New Literacy Studies: For What It’s Worth…

By: Dr. Todd Lilly, University of South Carolina

(For what it’s worth, this blog is peppered with a few hyperlinks to entertain the reader and to illustrate New Literacy Studies… for what it’s worth. Enjoy!)

Here’s a scene you might recognize: Everyone is concerned about the mental health of the young prince. The father of his fiancé finds him alone in a room in the castle, absorbed in a book. “What do you read, my lord?” The prince stops reading, flips through his book as if to try to find an answer to this most-important question. Then, as if making an astonishing discovery, he answers: “Words. Words. Words!”

I know what you’re thinking: “I’m not an English teacher! What’s this got to do with me?” Well… In the context of New Literacy Studies…Plenty. For what it’s worth, there was certainly a whole lot more in the prince’s book than words, and that should interest all of us.

“private property” by Lost Albatross is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Our house backs up to a popular public recreation area, so our Home Owners’ Association (HOA) posted signs: “Private Property/ No Trespassing!”

Many third graders would have no trouble sounding out the words:

“Pr…Pr… Pr as in Pretzel”

“Tr…Tr…Tr… as in Truck”

Hmmmm… I have no idea why the ‘ATE’ in “ PRIVATE” shouldn’t be pronounced like “8” or why the ‘ei’ in “eight” should. What exactly is a ‘ə’ anyway? “I’m not a reading teacher!” Anyway, that’s the gist of old literacy studies.

So, maybe we secondary teachers don’t actually know all that much about Old Literacy Studies, but still, we get the idea: If kids know enough rules to sound out words, they can read just about anything we give them, whether it’s a social studies text book or Hamlet. It’s an autonomous design: Learn to decode and you have power. It’s that simple.

Well… actually, no, it’s not that simple. And neither are the literacy events and practices we expect students to engage in when they enter our classrooms. That’s where New Literacy Studies gets interesting.

About 30 years ago, just about the same time as “You’ve got mail!” several out-of-the-box smart people from a few English-speaking countries got together and kicked around the idea that literacy was more than decoding, semiotics, and semantics. In the mid-1990s they saw how the rise in popularity of digital technology had the potential to radically change the way people produced and consumed all kinds of texts. They got so excited about this “New” idea that they made plans to meet in a small New England town, New London, New Hampshire, just to talk about it. And they did. They came to be known as “The New London Group.” What was their conclusion?

This might be a good time to get up, stretch, visit the bathroom and/or the refrigerator, maybe do a little yoga… Ok, here goes:

They decided that literacy is a social event embedded in a complex web of power-laden social and technological contexts that all revolve around texts and language. (Yes, English teachers; that’s what Pygmalion, written a century ago was all about… “Duh!”). Another way of looking at it is that literacy exists by means of some technology (a book, a sign, a billboard…) in a social space between a producer and a consumer. It involves ways of speaking, thinking, acting, and believing, which would mean that one’s identity and membership in social groups can and does affect meaning. This mutation from literacy as merely decoding to literacy as a social practice was coined “the social turn.”

So there. Move over Gutenberg!

That’s pretty much what they could agree upon. I can imagine the discussion got a bit contentious when they started thinking about the definition of “text.” Is an embroidery of birds on a pillowcase a text? Seriously, that’s an important question in the context of multiliteracies, but we’ll save that for another blog.

For now, let’s consider the “No Trespassing” sign above as a text. It’s not a Falkner novel or a Shakespeare play, “but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.”

Someone created the sign, someone nailed it to a tree, and there are indeed people who have come along and read it. The sign successfully transfers an idea from the sign’s producer to the consumer: “Keep off OUR property!” The literacy event is accomplished. What more might these New Literacy folks say?

Well…plenty. They would point out that that the posting and reading of the sign was but an event, part of a larger practice that brought together myriad social and power connections. The sign was initially a reaction to a legal context. At our annual HOA meeting, our lawyer noted that if we hadn’t posted these signs, we would be liable for any damages incurred by anyone who stepped onto our property. (Don’t you just LOVE lawyers?)

There’s also, of course, a power dynamic. Who are these potential trespassers? We can only imagine them happening by and reading our message: We own something/ you don’t/ you can’t have it/ We deserve it/ You don’t. Nanananana… “The sign said you got to have a membership card to get inside…Ugh!”

I’m sure y’all noticed the graffiti on the sign, probably a tag, a unique form of literacy that a certain group of people (in this case, graffiti writers) use to identify their work: Loosely translated, it says: “Hey, I’m somebody too!” And am I wrong to deduce a bit of anger and animosity?

If literacy, then, is all about contexts and social memberships, who gets to decide meaning? ELA teachers have heard this refrain before; it’s not new.

Student: “Mr. Lilly, I think Robert Frost’s ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ is about Santa Claus.”

I can’t remember my reply, but now in my current life, I call forth the literacy gurus:

Louise Rosenblatt would have said, “Ok, a reader has a right to make meaning out of otherwise meaningless symbols.”

E.D. Hirsch might exclain: “Hogwash! Go ask Frost!”

Michel Foucault would look up from his bath: “Go for it kid ‘cuz Robert Frost is dead!”

