The SMCS Listening Circle is giving students and staff alike at the Toronto independent Catholic boys’ school a safe space to cope with loss together while celebrating those close to them who have died.
Gianluca Caporicci, the initiative's creator, now faces new challenges as a first-year student in McGill University. However, it wasn’t long ago that he found himself back home in Toronto, facing family challenges that were much more important.
“In December of 2022, my mom contracted endometrial cancer. Towards April, she was fighting it while I was in the second half of my Grade 11 year at St. Michael’s and my brother was at Queen's University. On April 27 of 2023, she passed away,” Caporicci said.
Dealing with this tremendous loss, Caporcci said he stayed away from school for two weeks. He recalls the feeling he had upon returning and finding out his peers had heard about the news, something that would inevitably become a blessing in disguise.
“I remember the whole school knew what had happened because it had been put on the announcements with a prayer from one of the priests at St. Michael’s. There were a lot of people such as other students and staff who also had similar stories of loss who were comforting me and I started to see just how many people were dealing with grief,” he said.
So in his Grade 12 year Caporicci decided to bring the St. Michael’s community together with his newly formed Listening Circle, a type of school club that focuses on group meetings with open discussions and healthy dialogue around healing from loss of all kinds.
Still traversing his own grief journey, Caporicci recalls the launch of the program as a time of uncertainty regarding its validity. He wondered if it would be worth implementing at all.
“There were definitely a lot of doubts and I even remember my dad being a little bit skeptical as well. To start something like this, in an all-boys' private school environment, was risky because of those masculine feelings — guys may not always be inclined to go to a listening circle and talk about a family member who has passed away as they usually want to bottle those feelings up,” he said.
Despite these initial uncertain feelings, the listening circle took off, with the first meeting breaking the ice for what would become a bi-weekly gathering championing the mental well-being of students from Grades 10-12.
The SMCS Listening Circle would slowly become a space students began to depend on when they needed it most. Caporicci recalls a particularly special moment of unity following the passing of teacher Frank Heijmans.
“Whether it was for a school suicide prevention walk, the passing of Mr. Heijmans or even if one of my peers had a family member pass away, the listening circle was there to fit those needs. Different people needed it at different times and that I think is what made it so valuable to have,” he said.
“There were a lot of conversations about grief as a whole, a lot of shared emotion, tears at times, but it was also just a way to get away from the whole teacher-student experience and stress of school, sports and things like that. It became a blessing to get together with like-minded people and just have a space to enjoy each other's company.”
The Listening Circle initiative has been taken over by current students at St. Michael’s, something Caporicci had desperately hoped would be the case upon graduating last year and seeing the benefits of the program.
He hopes staff and students not only continue what he started but find new and exciting ways to address student mental health as lasting impacts continue to come out of the unique club.
“Selfishly, I felt like (the Listening Circle) was something that I needed when I was going through my loss, but when you go to school and you talk about these issues with people who always need support, it becomes this different relationship that you build and that was incredibly motivating,” Caporicci said.