The Vulnerable Heart of Literacy: Centering Trauma as Powerful Pedagogy

by Elizabeth Dutro

Overview

What is trauma and what does it mean for the literacy curriculum? In this book, elementary teachers will learn how to approach difficult experiences through the everyday instruction and interactions in their classrooms. Readers will look inside classrooms and literacies across genres to see what can unfold when teachers are committed to compassionate, critical, and relational practice. Weaving her own challenging experiences into chapters brimming with children’s writing and voices, Dutro emphasizes that issues of power and privilege matter centrally to how attention to trauma positions children. The book includes questions and prompts for discussion, reflection, and practice and describes pedagogies and strategies designed to provide opportunities for children to bring the varied experiences of life, including trauma, to their school literacies in positive, meaningful, and supported ways.

“This stunning book about trauma interrogates the very notion. Dutro excels at interweaving her stories with those of teachers and students and at challenging readers to find their way into the fabric. I recommend this book to teachers so that they might accept her challenge to explore and understand the importance of both witnessing and testimony in relation to trauma in literacy curriculum and pedagogy.”
—Mollie Blackburn, The Ohio State University

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807778081
Publisher:	Teachers College Press
Publication date:	09/06/2019
Series:	Language and Literacy Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	590 KB

About the Author

Elizabeth Dutro is a professor of education at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Table of Contents

Foreword Gerald Campano v

Acknowledgments ix

1 What Does Trauma Mean for Literacy Classrooms? 1

What Is Trauma? 4

Classrooms as Sites of Testimony and Witness to Trauma 6

Contexts and Ideas We'll Explore 11

2 Pedagogies of Testimony and Critical Witness in the Literacy Classroom 15

Navigating Approaches to Trauma in Education 17

Tenets of Pedagogies of Testimony and Critical Witness 22

Enacting Testimony and Critical Witness 37

Finding Your Pedagogical Metaphor 40

3 Pedagogies of Testimony and Critical Witness in Practice 43

Integrating Testimony and Witness into Literacy Instruction 47

The Lemonade Club Unit 50

Children's Stories 52

Reflections on the Lemonade Club Unit 55

4 Testimony and Critical Witness to Trauma Across Genres 57

Genre Study and Testimony to Trauma 59

Poetry 60

Letters 67

Informational Genres 71

Narrative Genres 78

Reflections on Genre and Children's Traumas 84

5 Tracing Children's Testimonies to Trauma Across the School Year 87

Children Weaving Testimony into Literacies Over Time 89

Classrooms as Sites of Swirled Stories 95

Reflections on Tracing Testimony and Witness Across Time 99

6 Conclusion 103

Living the Tenets of Testimony and Critical Witness 105

Teachers' Well-Being in the Midst of Commitment 109

Seeking Connection and Collaboration 110

Embracing Process in Centering Trauma as Powerful Pedagogy 111

A Coda-and Final Suggestion for Reflection, Discussion, and Practice 113

Afterword Megan Ollett 115

References 117

Index 123

About the Author 131

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Elizabeth Dutro’s scholarship makes an urgent intervention into current discussions of trauma and education. As a researcher who has been thinking about the intersections of trauma and literacy teaching and learning for decades, Dutro views all students themselves as writers, poets, critics, and literate beings who have the interpretive agency to make meaning out of difficult life experiences."
—From the foreword by Gerald Campano, University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education

"This stunning book about trauma interrogates the very notion. Dutro excels at interweaving her stories with those of teachers and students and at challenging readers to find their way into the fabric. I recommend this book to teachers so that they might accept her challenge to explore and understand the importance of both witnessing and testimony in relation to trauma in literacy curriculum and pedagogy.”
—Mollie Blackburn, The Ohio State University

“Elizabeth Dutro’s writing is meant to be read aloud, each word demanding attention, each metaphor leaving a taste in your mouth, each story lingering in the thick air into which you speak it. She is a writer who has gifted us with a stunning guide for writing with children in classrooms that honors life, loss, joy, devastation, and everything in between. This is the book on justice-oriented writing workshop that we’ve all been waiting for and it is delivered in a foil-wrapped soft and warm burrito that you will feel in your hands for a long time.”
—Stephanie Jones, Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor and codirector of the Red Clay Writing Project, University of Georgia

Editorial Reviews

”Every class is touched by the hard parts of life, and The Vulnerable Heart of Literacy has the potential to help teachers build them into students’ literacy engagement so that their writing is meaningful and helps them navigate the emotional challenges that inevitably face them in life.”

—Journal of Language and Literacy Education

From the Publisher