One never expects a disaster to occur, and when it happens, it is suddenly very real, especially when you are responsible for those around you. When our disaster struck, we were unprepared and experienced shock that left our heads spinning, all of which can be classified in trauma nervous system language as a freeze reaction. Our intention is to describe the cause of our shock, unpack our reactions from a personal to an institution-wide level, and provide some concrete recommendations for the future in case instructors find themselves in similar situation.

We teach in a two-year cohort model, and during one term, we shared the same group of students. During this term, which was held online due to the pandemic, one of us received the shocking news from a class member that a cohort member had been murdered by her boyfriend. The student discovered this tragic news after unsuccessfully trying to contact their assignment partner and, in their pursuit to locate her via social media, came across a CTV news item about their classmate’s violent death (McKay, 2022). We recall the student sharing that they wrestled with the decision to inform, or not, their professor and cohort of this news as perhaps there was a reason why they and their classmates had not been told given the deceased student had been in the ICU with her life-threatening injuries for 25 days. When they decided to inform one of us of the tragic news, it was the first time we had heard what had happened. When we reached our senior administration to seek their guidance, we learned our institutional leaders had been aware of the unfolding situation and had been in contact with the family but had not shared the information with instructors.

A correct recall of events thereafter is challenging for us, given our state of shock, but we do remember the gratitude we felt when two Faculty administrative staff met online with the cohort to officially announce the death of a classmate and to encourage our students to seek counselling services if they felt the need. They also gave permission for instructors to cancel classes for the week. We came to learn that the institutional response in this situation is to lower the university flags to half mast, to designate one person to be the deceased family’s liaison with the university, and to send condolences to the family.

During the week the news was released, we also jointly held an informal, optional, online gathering with our students where we checked in on how they were feeling and coping with the news they just heard. At this time, we offered very brief psychoeducational material where we aimed to normalize their reactions and assure them that there was no correct way to navigate this news other than with self-compassion and connection with others. A few days later, we arranged for university counselling services to facilitate an optional, critical-incident debriefing session (we did not attend this session). As instructors, we do not recall being offered any debriefing sessions by the institution, but we did talk with our own therapists at our expense. We never took time off as we continued with our research, prepared our lessons, and taught all our classes as having to complete course so as not to disadvantage students was a reality. In each class with this cohort, we continued to offer space to name the impact of not having their fellow student present for the rest of their term.

We do not recall any other institutional support being offered to the students after the first week of the crisis, and there was little to no mentioning of this incident in our Faculty meetings, and, if any, there was very little networking with other instructors in the program regarding this situation. We were essentially left to manage the traumatic situation on our own.

As psychologists, we are not immune to experiencing mental distress, including symptoms of trauma. Even though we have both dealt with death, hearing someone we knew was murdered was a deep shock to our nervous systems. It was a form of violence that has not been addressed in our counsellor training, and we do not recall ever working with clients who had a family member die by murder. We recognized this unfortunate news was as much a shock and hit to our nervous system as the students, despite our maturity and experience.

At the anniversary of this tragedy, the two of us have reached the healing phase where we wish to transform the emotional toll of navigating the violent death of one of our students into an action plan that our fellow instructors could utilize if they face a similar tragedy. This phase is characteristically known for requiring a higher order of cognitive processing as it facilitates the transformation of one’s pain to finding meaning that can be drawn upon in similar stressful events to enhance resiliency and recovery (Haugen et al., 2013). To this end, we have several recommendations generated from reflecting on our experiences and integrating our trauma-informed knowledge. Each recommendation should be modified and adapted to instructor and institutional needs and circumstances. None of the following recommendations is prescriptive, and they are not presented in any significant order.

1. Protocols for a death in the academic community

We discovered it is imperative to locate the policies your institution has in place to respond to a violent death of any member in its community. In our case, we discovered there were protocols, but we do not recall being introduced to this information during any faculty orientation or faculty meetings. Deans should brief new faculty, including sessional instructors and term appointees, of such protocols and remind their faculty on annual basis that resources exist when there is a death within the academic community. If we had known of such a policy, we would have had a structure and process to review and integrate into our plan for navigating this trauma. 