Here’s some song lyrics that were a bit more popular than Frost when I was a kid:

“Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep. It starts when you’re aways afraid. You step out of line, the man come and take you away.”
–Stephen Stills

In the words of the great Yogi Berra: “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” For you youngins (“Ok, Boomer…”), long before Post Malone, Lizzo, Chance, JayZ/ Beyoncé; long before Justin and Taylor, even before Back Street Boyz and still further back before AC/DC there was the Buffalo Springfield. Band member Stephen Stills, in 1967, during the tumultuous years of the Vietnam War and Civil Rights, immortalized these words in his “For What It’s Worth” which rocketed to #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Ok, what’s it about? Vietnam Protests? The Generation Gap? Was it a precursor to NWA? “Words, words, words.”

Nope, it was about an event in which riot police confronted a large gathering of young people who came together to protest a curfew in Hollywood, California. But to hundreds of thousands, it represented a division in America, an anti-establishment movement that exists to this day. If you don’t recognize the lyrics, I’ll bet if you click on the above link, you’ll recognize the tune. And if so, is the tune an integral part of the text? (If you actually click on that link, you’ve officially become involved in New Literacy Studies!)

Ok, that’s cool, but here’s the kicker: What happens to a text when it becomes older than the generation for which it was written? In the 1990s, about the same time the New London Group met in New Hampshire, the Buffalo Springfield band members (minus Neil Young, of course) all in middle-age, allowed their song to be used in a Miller Beer commercial. What?! An anthem of protest converted into an anthem of capitalism?! “Something’s happenin’ here. What it is ain’t exactly clear…”

Well, actually, it is quite clear. The baton had been passed to a new generation. The context, the setting, the medium, the identities and power dynamics of the producers and consumers had changed from social injustice to quaffing a cold one. If you think about it, it’s much like what kids experience when they march from math to social studies to ELA and to lunch, all in the course of a typical morning. Everything changes. Students might read the same word in each class’ lesson, (“plot,” for example), but it will have a totally different meaning as the bell rings and students march from one class to another. The fact that they can pull this off day after day demonstrates remarkable sophistication. No science teacher is going to accept a lab report written as a rhetorical composition. As soon as students cross the threshold into the science room, they abandon the aesthetics of poetry that defined the day’s ELA class and magically conform to the inductive reasoning espoused by Francis Bacon, whoever he was.

Where old school technology goes to die-
Alex Watson, CC.org

Nothing is benign; a literacy event is always at the intersection of competing contexts (identities, histories, cultures, purposes, technologies) that can wax and wane over time. While in the course of a single day, we demand students think like a historian, think like an artist, think like an author, think like a scientist, think like a mathematician, think like a musician; all of which require a different literacy practice.

This past March, those kids were sequestered to rooms in their home “castles” somewhere in the village or in places even Verizon won’t go. And at the flip of a switch we were found alone at our laptop at our kitchen table desperately trying to replicate the old literacy practices of a face-to-face classroom and project it onto the new, unseen, unfamiliar contexts of the students’ existence. We tapped out words that were meant to convey the same curriculum and the same standards, but we all sensed the inevitable: “Something’s happening here/ What it is ain’t exactly clear.” More than a few of us have been confronted students’ equivalent of “No Trespassing/ Keep Out;” maybe not in so many words,

This could be a very long, very hot summer!

Robert Davy “Protest” Licensed through Creative Commons

“What a field-day for the heat. A thousand people in the street. Singing songs and carrying signs. Mostly say, “Hooray for our sign!’…You step out of line, the man come and take you away. It’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down…”

For what it’s worth, this New Literacy Studies stuff never gets old.

“It’s only words and words are all I have to take your heart away” –Shakespeare (Just kidding; it was the Bee Gees, and if that makes a difference to you, welcome to New Literacy Studies!)

About the Author

Todd Lilly has been a teacher for over 40 years, the majority of which was invested in middle and high school ELA and theater classes in and around Rochester, NY. Over the past 10 years he has served on undergraduate and graduate faculties in Wisconsin and currently at the University of South Carolina. He earned his Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research interests include out-of-school literacy practices and the stories of marginalized, disenfranchised students. He is married to Dr. Catherine Compton-Lilly who holds the John C. Hungerpiller chair in the College of Education, University of South Carolina

Quaranteaching: We’re Not In Kansas Anymore

Blog, Teaching

By: Scott Buhr, South Carolina Physics Teacher

I was 11 years old when I got my first trumpet. My grandfather bought it for me and I was thrilled. I couldn’t wait to learn how to play it. I had taken piano lessons for several years and I can remember my 11-year-old mind thinking, “The trumpet will be so much easier, it only has three buttons!” Silly right? I was taking my knowledge of the piano and superimposing it upon a completely different type of instrument. Sure, there are some things about playing the piano and the trumpet that are alike, but treating one like the other will leave your orchestra one instrument short. My piano literacy did not translate into trumpet literacy, who’d of thought?

Now twenty years later, I am an educator who thinks about the sort of transition that I went through from piano to trumpet on a daily basis. Each hour of the school-day, students arrive in my classroom from all sorts of differing classes—each one teaching them their own literacy practices. My job as a physics teacher is to teach my students how to think like a physicist. How do physicists solve problems? How do they think about the universe? How do they talk to each other about it? This is every teacher’s task. How do I get my students thinking like the professionals in this field think?

