From the Upper School Principal

The report from last year’s accreditation review by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges’ (NEASC) highlighted core truths that we know about Milton. The report acknowledges:

• The common refrain heard from the faculty that “these are great students” is indeed true. Milton Academy students are a thoroughly impressive group of warm, open, and talented young men and women.
• The perception among students that the faculty truly cares about them—that teachers have their best interests at heart—is true.
• The classroom is the center of school life: the quality of teaching is apparent, and there is a high level of stimulating give-and-take between teacher and student (And among the students themselves), further evidence of the deep-rootedness of mutual respect.

Our next focus, which we named in our self-study preparing for the accreditation, and which the Visiting Committee affirmed, is to discuss systematically and carefully, among faculty, how we develop the “whole student” at Milton. Toward that end, we have embarked on a series of four professional days—the first was November 7—during which a quarter of the faculty at a time engage in discussion about students’ emotional, psychological, and developmental growth, and our response to their needs. The first discussion was a lively and invigorating exchange, and the series over this year promises to be valuable.

In the spirit of learning how we can more effectively support students, we recently welcomed Maria Trozzi to a faculty meeting focusing on students’ experience with disruption and loss in their lives. Ms. Trozzi is an assistant professor in the department of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine and Director of the Good Grief Program at Boston Medical Center. She is the author of Talking with Children about Loss: Words, Strategies, and Wisdom to Help Children Cope with Death, Divorce, and Other Difficult Times. Ms. Trozzi is also the parent of Melissa, Milton Class of 1995.

Ms. Trozzi talked with us about the kinds of losses that adolescents experience: the death of a parent or aunt or grandfather, the loss of friendships in the emotional rough and tumble of adolescent change, family moves and relocations, homesickness, divorce and the death of the nuclear family, chronic or life-threatening illness of a parent or sibling, dislocation and disappointment over college dreams frustrated. The more we talked, the more we realized the number and ways that loss interferes with our students’ emotional and academic lives. Their performance may suffer, they may act out, they may indulge in risky or inappropriate behavior, they may turn inward in self-destructive ways. Many function just fine by most external measures, yet their inner worlds are upside down.

This turmoil hits just as they take on the four big tasks of adolescence: separation, sexual identification and intimacy, moral development, and vocational development (what’s next? what are my choices?). Even in the last ten years, all four of these developmental tasks of adolescence have become more complicated in a changing world. Ms. Trozzi asked the critical question, “What happens to a student when in the middle of all this she’s thrown a curve ball? A parent gets sick, or Mom and Dad divorce, or a parent dies. Young people grieve, and they’re unequipped for grief. And moreover, they grieve longer than adults do, because they re-grieve developmentally as they go through those four tasks of adolescence.”

In her book, Ms. Trozzi identifies three false myths we pass on to our children and their children, which make it difficult to acknowledge the significance of our children’s losses:
1. Death is not a part of living.
2. Children don’t mourn.
3. We can protect children by shielding them from loss.

A few small but helpful pointers emerged from the discussion: Young people in crisis need more structure, not less. They need clear boundaries but flexible ones, or they don’t feel safe. And teens in crisis need the adults in their lives to model how to manage loss. They need us to check in with them, to ask how they are doing, to acknowledge the crisis in the family, or the disappointment over getting waitlisted at a favorite college, or the end of a friendship, and to ask how it affects their lives right now. We need them to know we are sorry, and that we’ll help them go on with their lives.

Ms. Trozzi’s book offers three strategies for parents and other adults who want to help students face the inevitable losses of childhood:
1. Nourish and increase the trust between you and your child by speaking truthfully about the specific life event. Don’t sugarcoat it or deny the facts at issue.
2. Empathize with your child by listening to his concerns without judgment.
3. Emphasize your child’s growth by calling attention to particular skills he has learned, which will equip him to face the new and daunting situation. Identify similar past experiences in which he ultimately felt powerful.

Our shared goal as parents and teachers is always to help your children through the crises of their lives, to help them grieve while they also move on, and to learn good problem-solving. We want them to learn resilience in the face of loss, and we believe that good modeling and good coaching – some of our most important work– make a difference in our students’ lives.

For more information on Maria Trozzi’s work with children and loss, please see Talking with Children about Loss: Words, Strategies, and Wisdom to Help Children Cope with Death, Divorce, and Other Difficult Times, by Maria Trozzi with Kathy Massimini (New York: Penguin Putnam, 1999).