In the sad event that a child’s health continues to deteriorate and all possible treatments have been exhausted, it is time for the students and staff to discuss ways to be supportive during the child’s final days. Students need timely information about their ill classmate so they can deal with his declining health and prepare for his death. The possibility of death from a brain or spinal cord tumor should have been sensitively raised in the initial class presentation before the child’s return to school, but additional information is needed as the child’s health declines. The following are suggestions about how to prepare classmates and school personnel for the death of a student:

• The school staff needs to be reassured that death will not suddenly occur at school; rather, the child will either die at home or in the hospital.
• Staff needs to be aware that going to school is vital to a sick child’s well-being. School staff members should welcome and support the child’s need to attend school for as long as possible.
• Staff can design flexible programs for the ill student.

• It is helpful to provide reading materials about death and dying for the ill child’s classmates, siblings’ classmates, teachers, and school staff.
• Extraordinary efforts should be made to keep in touch when the child can no longer attend school. Cards, banners, tapes, texts, emails, telephone calls, and webcam or conference calls (e.g., on the principal’s speaker phone) from the entire class or individual classmates are good ways to share thoughts and best wishes.
• Classmates can visit the hospital or child’s home, if appropriate. If the child is too sick to entertain visitors, the class can come wave at the front window and drop off cards or gifts.
• The class can send books, video games, or a basket of small gifts and cards to the hospital or home.
• The class can decorate the family’s front door, mailbox, and yard when the child will be returning home from the hospital.

All of the above activities encourage empathy and concern in classmates, as well as help them adjust to the decline and imminent death of their friend. The activities also help the sick child know she has not been forgotten by her teachers, friends, and classmates, even if she cannot attend school.

When the child dies, a memorial service at school gives students a chance to grieve. School counselors or psychologists should be available to talk to the classmates to allow them to express their feelings. Parents usually very much appreciate receiving stories or poems about their child from classmates. Scholastic® has a webpage with many excellent suggestions for classmates to remember their friend at www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3754883.