“QUARANTEACHING”—THE STRANGE TRANSITION FROM FACE-TO-FACE, BRICK-AND-MORTAR, GOOD-OLE-FASHION SCHOOL TO THE WHAT-IN-THE-WORLD, CRAZY-LAND OF ELEARNING.

Enter Covid-19. Suddenly, every teacher has been thrust into the unknown world of “quaranteaching”—the strange transition from face-to-face, brick-and-mortar, good-ole-fashion school to the what-in-the-world, crazy-land of eLearning. This unbelievable turn of events has forced teachers to make a literacy transition of their own. From the face-to-face to the virtual. Like many educators right now, you might be struggling to transition from the face-to-face environment that you know so much about to a completely digital experience. If you, like me, found the recent upset to feel rather normal and stress-free, then you might be a digital native—someone who was brought up with today’s technology and whose use of it feels less like using a prosthetic and more like using a natural appendage. Or, perhaps you would not consider yourself a digital native, but are comfortable adopting new technologies and have been for some time. Either way, there are many people whose comfort level with using all sorts of technology is high and there are some whose comfort is low. If you are an educator reading this, you probably could go through the names of the people in your department and pick out the ones who seem to like using technology just because it exists, the ones who avoid it at all costs, and everyone in between.

Now, I find myself in the comfortable position of being a digital native as well as having been enrolled in online grad classes for some time. My wife has taught virtually for years, and I am about to begin teaching my own virtual class. Many other teachers did not have my circumstances and were faced with the daunting challenge of online teaching with about two days notice.

Here is the interesting bit. I haven’t noticed that technology integration has been the biggest hurdle for teachers. Indeed, many teachers have been surrounded by all sorts of technology for quite some time—both in and out of the classroom. No, from my perspective, the biggest struggle for many teachers hasn’t been “How does this thing (Zoom, Google Docs, etc. . . ) work?” But instead, “How do I put it all together to work for me and my students?” “How should it work?”

The biggest struggle for many teachers is not “How does this thing work?”, but instead “How should this thing work?”

Let me explain:

I have seen many teachers share their plans of how they are going to replicate their classroom experience online. This includes bell work, short lectures, and even the possibility of taking tests online. These plans seem to elicit “oohs” and “aahs” for their elaborateness and are applauded for the fact that this teacher has created something so close to a brick and mortar classroom experience. Now don’t get me wrong, context is everything and there may be scenarios where any one of those strategies is really the best one for that particular age, class, or context. As a digital native though, here’s my two cents:

Is replicating the brick-and-mortar experience the best way to provide eLearning?

It is likely that your teacher-education program took a traditional approach to lesson planning and unit planning that involves students working linearly through materials as you guide them. This form very much fits the context of students who enter my classroom at the same time each weekday, stay about an hour, and leave with whatever, if anything, I have tasked them to do at home. Still doesn’t mean it is the best, but it certainly fits the context. Now, does a traditional lesson plan seem to fit our current context? Any online context?

Perhaps the nuts and bolts of the eLearning technology is really not the biggest issue. Maybe our approach to teaching in this sort of environment is what needs the most attention. Most online courses that I have taken have offered me less direct instruction and more opportunities to create things based upon research I have set out to accomplish with resources that the instructor has provided. That is, I have taught myself for the most part and then created some sort of product based upon my learning. Sometimes this has worked really well and other times it hasn’t.

The thing that has made this model the most successful is how the teacher approaches the class. If they take a “set it and forget it” approach, I am almost sure to be frustrated and unsure of what I am supposed to be doing. If, however, my first attempts on projects are met with specific, helpful feedback, then I am sure to thoroughly engage with the class.

Educational technologists have long towed the line that technology is a tool, but today it seems that the technology is more a context or environment than merely a tool.

So did you catch the key? Feedback. In my face-to-face classes, I provide this in a thousand small ways. Verbal feedback, facial expressions, and body language are paired with my planned materials to facilitate my being able to accurately gauge and respond to student understanding. Without those tools in an eLearning environment, my students will experience the same frustration that I had from my own online teachers who seemed to treat the courses I was in like an automated machine. In an online environment, many excellent teachers likely struggle to provide the incredible feedback that they normally would when working face-to-face. Could it be that the pressure to make eLearning look and feel like a traditional classroom is the wrong approach? Educational technologists have long towed the line that technology is a tool, but today it seems that the technology is more a context or environment than merely a tool. If my students are primarily engaging with me and my course through hardware and software, then hasn’t that repositioned the technology to more than just a tool? In fact, it becomes a whole different social discourse in which the ways we act, think, and communicate are quite foreign from the space of the traditional classroom. The literacy paradigm has changed. We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

Personally I have faced this challenge with my honors physics students. I introduced them to a new online tool called MasteringPhysics as a part of my doctoral work. This platform provides immediate and elaborated feedback to my students, but many of them still struggled to connect with this feedback. This program is specifically designed to use a host of technological magic to give electronic feedback to students and yet they still struggle. How much harder it must be for new eLearning teachers to adjust to this new paradigm.

