Sometimes we need to talk about hard things, like grief in the classroom. Because real life is hard, and real life is in our classroom every day. Our students and we as teachers — we all deal with death. I had to this past school year, and it was hard. It still is. And not everyone experiences it the same way. There’s no one-size-fits-all.
On this show, first-grade teacher Haleigh Bresnan and school psychologist Rebecca Brigner share how to help grieving kids and yourself. Their precious children’s book about grief, If You’re Lucky Enough to Know a Unicorn, honors Kennedy, a baby girl who lived just four months.
I knew this show would be about grief, but it took such an honest turn that it became one of the most authentic conversations about grief in the classroom that I’ve ever heard. I’m glad we had this conversation and I hope it helps people better understand both what teachers have to help kids with and what we deal with ourselves.
A gentle note: this episode talks about the death of a baby and about miscarriage.
Haleigh and Rebecca see grief from the first-grade classroom, the school psychologist’s office, and their own lives. Here’s where to listen.
Here’s where the facts in this episode come from, with the time stamp so you can hear each one. Checked October 6, 2026.
If you’re supporting a grieving student, the Coalition to Support Grieving Students has free training videos and guides for teachers, including what to say and what not to say. And if you’re the one grieving, please give yourself the same patience you give your students, and reach out to someone you trust.
This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki
Vicki Davis (00:00): Today is Classroom Wednesday, episode 1003. We will talk about helping kids through grief in the classroom. If little ones are listening in the car, you might want to save it for later. Our guest today wrote a gentle children’s book in memory of a baby girl they loved who lived just four months. But their story opens a door to something we don’t really talk about that most of us will face as teachers. Remember that grief looks different for everybody, and you don’t have to carry this burden alone. And if you’re grieving too, I hope you’ll give yourself patience and kindness that you also give your students.
Announcer (00:39): This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.
Vicki Davis (00:43): Today, we have a remarkable team, cousins who feel more like sisters. We have Haleigh Bresnan, first grade teacher from Connecticut, and Rebecca Brigner, school psychologist. They have written a book together that will stay with you long after this episode ends. The book is If You’re Lucky Enough to Know a Unicorn. It was written to honor Kennedy, a baby girl born with a rare condition called heterotaxy, who changed everyone around her in her short months of life. This conversation helps us help children with grief. And Haleigh, grief, It’s a hard thing, but it’s part of life, isn’t it?
Haleigh Bresnan (01:23): It definitely is. As a mother and as a teacher, grief seems to make its way into even just the most random conversations. And trying to navigate that with your children and your students is definitely something that they do not teach you when you’re in school.
Vicki Davis (01:40): So tell us about Kennedy and what inspired you to start writing this.
Haleigh Bresnan (01:45): I was pregnant when Kennedy’s mom, Lauren, was also pregnant. My brother was best friends with Kennedy’s dad growing up. As we got older, my husband was also great friends with her father. We come from a very small town. Lauren and I were pregnant together, and she actually gave birth to Kennedy just a week after I had my first son, Wesson. From the get-go, Kennedy defied all the odds and she was born really strong. She did really great. She was at home with her family. She really was just magical and brought so much happiness to her family in the four months that she was here. So of course, after Kennedy had passed, I was still dealing with my own postpartum emotions and I would rock my son to sleep every night. And I was just so touched by Lauren and Matt’s strength as a couple and moving on for their their son. He was a few years old at that point. I just sat and I rocked my son every night and I thought of them and I thought of my own emotions and I just started randomly writing this poem a little bit at a time. Every now and then I would just kind of come back to it. In the last six years, I just would chip away at it until finally this June, I said to Rebecca, hey, do you think you’d want to maybe do some illustrations for me? And so that’s kind of how it turned into what it is now.
Vicki Davis (03:03): So Rebecca, you’re a school psychologist, right? Now you’re an illustrator. So tell us about the conversation where you got convinced that
Rebecca Brigner (03:11): It started where Haleigh had sent me her poem and it was beautiful and immediately tears start flowing because most beautiful words for remembering such a sweet little girl. And she said, do you think that you just draw a unicorn for me? And I’m like, all right. She’s like, all right, maybe add this and add this to it. And then the first picture came to life. It was the first picture in the book was the very first picture that I did. Then we put the words together and we’re like, let’s make another picture portraying the next line in the poem. And then one thing led to the next. And suddenly we had like eight pictures, not in a title page. And we reached out to a couple of different publishing companies. Haleigh did most of the legwork with that and published it because we really wanted the world to see what grief looks like, you know, how strong you can be during a time of sadness and how brave you can be in pushing through.
