Electing to Heal

Source:

Garcia, A. & Dutro, E. (2018). Electing to heal: Trauma, healing, and politics in the classrooms. English Education, 50(4), 375-383.

What is Sacred:

As teacher educators, we have to find a way to navigate in the dark spaces of fear and pain that crease the fabric of our work, noting the intersections between our disciplinary commitments, theoretical traditions, and democracy. What does it mean to do teacher education and study literacy in a democratic society in which the lives of many are continually disenfranchised? We need to locate the political in our work, and locate ourselves within it. We need to find places to highlight how classrooms are spaces of inclusion and oppression, are spaces that value and actively resist diverse identities, histories, and knowledges. This is a moment that can and must be harnessed for change, for coalition building, for electing to heal (p. 382).

Connection to current/future work:

More training on "trauma-informed pedagogy" and then decide where that fits in to the scope and sequence of the classes and the curriculum. There is still work to be done, but Dr. Mays Imad, in her training with us started with a question to ask:

"I wish my professor knew. . ."

When I asked this as an exit pass, the range of answers I got from my students made me feel like there was a rush as far as what to do about it. So if I ask, I need to be prepared to do something about it. That is why I need to train and read with the urgency of a coming pandemic. Oh wait, the pandemic is already here.

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