Hopefully, educators all across the country will begin to pressure themselves into designing online lessons rather than teaching lessons online.

Reshaping your thinking isn’t easy. Even as a digital native, I have found myself trying to force my prior learning experiences as a student onto my current classes. It just feels “right” sometimes. My 11-year-old self had to learn to treat the trumpet as a completely different instrument complete with all new ways of thinking about music. It could well be that teachers who have been thrust into eLearning need the same kind of adjustment in their thinking. So have you felt pressure as a teacher to replicate face-to-face style learning in the virtual world? Was this pressure internal or external? Hopefully, educators all across the country will come out of quarantine with a fresh perspective of the advantages and disadvantages of eLearning and begin to pressure themselves into designing online learning using online literacies rather than teaching lessons online. This is going to require New Literacy Studies.

About the Author

Scott Buhr is a high school physics teacher in Simpsonville, SC. He is a doctoral candidate at the U of SC College of Education studying Curriculum and Instruction. He has been involved with physics instruction, instructional design, and public speaking for nearly a decade. He was named in the Top Ten Teachers of the Year for Greenville County Schools in 2017-18 and shortly thereafter led his physics class to break a Guinness World Record. Scott also operates a small, gourmet popcorn business and actively ministers with his wife in their local church.

Do I Really Have To Read and Write?

Blog, Teaching

By: Elinor Lister, Glenview Middle School English Teacher

One year at the start of the school year, a student asked “Do I really have to read and write?” I think my response was “Umm, yes, this is English class.” I’ve also answered this sort of question before with something like, “No! Not at all. This is only school. We don’t do those things too much here.” My sarcasm is definitely why I teach eighth grade and above!

Many children would rather do anything else besides read and write. So many of the rules and regulations of our education system have beaten the love of either out of them.
– Elinor lister

Despite the humor and our eye rolls at these questions, lies a real truth – one that is disappointing and frightening. Many children would rather do anything else besides read and write. So many of the rules and regulations of our education system have beaten the love of either out of them. Teachers have to prepare students for benchmarks, MAP testing, SLO tests, standardized tests, etc. To do this, we often give students things to read that we wouldn’t want to sit down and read ourselves, if we didn’t have to do so. We make them write nothing but what will help them answer a discussion question well or respond to a writing prompt correctly. All of these expectations have removed the one thing that is vital to a student truly receiving a good education – the desire to learn.

As educators it is our job to handle the mandates and requirements of assessments while finding ways to help students want to learn, love to read, and desire to write. Piece of cake, right? As easy as putting out a house fire with a water bottle! And yet, teachers do it every day because they are awesome and dedicated and refuse to stop trying.

In my career, I have run across some tools that I have used or seen used with success in helping students enjoy reading and writing. Most of these transcend content and can be great practice in any classroom.

Tools to Increase Student Enjoyment of Reading and Writing

Sustained Silent Reading (SSR)

This isn’t new, but it has fallen by the wayside. I know the argument some use saying that students sit there staring at a book and do not actually read. There may always be a few who are harder to reach than others, but don’t take the experience away from the majority.

Colleagues and I have found the best success with SSR when students can truly pick what they want to read – books, magazines, graphic novels, newspapers, informational texts, etc. I’ve even allowed children’s books. Does it really matter what they are reading, if they are interested in reading it? I never found success forcing students to keep a reading log or write about what they read each day. We should give them time to read what they want to read. Let them rediscover the joy in reading, and learn that reading doesn’t have to have strings attached to it. As adults, we read because we want to and because it’s entertaining or informative. Why can’t students experience that too?

Hyperdocs

These documents are a wonderful way to pull a variety of literacies together for one topic. A hyperdoc moves students through their work, it can take them to different articles, videos, images, and websites. Students read and process through so many varying texts to learn, analyze, and produce results. Hyperdocs are a fantastic way to engage students while having them read, write, think, and produce. If you are unfamiliar with the term, Google it, and you will find so many examples and help guides. You’ll be glad you did! I use some form of a hyperdoc now for almost every unit.

Current Sites

Current. Relevant. Now. Typical curriculums rarely involve reading this type of work. There is amazing and interesting literature out there to be read, enjoyed, and used in classrooms. I am not suggesting we get rid of pieces that have age, history, or formality to them, but those are primarily taught in English classes. English classes don’t need to be the only classes reading, and English classes can certainly bring in some current reading as well now and then. Teachers don’t need to spend their valuable time searching for material, though. There are several sites that have wonderful articles and materials that span various contents, themes, topics, and reading levels.

Actively Learn has a wealth of articles with guiding questions and discussions to accompany each one. The questions and discussions are also editable so teachers can make them exactly what they want, if needed. This site has had so many wonderful articles throughout Covid-19 that spoke directly to students’ fears, uncertainties, and stresses. This site is completely free.
Newsela also has a wealth of current and relevant articles. It has articles based on primary and secondary sources, on topics such as art, money, sports, health, etc., and on speeches and famous people. Each article has a quiz relating to the content of the article that can or cannot be used along with a writing piece. What I love is that the writing prompt can be edited to fit what the teacher wants to focus on for discussion. There is a free version to this site that offers a great deal, but it has some limitations.
TeenInk is another site. This site has pieces that have been written by teens themselves. It has writing in magazine form, fiction, poetry, nonfiction, reviews, art and photos, and more. There are so many genres offered within each of these categories, even the most reluctant reader can find something. They are very real and very relevant. Those interested can also create an account and submit their own writing to be published on the site. After reading pieces by other teens, many want to write themselves and submit their writing for publication.

