The Vulnerable Heart of Literacy: Centering Trauma as Powerful Pedagogy

Language and Literacy

by Elizabeth Dutro, Gerald Campano (Foreword), Megan Ollett (Afterword)

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, especially their writing, in positive, meaningful, and supported ways.

Book Features:

Offers a reconceptualization of trauma as a source of connection, reciprocity, knowledge, and literacy engagement. Identifies three key tenets that teachers can follow to ensure that children's experiences and perspectives are honored. Shares classroom stories and literacy lessons, including many examples of children's writing. Includes sum-up reflections and discussion prompts. Provides up-to-date lists of resources.

Genres: Teaching, Education

144 pages, Paperback

Published August 23, 2019

Reviews

[Tanya · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a lucky pleasure to be able to read this book and interview the author, though I wasn't sure that was how I was going to feel after I read the first chapter. At that moment I cried, put the book away for two weeks, and tried to think about who else I could give this task to, as I wasnt' sure I was up for interviewing someone who was writing about what happens when children's trauma -- or any part of their whole selves -- is not welcomed at school.
thank goodness I kept going. If your school is talking about trauma-informed pedagogy and/or SEL, be sure to include Dutro in the mix. She includes a respectful critique of "trauma programs' for schools, and beautiful story telling and analysis that makes it seem if not easy, certainly doable and necessary to make room for students (and teachers) to bring their whole selves to school.

[Galen Fletcher]

I read this book for an organization I’m apart of and honestly it was very insightful and talks about a new approach to trauma within the classroom.

[Sean Kottke · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my masters degree program, I researched bibliotherapy as a method for supporting gifted and talented adolescents navigate developmental milestones and trials through the language arts curriculum. Then I met Elizabeth Dutro at NCTE in a presentation on boys' and girls' book selections, which I found so compelling that it became the focus of my doctoral studies. It thus feels like I've completed a full cycle of spiraling scholarly trajectories with reading this soulful book, coming back to centering affective and social emotional learning in the literacy classroom. The book is brief but packs a punch. It threads a difficult needle in considering how to center trauma yet not regard children through a deficit lens, to position the teacher's role as witness and advocate, not savior. It succeeds admirably by adopting a funds of knowledge perspective on the trauma children and teachers carry with them. The book debuted in 2019; while we could not have known just how essential its core message would be after 2020, children's experience of trauma is not so new a phenomenon that attention to this vital topic isn't overdue.

[Imani Matherson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is great for anyone who works in education. This book helps explain how students deal with outside trauma and a sense of worthiness in the classroom. Most students in the book talked about how they felt like there trauma could not be spoken or written about in school. It made me reflect about what policies or rules are in place that bring fear to students when expressing their trauma. This book helps with understanding that a classroom should be a safe haven for students to speak their truth in a way that’s comfortable for them such as writing. I would recommend this book for anyone in education.

[Janine Darragh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the stories/examples provided. This book is definitely primary-level focused. I think it would be best suited for those who do not subscribe to letting children talk or read about anything "sad" in school, and for those teachers who don't believe in letting students see that they, too, can have vulnerabilities.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really beautiful and special book. I really value boundaries in trauma-informed education and this pushed me to think about boundaries in new ways. Dutro's writing is gorgeous and I know I'll be revisiting this text often.

[Jill Adams · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping to transfer the ideas to secondary...but it's definitely primary.

[Paula Boyce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Elizabeth Dutro writes so eloquently and emphatically about the importance of sharing both positive and difficult life experiences with our young students during writing workshop. By allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and opening up with our students about our loss, grief, disappointments and challenges, we are inviting (not requiring) our students to also share those same feelings and bring to their writing what has happened or is happening to them in their out-of school-lives. By acknowledging to students that they are not alone in their hard times, that others, even their teachers, have hard times--and silly and happy times--students will feel that they belong to their classroom writing communities.