Vicki Davis (04:04): Haleigh, have you read it to your first graders and what was their response?
Haleigh Bresnan (04:08): They loved it. I’m not sure that they exactly understand the depth of it and I didn’t really go into it. They thought it was really cool that their teacher was on the news because the interview that we did was on a local news station. So they just thought that was awesome. We live in a small town. We work in that same small town. So the amount of community support we’ve received is just incredible. I mean, our superintendent, our principals, everyone in our buildings, everyone has just shown up for us. And it’s made our lives just so much more special. I mean, we love our jobs and we love the town that we live in. But seeing this has just been, I feel like, another level. I feel like so far. Proud to live where we do.
Vicki Davis (04:55): Do y’all have kids that have read it, your own children?
Rebecca Brigner (04:57): So I have two kids, a five-year-old girl and a two-and-a-half-year-old boy. And my daughter, her theme for her birthday party this year was unicorns. So it really gets home to those younger ages. They all love the rainbows and unicorns right now. And we actually use a lot of the props from her party for our book signing that we had a couple weeks back. I think it really draws little kids in when they see what it is. And then I think the parents know the deeper meaning of the book and the words. It’s for everybody.
Haleigh Bresnan (05:27): I have two boys. I have a six-year-old and a three-year-old. I started writing the book when my six-year-old was barely four months old and he can read a lot of the words now. So just listening to him read this book that I used to write every night and I was rocking him and feeding him. And it’s just kind of surreal. It’s a full circle moment, something that started out so small. And when your baby was truly just a baby and COVID hit right after Kennedy died. And so I had all this time and I feel like, I just spent so much time at first, especially doing this poem. And now here we are this many years later, putting all this work into the poem again. So I just feel like it is just special.
Vicki Davis (06:12): What’s your message to a teacher who might be in a classroom right now? And that classroom is going through grief. It might be parents. It might be a student in the class. How do we help?
Haleigh Bresnan (06:21): It really depends on the child. And I think you have to use best practice techniques to assist the child in the way that they need. Yes, because a lot of time grief comes out and not in a way that you would think. They’re not going to come out and say, hey, Mrs. Bresnan, Mrs. Brigner, I’m having a really tough time and I’m going to turn your room upside down today because I’m having a tough time. It comes out in their actions, sometimes social issues with others. So I think a lot of the time it’s just knowing what they need, whether it’s do they need a hug? Do they need you to recognize what’s going on and to say it out loud? Or do they just want to play with their friends and just not think about it? Let them approach you at a later date. I just think every kid is so different and giving them their own independence when it comes to grief is just really important because one size does not fit all.
Rebecca Brigner (07:14): One word that came to mind for me when dealing with kids with grief is patience, because again, the shoe doesn’t fit on every student. So in my role, obviously, I have the opportunity to work with them one-on-one, which not every school district has that opportunity. But that is one thing, too, that I suggest is for teachers to be able to reach out to a school psychologist or social worker. Someone in the building that the child can go to to really feel safe and feel heard. And not that a teacher can’t provide that because for some, that teacher might provide all for that student, but some kids are a little bit more shy with their emotions. And I definitely see that firsthand in my role. I like having that opportunity to be able to talk to students one-on-one and really help them out and push them through as best I can and possibly get them supports outside of school too if they need that.
Vicki Davis (08:04): And I like how you manage your own grief through creativity. It’s so interesting to me as I record these shows how many things happened in my own life. And my dad passed October 1st of last year. As we’re recording this, the last two days, that grief, they call it grief ambush, that has been all over me. And I find myself as a teacher struggling with patience, and it’s not because I don’t love the kids. It’s because, golly, I miss my parents, you know? So grief hits all of us. And what was I doing? I was writing. I write poetry. I write. I can’t draw. Obviously, one of you has the talent for drawing. But sometimes that moment of dealing with your grief like you did, Haleigh, and saying, okay, I’m going to pick up the pen and write and process, isn’t that a very human thing to do as we struggle with grief?