Blogs

Students have to learn to complete academic writing. They need that knowledge for all parts of school from upper elementary through college. In teaching that, however, we often forget that students need to experience freedom in writing. It is creative, therapeutic, and enlightening. We can learn so much about our students from their writing, but we rarely feel that we can allow them this time. A way I find to give them this opportunity is through blogs. I set up a Google Site (either with multiple pages or with embedded Docs) and allow students to make it their own. They can write about anything on their mind or any topic they are interested in; they just have to write. I try to give them twenty minutes two to three times per week. I have ninety minute classes, so that works for me.

I have had students write about recipes, makeup tips, sports, extra-curricular activities, traveling, hobbies, friends, drama, dating, video games, etc. They can add pictures, videos, you name it. You can also have blogs that are specific to topics so that students write about content but in a less formal way. This could be books they’re reading, reviews of things, or thoughts on characters or chapters. Blogs would work in any content area, and they are a real-world type of writing that allows students to feel heard in their own way, not through a formal essay.

Student Choice

I firmly believe that one of the greatest ways to utilize students’ strengths and make learning relevant is in allowing students to have choice. It could be choice in a topic, choice in a project medium, choice in a partner, anything – just give them choice. Let them take ownership! Students can learn information and be able to share that they have mastered it in so many different ways. Capitalize on that. As teachers, we often get worried about giving away control. Our control doesn’t often create engagement and expand student literacy. Set up parameters, give guidelines, create a rubric, and let students go. You will be amazed at what they can create!

Allow students to write books with Slides, Forms, or websites like Storyjumper. Let them create a comic strip with a website like Pixton. Give them the freedom to write a script and film a video. Provide a topic to research and tell them to present that information in any form such as a Prezi or a Powtoon to so many other websites that are free and available. Here’s a short list of some favorites: Adobe Spark, Canva, Smore, TES, Padlet, Flipgrid, Screencastify, Thinglink, and Emaze. I even have a colleague who walked students through scientific research and then let them create podcasts! They were fantastic.

Our students live in a world of constant technology. They are immersed in it. We need to let that spur them into renewing their reading and their writing.

We have so many tools at our disposal, so many ways to enrich our students’ literary skills. They live in a world of technology; it is all around them. We can use that to our benefit to help renew their desire to read and write. We can also remind them that reading and writing should be more important to them than just fulfilling academic requirements. Once we can hook them, the academic success will follow.

About the Author

Elinor Lister has taught high school and middle school English for twenty years and currently teaches eighth grade English in Anderson, South Carolina, at Glenview Middle School. She was the District Teacher of the Year for Anderson Five for the 2018-2019 school year. Elinor holds a Bachelor’s in English from Erskine College, a Master’s in Educational Technology from Lesley University, and a Master’s in Administration from Gardner Webb University.

The Trauma of Social Distancing

Blog, Teaching

By: Jason McCauley, South Carolina Middle School Principal

As an incredibly extroverted third year principal I have really taken inventory of my thoughts and feelings about this new reality that we are all attempting to adjust to. I always knew that I drew my energy from people and depended heavily upon my daily interactions with hundreds of people, but I had no idea just how much. So, as I am racking my brain to figure out new and creative ways to interact safely with my people while practicing “social distancing,” I can’t help but wonder how the isolation is impacting our students and their families. Whether we draw our energy from interactions with others or if those same interactions take all of our energy from us, we ALL still benefit from being in community and actively participating in face-to-face interactions.

I am not a psychologist or sociologist and have really no research for my thoughts, other than observations of others and limited interactions with others. The word that seems to be coming up over and over is frustration.

Everyone just seems to be frustrated!

The teachers are working overtime to meet the needs of all students by creating countless video lessons, trouble-shooting technology issues, ensuring that their students basic needs are being met, while also following up with parents of students that have not checked in or completed an assignment in a while. The parents are frustrated. Not only are they dealing with the stress and uncertainty that this virus has added to their work-life and financial future, but they are also adapting to the new reality that they are now a full time, home-based teacher and were given less than 24 hours notice to make the necessary preparations to accept this new role. School and district level administrators are attempting to be in constant communication with everyone to ensure that we are heading to a point of equilibrium and sustainability as we are all starting to understand that this could be our reality for the foreseeable future.

I have no doubt that we will adapt. Human beings have been adapting to new situations since the beginning of time. I guess my concern is what if we actually do adapt? What if our new reality is one without handshakes, high fives, and fist bumps? What if “social distancing” is our new reality? It is my fear that social and personal interaction will go down and that technology consumption will go way up.