2. Crisis management resources

It is very unfortunate that our student, who learned of a fellow student’s death, wrestled with the decision to disclose, or not, this news to their professor. This was unnecessary angst for a student, and it could have been prevented if this person knew that there was a list of action steps that were simple to follow and clearly identified the lines of communication channels. Thus, we highly recommend that on each Faculty’s website there be an easy to find weblink to resources that provide a step-by-step action guide when someone discovers a death of a student.

Furthermore, given the shock and limited executive functioning when faced with this unimaginable tragedy, students and faculty need to know where to turn for help beyond campus counselling services, so this information could be included in the above link. We were surprised when we learned how many of our students seemed hesitant to access on-campus services, such as having an irrational fear it was not confidential and how they may be looked down upon as student counsellors seeking support from the very site where some wished to complete their practicum. In addition, we heard comments from several of our students how they were in “numb mode”, so they just want to focus on their studies and not feel the pain of their grief. As such, we recommend that the link be actively promoted so, when a student is ready to reach out, there is no confusion where to find such assistance.

3. Senior administration ought to keep faculty in the loop 

When administration (e.g., student services staff) receive information about students that may have potential consequences for classroom dynamics or cohort well-being, we believe it is imperative that relevant faculty (and Deans) be updated with whatever information they can release so instructors are not caught off guard when a student shares bad news that is already in the public domain. In our case, if the lines of communication had been open and faculty were informed about a student’s life-threatening injury, we could have made the necessary adjustments for partner assignments and, when given permission to do so, gently inform the students (or arrange for this disclosure to be made, as per protocol). Being kept in the loop would have reduced the student’s anguish of having to tell faculty about a student’s death, and it would have allowed us to be more supportive to the student who broke the news as we would have had time to digest the news before having to look after our students.

4. Handling the empty chair and rituals of remembrance

Depending on the responses of the students, some may want to push this painful situation away as the emotional shock is too much for them to address. They may express that they wish to just get on with the class and want to discuss the logistics of finishing the class without their missing peer. However, we feel that it is important to move forward in a manner that is respectful to all students in the class. To this end, the following outlines what we did, and we hope this may generate ideas of what to do if faced with similar circumstances.

When your class gathers for the first time without the physical presence of the deceased student, regardless of whether your class is online or in person, there needs to be a naming of the empty chair. Although we may have been clumsy in our initial processing of the empty chair in our classrooms, we later thought that if we were to face the unthinkable again, we might try various activities during the term ranging from verbal to nonverbal acknowledgements, given some students may not feel ready to talk aloud their shock. Our suggestions include the following, realizing this list is not exhaustive: (a) create a moment of silence to allow space to gather their thoughts about the deceased student, and continue this ritual for the rest of the term, (b) invite students to find Internet images, perhaps of flowers, to associate with the student and paste them on a Zoom whiteboard or share them via in-person class projection system, (c) to help students find words that describe the deceased student, have students circle words from a list of adjectives and verbs that capture their memory of the student or use this list for a discussion about the person, (d) write a message of condolences to the family members on blank cards brought by the professor or using Zoom whiteboard function followed by a screen shot, and then arrange to send these messages to family members via student services, (e) create a centrepiece to represent the student by bringing in polished rocks, random pieces of fabric, objects students might associate with their deceased colleague, and so on and discuss with the students what to do with this symbolic representation of their colleague (e.g., bring to each class, send it adrift in the river, bury it, etc.) and, (f) host a conversation of perhaps the possibility of honouring their colleague via planting a tree on campus, creating a memorial, or organizing a collection to donate to a charity that would be meaningful to their former cohort member.

Discussing with the class how long the empty chair exists in your classroom is an important process associated with naming the deceased. Most classrooms have more chairs than students, so the empty chair may not be obvious. However, physically removing one chair from a table to recognize the absence of the student may provide a way to say goodbye. At the end of the course, or at the end of the year with a cohort model, when there is the celebration of completing a job well done, perhaps acknowledging how much the missing peer would be enjoying this and pausing to remember them would be appropriate. We also arranged to send messages from the cohort to the grieving parents at the conclusion of their course year.

