It’s the class that every senior student at the Harley School wants to take.“It’s honestly one of the reasons why my parents enrolled me here as a second grader,” student Zora Scannell-Rooks said.
 
“A lot of what I knew was that people wanted to take it because they had heard for so many years,” student Oscar Bernfield said.
 

“That really just showed how much this class meant to people,” student Margaret Kass said.

What You Need To Know
  • The Harley School’s nationally recognized Hospice Program offers a unique opportunity for Grade 12 students to engage with the universal human experience of death and dying
  • This two-decade-old elective goes beyond a traditional classroom by combining academic study of the medical, philosophical, and cultural aspects of mortality with hands-on comfort care experience at local hospice homes
  • The course is divided into three trimesters: Focusing on the tenets and history of hospice/palliative care, direct care for clients, and having outside resource people  present various topics as well as a ‘Ceremony of Remembrance,’ a time to celebrate those who have died and share how everyone is connected

But death is conversation that many people often avoid.

 

“Now that I’ve started to sort of interact with death and hospice and the dying process in this way, it’s not scary,” Kass said. “And it can actually be really nice. Dying is about more than death itself. It’s also about living.”
 
The college preparatory school’s curriculum includes a broad range of topics. But its one of a kind program has made this school the only one in the country to do it, hospice education.
 
“They’re unique and they’re fun, like learning how to turn somebody, how to clean their sheets with somebody in the bed that you can’t move,” student Hatcher Morrow said. “It’s like they’re very niche skills that you wouldn’t think you’d need to learn. And just help get rid of some taboos and stigmas around death and that, like palliative care. Just to make other people’s lives better.”
 
The Harley School launched its hospice program more than 20 years ago, introducing students to workforce opportunities. And for these kids, within just a few months, they have been gaining a deeper understanding both professionally and personally.“Before taking this class,” Kass said. “I had actually had quite a bit of experience with hospice. I no longer have any grandparents left.”
 
“My grandmother passed away when I was about ten years old,” Scannell-Rooks said. “And I was right there when she died. And I, I don’t know how I could tell this, but I could feel that that made it different and made it better having people there for you. And I wanted to do that for someone.”
 
The course is led by educator Sybil Prince. Students take the work from the classroom and work alongside volunteers at a private comfort care home.
 
“They’re going to care for approximately 50 to 60 individuals who they will care for and who will die,” the Harley School educator Sybil Prince said. “The lessons that they learn about life and living their own life and building a life of meaning and purpose.” Something Prince says they can’t learn in a classroom.
 
“Regardless of what I’m going to do down the road, maybe I’ll be a mathematician, but the things I’ve learned here will always carry through with me,” Kass said.