcast episode for Jenna and Aleta’s conversation on the cultural traditions around, personal experiences of, and classroom approaches to navigating death and loss.
Chief Curiosity Officer Jenna was inspired to create an ofrenda in her home after learning more about Dia de Los Muertos traditions (and watching the Disney movie, Coco).
This week, classrooms across the United States will be engaging in activities and celebrations related to Halloween. Whether these festivities are tied to ghouls and goblins or story-book characters, there will be some dress-up, some candy, and a lot of energy. Halloween is fun; these festivities are enjoyable ways to play and connect in school communities.
But Halloween is the day before another celebration that can take those connections a step further. Dia de Los Muertos happens on November 1. It is a festival for the dead that takes place in Mexico, Central, and South America. The cultural traditions that are part of this celebration lend themselves well to classroom exploration. Through photos, food, flowers, and storytelling, a Dia de Los Muertos celebration can help students talk about death—a topic that often feels taboo—but is a unifying fact of life for every living being.
Inspired Teaching Fellows Alicia Galvan and Sabrina Burroughs shared with us their insight into helping young students navigate death and loss.
In our visits to schools around Washington, DC, we have seen ofrendas (altars to the dead) erected in hallways and classrooms and marveled at how such a project builds on the ABCDEs of Learner Needs:
Students are invited to bring in photos or memorabilia of people and pets who have died to put on these displays. (They have the Autonomy to choose what they want to share.)
They have opportunities to share these photos and talk about them with their peers. (These conversations build a sense of Belonging.)
They decorate candles and skulls and discuss the symbolism behind them. (Such projects are often Engaging and Fun.)
They learn about why monarch butterflies are associated with the celebration, and how their marvelous life cycles can be metaphors for our own. (A Developmentally Appropriate way to explore life and death.)
Of course, as teachers, we must be thoughtful about how we approach the topic and how we support the big feelings that can accompany any discussion of death. Especially with very young children, these conversations create important spaces for clearing up misconceptions. But we should not shy away from having these discussions because tremendous connections can be found in realizing we’re not alone in our sadness or experience with death; it’s something we’ll all encounter many times in our lives. And engaging children in a celebration about loved ones who have died teaches that we can still keep them with us in memory.
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Hooray For Monday is an award-winning weekly publication of Center for Inspired Teaching, a social change nonprofit organization that champions the power of curiosity and is dedicated to transforming the school experience from compliance-based to engagement-based. Inspired Teaching provides transformative, improvisation-based professional learning for teachers that is 100% engaging – intellectually, emotionally, and physically.
