Hope & Healing Required Readings
Pedagogies of Trauma and Healing
- Article: Tyler, Lisa. Narratives of Pain: Trauma and the Healing Power of Writing. JAEPL, Vol. 5, Winter 1999-2000, 14-24
- Although quite old, I found this article’s discussion of the benefits students gain from writing about trauma highly persuasive
- MacDevitt, John. (2013). Responding to Student Traumatic Writing: A Psychologist’s View. Teaching English in the Two Year College. 135-148.
- This article from a psychologist/composition teacher talks about students’ need “to air pain”
Sample Stories of Healing
- Article: DeBacher, Sarah, & Deborah Harris-Moore. First, Do No Harm: Teaching Writing in the Wake of Traumatic. Composition Forum 34, Summer 2016
- This article tells about two traumatic events and how teachers tried to help their students cope with those events through writing
Hope & Healing Optional Materials
Optional Pedagogical Resources
- Teaching Blog Post: Silvas, Tiana. (2018). Releasing the mind of childhood trauma through writing. International Literacy Association.
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Experts from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network share their recommendations for educators supporting students during the COVID-19 crisis.
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Optional Articles/Book Chapters
- Molloy, Cathryn. Multimodal Composing as Healing: Toward a New Model for Writing as Healing Courses. Composition Studies 44.2 (2016): 134–152
- Goggin, Peter, & Goggin, Maureen. (2005). Presence in absence: Discourses and teaching (in, on, and about) trauma. In Trauma and the Teaching of Writing (pp. 29-51). State University of New York Press.
- Peter Goggin is an IUP Alum
- Moran, Molly Hurley (2004). Toward a writing and healing approach in the basic writing classroom: One professor’s personal odyssey. Journal of Basic Writing, Vol. 23, No. 2.
- Book Chapter: Frankl, Viktor E. (1992). Man’s Search for Meaning. An introduction to logo therapy. Fourth Edition. Boston: Beacon Press.
- This is one of the great works of the 20th Century; the entire book is fabulous
- Especially worth reading are pp. 78-91. Please note that the text on p. 83 is readable but slightly messed up. The rest of the pages are easy to read.
- A key narrative related quote is on p. 81: “We could say that most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.”
Optional Thesis/Dissertations
- Rogers, Scott L., “Writing out the storm: trauma and the work of composition.” (2011). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1225.
- A dissertation that examines the idea of teaching about trauma in composition courses
- Especially valuable are pp. 30-59:
- Tropes, Arguments, and Narrative of Post-traumatic Pedagogy p. 30
- Teachers Like Therapists (pp. 31-43)
- Writing Is Inevitable (pp. 44-52)
- Trauma as a Teachable Moment (pp. 53-59)
- Oorlog, Carrie Crisman, “Within and Without: Psychoanalysis, Trauma Theory, and the Healing Narrative” (2016). Theses and Dissertations. 1111.
- A thesis that discusses how to respond to living in the “Age of Trauma,” a term she takes from Stolorow (2011)
- Stolorow, Robert D. “Empathic Civilization in an Age of Trauma.” International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology. 22 November 2011. https://iapsp.org/eforum/feeling_221111.php.
Optional Book Review
Class Activities for Stories of Hope & Healing
Opening
Part 1. A Song about the Power of Stories to Bring Hope
- Video: “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman (1988)
- In this song, Chapman tells a story of the future to give hope for escaping the troubles of the present
Part 2. How to Teach Stories That Address Trauma
- MacDevitt, John. (2013). Responding to Student Traumatic Writing: A Psychologist’s View. Teaching English in the Two Year College. 135-148.
- This article from a psychologist/composition teacher talks about students’ need “to air pain”
- “According to Joshua Smyth’s 1998 synthesis of the research on the impact of written emotional expression on health, there is a predictable and very significant rise in writers’ emotional distress as they write about traumas and in the immediate aftermath of writing. However, in the many studies included in Smyth’s analysis, few subjects claimed to have actual difficulty dealing with the feelings that emerged from their writing practice: they just felt distressed. I think of the emergence of emotion as a good thing, an evidence of caring for oneself (why weep or rage over the suffering of someone you dislike?) and a sign that a pain or a tension is relaxing its grip. Rather than attempting to “do” something, to “fix” the situation or feeling, psychotherapists commonly attempt to receive the client empathically and to communicate that empathy to her. Since Carl R. Rogers’s application of ideas from counseling to the educational process, empathy has been suggested to teachers at all levels as a stance that helps free students to learn” (p. 138).
- “If the composition instructor is perceived by the student as decent, em-pathic, and caring, the instructor need not agonize about exactly what to say: she can just say what is on her mind, as tactfully as possible” (p. 139).
- Trust the student and respond as an empathetic listener
- “I think a tactful ‘speaking of one’s mind’ includes using ‘I’ statements instead of ‘you’ statements. For example, I felt uneasy after I read your essay about cutting, and it nagged at the back of my mind last night. I feel like I’m intruding, asking this, but are you in danger of doing away with yourself? This is much easier for a student to hear than You sound pretty disturbed—are you going to kill yourself? (p. 139).