5. Course work adjustments

How do we prioritize finishing the course over helping our students through a very difficult time involving one of their colleagues was a significant question we struggled to answer. Our recommendation would be to share the dilemma with your students–naming how to meet your professional obligation to meet the course objectives and at the same time realizing the students may not be as highly functional as they were before the event. This allows for a discussion of the pros/cons of various options you could present to the students. It goes without saying that extension of deadlines and significant revisions to course assignments and exams will be necessary. We would also encourage faculty to consider hosting small study groups to help students process the course material as we discovered many of the students seemed to struggle with encoding and retrieving the material, so ample repetition was required as well as substantially reducing the content of the course due to time restrictions. These modifications were done with a heavy heart as we both have the reputation of taking our gatekeeping function very seriously and take great pride in preparing our students exceptionally well for the workforce. However, a traumatized brain has impaired executive functioning (Polak et al., 2012) meaning that learning will be more difficult, and we had to accept the limitations in our role.

6. Lean on each other

Researchers have established that social support fosters effective coping strategies and is a protective factor for developing stress-related illnesses (Ozbay et al., 2007). Over the year, we reflected on the way we were essentially left on our own after the initial week of disclosure. This feeling of isolation was due to a variety of factors including the pandemic and the institution recently ending a lockout that seemed to further breakdown faculty-administrative communications.

To our surprise, there did not appear to be any protocols to be in place to support faculty who faced such a tragedy in their classroom. Sadly, both of us do not recall any administrative staff checking in with us after the initial shock wore off. It seemed to mirror what bereaved families experience when the world goes on without them as they manage their grief. We were left wondering what faculty would do if they did not have a counselling background and had to face an extreme traumatic event solo. Therefore, we offer three specific recommendations to promote connection when instructors are navigating classroom dynamics due to a tragedy:

1. Have upper administration insert into their calendars the task to check in with faculty members at least once a week for the first month and then at least monthly for the first 6 months. We offer this recommendation because, after the term ended, we noticed we started processing our reactions in a deeper, unexpected way that also made it challenging to start a new term with a new group of students who were not aware of the inner struggles we faced just weeks before.

To us, a check in would be asking questions via email, phone calls, or office visits that could begin by “Just thinking of you…. how are you? and “Is there is anything you need from my office or me right now?” For more specific questions, we reflected how we would have appreciated questions that we may or may not have wanted to answer but by being asked would have sent a powerful message that we have not forgotten you, and you remain part of our community:

• What is going well and not so well with making sense and coping with the news?
• How are you feeling – what are you noticing as being harder/easier as more time passes since the disclosure of the tragedy?
• How are you sleeping?
• What is your sense? Are you ready to participate in a debriefing with the other faculty members who are also impacted by this tragedy? We will continue to offer this service until there is no longer a need to do so.
• Is there anything I can do to help make connections to expand your support or help you with your task of teaching?
• Is there anyone you know connected to this tragedy who might need a check in or more support?
• Are you able to give yourself permission to slow down as you make sense of what happened and support your students?
• What thoughts and feelings are you having about starting a new term?

2. When interacting with faculty who have experienced a crisis in their classroom, ensure they have access to a comprehensive, detailed, up-to-date list of a variety of crisis resources. There would be significant value in sharing this list with these faculty at least three times over a period of a several months with normalization that these resources are designed to help them with their mental exhaustion, grief, and traumatic reactions to the event and to help them navigate their role of being a compassionate leader for their grieving students.

3. As psychologists, we tracked our temptation to withdraw and go numb. However, we both knew of the wisdom (Hall, 2014) of reaching out to digest the affective and cognitive toll we were experiencing. As two faculty members, if we had not leaned upon each other for academic and emotional support, we fully anticipated we could have suffered some serious posttraumatic symptoms. The most common ways we supported each other were:

• going for long walks in companionable silence;
• talking freely, without judging each other, regarding our utter exhaustion;
• naming aloud how we felt forgotten by our academic leaders and mentors;
• sharing our concerns about the students we had in common and how to point them in the direction of receiving assistance;
• debriefing and problem solving the challenges of meeting the course objectives while also bearing witness to the students’ grief responses;
• making it a daily ritual to check in with each other, often asking–what is one thing that is going well for you today and one thing that you are struggling with? When we felt we had the energy, we would also ask each other, is there anything I can do–when I feel I can–that might be of assistance to you?
• in the last few months, we noticed a definite shift in our debriefings as we are now more focused on how we might honour this student’s death as this cohort graduates from university, and how we can construct meaning for ourselves around this student’s death.

Disclosure

This article was developed with the assistance of OpenAI's language model, ChatGPT-4. While the initial content ideas, structure, and final editing were provided by the human author, ChatGPT-4 contributed in providing insights, drafting sections of the text, and offering language suggestions.