Students at Dominion High Work Through Grief's Lessons

By Michael Birnbaum (Contact)

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Spring break tales floated around a table of high school boys last week, typical stories of anxious college decisions, family trips and sleeping late. But in each story was a gaping hole: a missing parent or sibling.

Counselors at Dominion High School in Loudoun County started a group this school year, apparently the only one of its kind in the region, for students who have lost close relatives. Participants say they are surprised by how much it has helped.

"There's no good grief," said Dominion guidance director Kevin Terry. "But this is as close to good grief as we can get."

Across the country, school counselors are experimenting with new ways to group students to help them through trouble. It's not enough, counselors say, to wait for students to come to them one by one with concerns.

"Teenagers tend to feel that nobody else has ever gone through what they're going through," said Lynne Linde, president-elect of the American Counseling Association. "When we do groups, we see it works. . . . It normalizes what they're feeling."

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Dominion Holds Grief Counseling Sessions

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Tara Moss, a social worker, talks with male students during a grief counseling session at Dominion High School where students and counselors talk about the students' loss of a close relative. (Ricky Carioti)

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Seniors Scott Everhart, John Paul Mardelli, Ryan Stubbs and Alex Wood talk to each other during a grief counseling session at Dominion High School for students who have lost a close relative or about to lose a close relative. (Ricky Carioti)

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Tara Moss, a social worker, and Geri Fiore, a school counselor, talk with male students in the grief counseling session at Dominion High School for students who have lost a close relative or are about to lose a close relative. (Ricky Carioti)

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Senior Ryan Stubbs hugs senior Maya Evans as fellow students Skyelar Decker, a sophomore, and John Paul Mardelli, also a senior, look on after a grief counseling session at Dominion High School. (Ricky Carioti)

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After Dominion counselors realized in the fall that at least 20 of their 1,200 students were grieving — a higher number than they had seen at other schools — they wrangled a social worker from a local hospice to guide discussions. They whittled the pool to about a dozen they thought would benefit from a peer group. They found a rhythm — 45 minutes to an hour a week around a conference table in a bright white room at the Sterling school, one session for boys and one for girls. And they started teaching students about grief, about relationships and about handling something many people don't confront until their faces are more deeply lined.

Other schools offer help to students whose parents die, but a year-long program such as Dominion's is highly unusual, Linde said. No other school in the Washington area seems to have anything comparable, officials say.

The group wasn't an easy sell.

"I really didn't want to do it," said Scott Everhart, 18, a senior whose father died of melanoma in his sophomore year. A hospice counselor had talked to him before his father died, but he said the conversation felt forced and unhelpful. The school group, he said, has helped: He is able to talk to people who have been through something similar.

"You don't really talk about it with your actual friends," he said. "It's not like you don't want to talk about it; it's like they don't want to talk about it." There's far less of that awkwardness in the grief group, he said. And talking about his feelings at school has helped him open up with his mother as well.

Before, he said, "we would talk, but I really wouldn't talk. . . . I just didn't want to put any more stress on her. I've learned that it's better to talk."

His mother notes the change.

"I think it gave him a vocabulary and an ability to recognize what grief is," Barbara Everhart said.

Counselors have pulled in parents, too. A winter dinner the counselors hosted became, in some ways, a meeting of another peer support group.

Parents read anonymous messages from the students that let them know what the kids appreciated, and what they didn't, about their ministrations after a loss. And they bonded over shared tragedy.

One student talked more easily to his peers than his family.

Alex Wood, 17, a senior whose mother died of cancer in October, said the grief group had resonated with him. The family therapy he attended after the death was less helpful. "It just wasn't as comfortable," he said. Talking to people his own age felt more productive.

"It's cool to know when you're not the only one going through this," he said. "Everyone else knew what I was going through, and it's just comforting to be able to relate."

Dominion counselors don't know whether the sessions will take place next year. Many of the participants are graduating, and a tight budget makes the counselors worry that their workload next year might not allow it.

For this year's students, though, the group served its purpose.

"It was definitely something that I needed for right now," Wood said. But he doesn't plan to find anything similar when he goes off to college in the fall. "It's a fresh start," he said. "And in time, it's going to get better."

Tagged: Dominion High School, schools, students

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