Haleigh Bresnan (08:58): Definitely. And just giving yourself time. I think of my first year coming to this district. I had been a teacher for a few years in another district, but I finally got into the district I wanted. And we were getting ready for winter vacation. And I had just found out that I was pregnant. It was a little bit unexpected, but we were just excited. We already had our first son at this point. And all of a sudden, I just started not feeling well, got really sick. And come to find out, I was actively miscarrying. I had to go to school. And… Deal with all this because I really had no sick time available. And so I remember my stomach hurting, not feeling well, and going through my own grief and, you know, the process of a miscarriage. But I had to show up for my students and I had to show up for my son. And that’s something that I feel like a lot of teachers don’t talk about is you’re going through all of your own things, but you’re still expected to come and put on a show every day for these kids and show up for them and make their learning opportunities the best that you can. I think that’s really important that we point out because it’s something that I feel like no one talks about.
Rebecca Brigner (10:11): I feel like for so many years we’ve been told to like hide your emotion. Oh, you’re okay. You know, like, but whereas now we’re telling kids it’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to have these emotions. It’s okay to share this with people. But us as adults, we’re like, well, no, it’s not. That’s not the way we were taught. So it is a difference with, but yeah, it’s really hard to just pretend like nothing’s happening. But at the same time, keeping busy and doing something that you love, teaching or drawing or just being a parent, I think a lot of the times helps you push through. You see the light on the other side. You see that there’s a light right in front of you, whether it’s your children, your students in your classroom, creating a book so that others can see what grief looks like and what the process looks like.
Vicki Davis (10:57): What do Kennedy’s parents think about the book?
Haleigh Bresnan (11:00): Lauren was just so overwhelmed with happy emotions. She had no idea. We really didn’t tell anyone. Our closest friends and family members knew, but no one knew about it. And we wanted to keep it that way because I wanted to make sure that the book was like a whole representation of what we actually wanted. And I wanted to make sure it was perfect before we could present it to Kennedy’s parents. So she had no idea for the last six years. And I finally was able to reach out to her and let her know everything was going on. And I sent her the fine edits and she just couldn’t even believe it. She was completely blown away. They, of course, have been so supportive through all this as well. And the funny part is so the book I think was finally published on, the anniversary of Kennedy’s passing was just about a week later, so everyone that ordered like our first round of books ended up getting them a day early which was the day of Kennedy’s passing here her family was like you know on such a dark day here we are still talking about her six years later and other people now are talking about her and remembering her it was really great the way that the timing worked out.
Vicki Davis (12:14): Well, thank you both for processing your grief, sharing it with others. Grief is something that we as teachers not only help our students with, but we deal with ourselves in our classrooms, and it is part of life. And so we’ve been talking with Haleigh Bresnan, first grade teacher from Connecticut, and her cousin, Rebecca Brigner, school psychologist. The name of the book is If You’re Lucky Enough to Know a Unicorn. And what a beautiful story. It’s a children’s book. Thanks for coming on the show.
Announcer (12:46): Thank you for tuning in to 10 Minute Teacher Podcast. Join us here every weekday and subscribe to the Classroom Matters newsletter. See you later, educator.
Haleigh Bresnan is the author of If You’re Lucky Enough to Know a Unicorn. Growing up in Eastern Connecticut, she now teaches first grade in the same school district where her cousin Rebecca works as a school psychologist. Haleigh enjoys traveling with her husband and two sons, as well as coaching high school cheerleading. Her passion for storytelling and art inspired her to create this heartfelt book, blending her love for writing with meaningful themes.
Rebecca Brigner is the illustrator of If You’re Lucky Enough to Know a Unicorn. Also raised in Eastern Connecticut, she works as a school psychologist. Rebecca cherishes time spent with family and friends, whether enjoying cozy nights in or spontaneous beach adventures. Her artistic background and shared love for storytelling with Haleigh led to the creation of this special book, combining their talents in a project close to their hearts.
If this conversation helped you, share it with a teacher who is carrying a loss right now.
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