One thing that is very important to me, as a middle school principal, is that we are constantly embedding those very important social emotional skills. We teach the students how to make good eye contact while delivering a strong and confident handshake. We teach our students how to take a welcoming and non-threatening posture while involved in a conversation. We understand there are still plenty of opportunities to practice good social skills while social distancing but the prospect of this new reality is really hard to think about.

About the Author

Jason McCauley is the Principal of Palmetto Middle School. He is wrapping up his fifteenth year in education. Jason served as a Spanish teacher for five years, assistant principal for seven years, and just finished his third year as principal at Palmetto Middle School. During his time as an educator, Jason coached baseball and football. He has
been married to his wife, Amanda, for fifteen years and they have two sons; Wyatt and Briggs.

Choosing Perspective

Blog, Student Contribution

By: Addie Laney, South Carolina High School Student

Perspective. Many of us learned this word in art class when we were younger, but didn’t quite understand how it would apply to our lives on a broader scale, not yet. I thought it was an art term, then I learned this word is more than an art term. Perspective is the opinion form around a topic and how you choose to view issues. When thinking about the Coronavirus, the first thing to come to mind are negative thoughts, which is natural. As the cases rise, so does the fear, and so does the trauma that some people experience.

There are questions we never thought we would be asking, like: “What if i get it?” “What if my loved ones get it?” “When will I see my friends again?” Now those are questions we hear everyday. It’s okay to feel this way. No one knows what the next steps are involving the world’s peculiar situation right now.

Even though the level of uncertainty is so high involving the Coronavirus, one thing we can be certain of and have control over is our perspective.

I asked my friends to share negatives and positives they have found during this time of quarantine and social distancing. The video proves the undeniable truth and power of perspective. During this time we can choose to focus on how the stores aren’t open, how we can’t see all of our friends, or even how much we miss stepping into a school building everyday to learn. Or, we could focus on the good. We can spend more time with our families and reconnect with them again. We can focus on other values we have in life, like religion. We can learn new hobbies that help us find out new stuff about ourselves. Most importantly, we can learn how to truly appreciate what we have.

This is how we can view not only the situation involving the Coronavirus, but any situation life throws at us. Focusing on the negative, in a time like this, isn’t going to change anything or how anyone is feeling, it just feeds our trauma. We can choose to turn what could be a traumatic experience into a good, life changing experience and instead choose to heal ourselves, better ourselves and support ourselves. I choose to smile and stay safe. I hope you will too by focusing your perspective not on the negative, but on the positive.

About the Author

Addie Laney is a rising junior. She is the Fine Arts Chair of Student Council, President of Fellowship of Christian Athletes, a member of Future Farmers of America, a member of Youth Leadership for her county of residence and the Public Relations Chair for National Honor Society. She is also a member of her high school tennis team and a member of the senior dance in dance academy. She aspires to attend USC and become a therapist.

What Can We Do To Support Our Students’ Trauma And Our Own During These Uncertain Times?

Blog, Teaching

By: Dr. Rachelle Savitz, Clemson University

Navigating Your Own Trauma

As the past weeks have unfolded, like many of my students and colleagues, the uncertainty of tomorrow, next week, the fall, and the world have caused me to struggle. I find myself experiencing life in a new way that consistently revolves around questioning my surroundings. For instance, when I went to the grocery store weeks ago, the amount of people walking around without a mask, coughing on others, and even one person sweating profusely caused my alarm bells to ring. I rushed home and realized I was in a state of panic; immobilized by fear of the unknown and fear of this potentially fatal disease. This traumatic experience continues to stay with me, and in fact, I have only gone back to the grocery store one additional time. Although my second experience made me feel safer because so many were wearing masks and there were limits on how many people were in the store, I was still worried and overcome with the feeling of sadness. Such a regular day-to-day situation, going to the grocery store, or any closed in space, has now become an immediate concern for me and a risk that I am not comfortable taking.

These same feelings continue as I watch news sources and read friend’s threads on social media about the loss of so many. When friends share their inconsolable grief at being unable to say goodbye to their loved one, or when I see the extremely long and growing lines at local food banks and the unparalleled call to support our communities, all of these experiences and moments leave me breathless with a sense of sorrow. These secondary traumatic experiences, and my own circumstances can easily lead to little hope. I often find myself critically reflecting, asking questions, and wondering how to get past this fear and enter a sense of calm and understanding. I wonder how others, students, friends, and colleagues are coping through these uncertain times. I am curious as to their feelings when going out in public, to restaurants or even getting a haircut. I question if I am being overly cautious, too cautious, or if my feelings and precautions are “normal.” Most importantly, I wonder when I will feel safe again. Sadly, none of these questions have immediate and definite answers.

As each day passes, I am constantly attempting self-care, as Kathleen Pennyway described in her post last week. For me this means taking time to get lost in a good book, catching up on a recorded tv show, or calling a friend to share experiences. I quickly learned that by sharing my experiences – my fears, my successes, my failures, and my daily situation, I felt a better sense of hope and calm. I was able to understand that although my experiences are my own, many can relate. Some offer words of wisdom and others relate their own experiences. None provided judgment. This relates to what Elizabeth Dutro shared in her post, and in her very important book, the concept of reciprocal witnessing. Although I did not know this term until recently, I have always understood the power of sharing our stories (testimonies) and having others listen – really listen and provide empathy, is powerful.

