Pedagogical Reflections on Loss

Abstract

This article examines the idea of loss in relation to elementary education. The goal is to show the importance of teachers attending to their students’ individual experience and, in particular, to the ways schools can make children feel lost or found. The article relies primarily on classroom narratives, focusing heavily on stories about one student with a diagnosed learning disability. The author invokes psychoanalytic theory to help explain the connection between mourning and the ways children behave in school and argues for the significance of teachers examining their own relationships with students and learning. The article also aims to critique the role of audit culture in education by showing how it simplifies the way students and teachers experience each other.