We did not know each other before 2024, although we are both heads of school. Separated by coasts, we were brought together by grief, and we connected as school leaders navigating ourselves and our school communities through a death by suicide. We each knew that the experiences we were having were profound and challenging us—as humans and as leaders—but it wasn’t until we connected that we realized just how profound and how much we needed and would lean on each other in the coming months.
Renée Greenfield: When I dreamt that another teacher died by suicide, I woke up and sat straight up in bed, whispering to my spouse: “Did another teacher die? I think it was a dream.”
He said, “You’re OK. No one else died. Go back to sleep.”
Pulled to move my body, I headed downstairs to the Peloton and rode. At the end of the ride, as if she knew I needed to hear it, the instructor said: You’re OK. I wept.
Almost immediately, I knew who I needed to reach out to: Mary. Her response included this:
I get what you mean about the dreams... they do have a way of framing our deep worries. Always too much and we do make a difference. In the meantime, let's hang in there.
In August, when one of our educators at Carroll School (MA) died by suicide, I reached out to my networks. A head of school from California wrote immediately: I have a colleague, Mary, in the East Bay, and I think she is one week ahead of you. Mary and I were connected right away and forged a swift and unexpected friendship.
Mary Antón: For me, connecting with Renée was a godsend. I’d lost a teacher before to suicide, but this time it was totally different. This loss came three days before the start of school, and I had assumed the acting headship at Northern Light School (CA) two weeks before.
I did not know the teachers, I did not know the community, and I had only met the teacher once. This was not the way I thought we would begin. It brought a totally different meaning to “first day of school” anxiety.
Our connection gave us an outlet to share and reflect on what it takes to lead a school through loss so that neither of us had to go through it alone. Together, we found an opportunity to shape conversations, pull taboo subjects out of darkness, and be there for each other and our communities in unparalleled ways.
Learning to Lead Through Grief
When leading a school community through a stigmatic loss in the school community—in our case, the death of an employee by suicide—heads quickly shift into their simultaneous pastoral and operational roles. As we each did this and looked to established best practices to guide us, we found that some approaches—like encouraging employees to rely on and share their grief with each other rather than grief counselors––didn’t feel right to us. To support our communities, we had to unlearn some things and shift our perspectives, resulting in deeper, authentic conversations about death by suicide and how to support the mental health of our employees and students.
We learned about a model for coping with loss created by Maria Trozzi, founder of the Good Grief program at Boston Medical Center, which helps communities cope with death and loss of loved ones. Rather than a stage-based approach to working through grief, the program takes a task-based approach: understanding, grieving, commemorating, and going on. Using this model as a guide, we each began having more authentic conversations with our employees and students and learned how to better support them, ultimately building resilience in our communities.
Understanding
What we know about humans, relative to processing any kind of loss, is that we try to make sense of what has happened and make meaning out of it. The more information we can share with employees and students about the cause of death, helping them to fill in the “gaps,” the sooner they can begin to process their grief. That’s in part why the immediate communication between the head and the family of the employee who died is crucial.
Heads must thread a tricky needle: Conveying compassion and empathy, while simultaneously asking the family for permission to share the cause of death with the school community. When families allow schools to share that their loved one died by suicide, it provides an opportunity to open up the conversation around mental health. It’s an incredible gift, to both honor their loved one and work to improve our school and societal structures around stigmatic loss.
Before communicating with employees, students, and families, another critical step is identifying “hidden victims” within the school community. This includes those who have previously shared their lived experiences around stigmatic loss (i.e., addiction, miscarriage, suicide). However, there are often those who have never shared about their previous loss, making it essential to observe all in the community. The key is to communicate with hidden victims separately and ahead of larger announcements, always offering support based on what they need. Creating space for employees to understand the information being shared is key, as is leaning on existing routines and structure.
We shared with employees first, in person and all together, recognizing that while some employees were in a deep relationship with the colleague who died, others were not. Soon after, we prepared them to communicate this information in developmentally appropriate ways with their students, who knew and worked with the employee.
Fortified with scripts and resources, our educators worked in pairs to sit with their students in advisories and homerooms to share this information. They created space for questions, observed their students and their reactions, and, most importantly, sent a clear message to their students: I can talk about hard things, and if you are struggling or need support, I am someone you can talk to. This single act of our educators—to sit with their students to try to make sense of the unsensible—was another incredible gift. Even within their grief, they situated students at the center.
After sharing the information with the school community, we observed employees and students to identify anyone who might need extra support. In both of our school communities, almost all the students and employees used their existing coping strategies and skills to process this information. For a few, we created individual plans to engage with and support them. Overall, our communities showed incredible resiliency.
Grieving
Grief has no timeline and is not universal. We tried to listen intently to understand how our communities were processing their grief. It was important to remember that not all of our employees and students were grieving; even if they didn’t have a relationship with the deceased, they also needed care and attention. We made sure to acknowledge that all reactions were welcome, including no reaction. For grieving employees, students, and ourselves, we recognized their grief relative to their proximity to the employee, as different relationships lead to different grief.
Commemorating and Going On
In both of our schools, the families of the deceased planned memorial celebrations aligned with their belief systems. We shared this information with our communities with the intent to inform them, rather than influence their choice to attend. For students who wanted to “do something,” we encouraged them to write a letter to the family as a way to process their grief.
At each of our schools, we have plans this spring to honor these educators who died in ways that acknowledge their contributions, but not in permanent, physical ways on our campuses. Permanent, physical ways of remembrance are not recommended. Best practice tells us to avoid taking actions that could make suicide seem like an appealing act to others to gain recognition.
What Leaders Need
Unfortunately, it’s not about whether school communities will experience stigmatic loss, it’s about when. Heads and school leaders deserve to be prepared to manage this in their schools. And while schools need crisis management teams, protocols, communication templates, and flowcharts, when it comes to working through a crisis with people, these tools are not enough. Employees and students need heads and other leaders who lead with care, compassion, and clarity.
The work of heads is complex, spanning teaching and learning, operations, philanthropy, school culture, leadership, and family partnerships. But one of the things not often discussed at the leadership level in schools is death and dying––something we all, as humans, experience. Our experiences leading our schools through loss tell us that we need to talk about our experiences with one another and share best practices.
Wei Ji means “crisis” in Chinese: Wei means “crisis,” Ji means “opportunity.” In our crises, we found kindred spirits in each other, in our capacity to share, support, and grieve.
If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, reach out 24/7 to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (formerly known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline) by dialing or texting 988 or using chat services at 988lifeline.org to connect to a trained crisis counselor.