Navigating Student Trauma: The Importance of Connection to Heal

In our book, Teaching Hope and Resilience for Students Experiencing Trauma: Creating Safe and Nurturing Classrooms for Learning, Doug, Nancy, and I discuss how teachers can leverage literacies as tools to help our students navigate their lives, building capacity to respond to troubling times. We share how collaborative and meaningful discussions, using texts, and writing can build children’s and adolescents’ resilience. These ideas not only allow teachers to support students’ well-being and social-emotional learning, but they also address required content. But what could this look like in an online environment?

Ways to Leverage Literacies as Tools to Help Students Navigate Their Lives

Discussion to build

Of utmost importance when implementing any of these, is the ability to be a warm-demander, building upon already created teacher-student relationships in an online format. Peer relationships are just as important online, as in person, too. Although different, community can be built and developed. Salena Davis discussed in her post the importance of communication. This not only relates to what Dutro shared, but also aligns with the need for discussion with our students and for them to discuss with their peers. This may relate to sharing their stories, but we can also encourage discussion related to our own content and what they are learning or reading. For instance, I use Voicethread to share my lesson, embedding additional material, such as links to videos. On each slide, I provide my lecture, but add specific questions related to the content or ways to promote connection among the group. Students can respond to me or one another via audio, video, or text. These discussions are asynchronous but allow students to continue building community. Often, my students bring up their own personal connections to the material and relate it to their own lived experiences.

Reading to relate

Another way to support student learning and choice is within our text selection. I recently had a teacher ask me about what book she could assign to her students now that they were remotely learning. My quick response was “what do they want to read?” If there are specific types of analysis questions that this teacher wanted to use, then she could provide an open theme or topic and let students choose their book. By giving her students options in what they read, she can still focus on analysis, the main goal, but also support student motivation to continue reading. Her students could synchronously meet with her and their classmates weekly (more or less) and share pieces of their book that has excited them, things they questioned as they read, or even how the student may have related to the situation, events, or characters. For instance, maybe a student reads about a character facing the death of a loved one. The student may share her own experiences that relate. Or, another student may read about inequities and ask questions of her peers (and the teacher) related to the inequities in her own life or within this current pandemic. Inquiry-based learning is a great way to provide choice in research for classrooms that do not use literature.

Writing to remember

Over the past few weeks, I have had quite a few students, all current teachers, wanting, more importantly, needing to share their experiences. Some created a running online journal with me, where they record their thoughts, feelings, and questions, and then I either respond, ask my own questions, or share my experiences. This may not work for all students, and it could be time consuming for a teacher to journal with all students. Therefore, we can encourage our students to support their own healing through private autobiographical writing. They can then choose if/when to invite other adults or peers to listen. As Kathleen Pennyway mentioned, having an open door, or in these days, an open email policy, is important. We want to ensure that our students and colleagues have a way to reach out and share, ask questions, or tell their stories.

Outside experts and a plan

While we want to communicate to our students that their voices count and can create constructive change, not accepting unjust realities, we must also remember that topics may inadvertently trigger memories or reactions related to additional traumas. It is important to have a plan to monitor students’ unease or if the topic may be too much in the moment. It is important to remember what we learned from Guy Ilagen’s post – our school counselors are available. As educators, we need to keep in mind our state’s mandated reporter requirements as we continue monitoring our students and their situations. If there is reason for concern, we need to reach out to our more trained peers. More importantly, we can reach out to our fellow colleagues and check in on them.

Where do We go From Here?

As I wrap this up, I want to emphasize that we can promote student empowerment and agency. I have found that by asking my students what they want or need is powerful. Through these discussions, we co-constructed knowledge and negotiated ways for students to demonstrate their learning and growth. Our students faced many hardships and traumatic experiences prior to this pandemic. Now, we are all experiencing this together. It is vital that we provide the time and space for our students to safely share their concerns and be human. This process starts by first sharing a bit of ourselves. I will never forget the moment of relief I noticed in my students when I shared my grocery store experience. It was like a huge weight was taken away from each of them. Although this did not allow for immediate conversation related to content, I found that these teachers needed to download their fears and connect with one another. These teachers shared their fears, connected and asked questions about transitioning their own classrooms to online, and ultimately realized the similarities and differences occurring across lives. Although all of my students were adults, they needed to know that the proverbial door was open.

Finally, I feel it important to thank all of my friends, colleagues, peers, fellow teachers and students for all that they are doing during these unstable times. Most importantly, I want to thank everyone reading this for bearing witness to my own traumatic experiences as I shared a piece of my story. I want every person reading this to know that it is okay to feel uncertain. I challenge each of you to reach out to someone and share your thoughts and feelings, inviting them to reciprocate.

About the Author

Dr. Rachelle S. Savitz is an assistant professor of adolescent literacy at Clemson University having been a K-12 literacy coach/interventionist and high school reading teacher. She is the recipient of Association of Literacy Educators and Researcher’s Jerry Johns Promising Researcher Award, American Reading Forum’s Gary Moorman Early Career Literacy Scholar Award, finalist for International Literacy Association’s Timothy and Cynthia Shanahan Outstanding Dissertation award, as well as Secondary Reading Council of Florida’s Reading Teacher of the Year award. She has published articles on inquiry-based learning, analysis and use of young adult literature, and response to intervention.