- “If writing students choose to create and share personal writing, it may be helpful to them and to their readers. It will not damage them. But whether writing is personal and self-disclosing or impersonal and formal, students will feel discomfort at the prospect of being evaluated. Many may feel far more discomfort writing a research paper than a more personal paper. Regardless of the type of assignment, the teacher’s job is the same: to maintain an environment (including relationships) that promotes students’ learning and to help them become better writers. Treating students with respect and empathizing with their feelings are just part of maintain-ing the learning environment. Sharing an honest but supportive personal reaction and expressing empathy only take a few moments, and those efforts make it much easier and natural to work on the process of improving the piece of writing” (p. 146).
Part 3. Do No Harm
- Article: DeBacher, Sarah, & Deborah Harris-Moore. First, Do No Harm: Teaching Writing in the Wake of Traumatic. Composition Forum 34, Summer 2016
- “My biggest teaching crisis that semester came when I faced the unavoidable: I would have to assign grades to my students’ writing, which just felt wrong. I found myself struggling to separate the writing from the writer, the text from the life. Certainly, we writing teachers face this challenge in ordinary circumstances, but suddenly I felt paralyzed by the task. Tangled up in a collective trauma, each ‘F’ took on new meaning, both absurd and perhaps even cruel. My students struggled to meet learning outcomes. They—and I, for that matter—struggled simply to show up—a feat deserving of an ‘A,’ I remember thinking. Inflated grades across the department that semester reflect that this struggle was not mine alone.
I soon found myself asking, “Who am I to make my students write about Katrina?” and “Who am I to cause them further potential harm in the form of a grade?” I think trauma theorists would say those are good questions. - “With no guidebook or instructions to follow, instructors are often left with their instincts and immediate resources. After reflecting on our unique but overlapping experiences, we don’t have any definitive answers to the challenge of how to teach after and amidst trauma. What’s clear to us both is that while we want very much to help our students, as writers, make sense of their worlds and lives through writing, we also want them to have some choice in how they go about it. And while silence may be an option for them, we writing teachers have an obligation to understand and discuss how—and perhaps even if and when—to teach in traumatic contexts.”
- “My biggest teaching crisis that semester came when I faced the unavoidable: I would have to assign grades to my students’ writing, which just felt wrong. I found myself struggling to separate the writing from the writer, the text from the life. Certainly, we writing teachers face this challenge in ordinary circumstances, but suddenly I felt paralyzed by the task. Tangled up in a collective trauma, each ‘F’ took on new meaning, both absurd and perhaps even cruel. My students struggled to meet learning outcomes. They—and I, for that matter—struggled simply to show up—a feat deserving of an ‘A,’ I remember thinking. Inflated grades across the department that semester reflect that this struggle was not mine alone.
Part 4. Pedagogical Resources
- Article: Molloy, Cathryn. Multimodal Composing as Healing: Toward a New Model for Writing as Healing Courses. Composition Studies 44.2 (2016): 134–152
- Teaching Blog Post: Silvas, Tiana. (2018). Releasing the mind of childhood trauma through writing. International Literacy Association.
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Experts from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network share their recommendations for educators supporting students during the COVID-19 crisis.
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Part 5. School Story Draft Review
- Please send your School Story draft to the other people in your group
- Read the story and then provide feedback
- Please cover the following in your response:
- What did you like about the story?
- What are the story’s strengths?
- What areas could be improved, enhanced, or clarified?
- Could the reflection be improved in any way?
- If the writer were to make only one revision, what would you suggest?
Part 6. The Power of Words (A Thankfulness Activity; 20 minutes)
- Every family and every family story is different, but whatever form that family takes, our family story shapes who we are
- Even if your family is not perfect or holds problems, hopefully you have close people who have helped you along the way and this activity is designed to help you identify those people and their contributions to your life so you can give thanks
- “In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.”--Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love
- Spend a few minutes writing a memory about a family member for whom you are thankful; this writing will help you to preserve a little of that memory
- Anyone who wishes to share a thought of gratitude is welcome to do so
- “I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”–G.K. Chesterton
- How Words & Frequency Can Change Water
- I encourage you to send a word of thanks to the person you chose from your family; I’m quite certain they will appreciate it
Part 7. Three Skills for Self-Regulation Techniques
To help students cope with stress/trauma, here are some techniques to use in a class. This can help if someone gets triggered as well, by helping students return to a state of homeostasis/calm:
- Strategy One: Self-Hugging
- One hand on the heart, one hand on the belly
- Strategy Two: Grounding
- Bring awareness to yourself in the present room
- Identify that you are alright in this exact time and space
- Feel your feet on the floor and your bottom on the chair
- Strategy Three: Box Breathing
- Breathe in seven, hold seven, exhale seven, pause seven
Part 8. And to Guide Us Back