Trauma Informed Teaching During COVID-19: What the Virus has Taken from Us and How We Can Get It Back

Blog, Teaching

By: Kathleen Pennyway, High School Drama Teacher

Before the schools closed…

My classroom was fully invested in the practice of trauma-informed teaching. I was confident in my ability to build relationships with students that were based on honesty, listening, and mutual respect. I used those relationships to strengthen my students’ academic and social-emotional abilities. We had regular meditation practice in my room for all of my students. I had a couch in the corner that students frequently used to calm down if they needed to decompress from a stressful situation, and snacks in my office if anyone had forgotten breakfast. There were signs in my room celebrating diversity and respect for all, and my students regularly had conversations about race, police brutality, sexism, gender and sexuality, and other issues of social justice. I had agreements with other teachers in the school that if they needed a student to cool down for a second, they could send that student to me. Each of these strategies was designed to center my students’ needs, and to help them to deal with traumas such as violence, home instability, and poverty.

My students frequently commented the drama room was the place they felt safe, and I wore that accolade with as much honor as the awards we won at state competition. And there were many teachers at my school who were doing these things – I was only one part of a committed group of teachers who were working towards trauma-informed practice as our goal. Our school was making leaps forward, with plans for student and teacher wellness rooms, a good amount of teacher buy-in, and successful professional development opportunities. In short, there was momentum building in trauma-informed practice.

And then, the virus charged through our country and ripped apart everything that we had built.

Photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi on Unsplash

I don’t know that I have ever felt as lost as an educator as I have during the past six weeks. I felt I was working harder than I have ever worked, and simultaneously I was failing at my job in reaching students. There were many times when I felt like giving up in despair. But I didn’t. As educators, our mantra is monitor and adjust, so I did. I made many mistakes over the course of learning how to teach theatre virtually, but I believe I have arrived back where I belong, with trauma-informed practice at the center of my teaching.

Here’s what I have learned.

1. Keep relationships at the center of your job

In the normal world, my classroom is constantly filled with of young people. From before the first bell rings, to long after everyone else in the building has left, there is theatre happening in Room 133. But more than that, I have worked hard to make the drama room a space where my students feel comfortable and safe. Whether kids needed a nap on my futon, a minute in the costume closet to cool down, or a chat in my office, they came to the drama room to find it.

Part of trauma-informed practice is creating a physical space that helps students relax and be able to learn. The loss of the physical space of my room left me without a huge tool to check in on students who are struggling academically and emotionally. The relationships built in school are grounded in the physical space of our classrooms. In a COVID-19 world, reduced to Zoom meetings and virtual assignments, our ability to connect and build relationships suffered. One of the things I miss the most about school is the ability to connect with my students easily and naturally on a human level. To say “Hey, I read that book you told me about,” or “What did you think of this scene in a play?” or “Have you heard about the new video game?” and hear about their interests and their dreams and who they are as people.

As online teachers, we need to be more intentional than ever in our efforts to build and maintain relationships with our students. Some of the things I did to maintain those relationships included starting weekly Instagram posts where I would pose a silly theatre related question that students could respond to. I hosted watch parties of plays on Zoom and virtual “lunches” in the drama room. And I started reserving time in our Zoom classes to ask my kids to share things that were going on with them – what they were watching (a lot of Tiger King), whether they missed school (surprisingly yes) and whether they were sleeping on a normal schedule (definitely not). These non-academic pursuits brought back several of the students who had gone no-contact, and I was able to use them to convince some of those same students to complete some of their academic work.

It is easy, in the world of eLearning, to reduce a teacher’s job to academics. This is a trap, and we dare not fall prey to it. For many of our students, we are a stable and welcome presence in their lives they may not find at home. This presence is as valuable as the content we teach. I know many of us are worried about test scores, the summer slump, AP Exams and college preparedness. I understand this worry, but it cannot take precedence over our relationships with our students.

2. Encourage self-care in your students, and practice it yourself

Students and teachers alike are experiencing some sense of anxiety, loss, grief or trauma right now. The news of the virus alone is enough to keep anyone awake at night. Many of our students are experiencing economic hardship due to the pandemic as well. And there are losses that are small to adults but loom huge in the lives of our students. Prom. Graduation. Spring performances.

These are losses and your students deserve to grieve them. When a student tells me about something they are upset about, I don’t placate or tell them there are people who are worse off. I don’t tell them they shouldn’t feel the way they feel. Learning to recognize and regulate our feelings is an important part of trauma-informed practice. I frequently tell my students feelings are never right or wrong, and controlling what we do with our feelings is more important than the feelings themselves.

At the same time, we need to make certain we are practicing what we preach. As I mentioned earlier, I had an extremely difficult adjustment to eLearning. There were times when no matter how hard I struggled, I barely felt like a teacher. In addition, I was caring for a 5-year-old and a 2-year-old who were also experiencing some regression due to the pandemic. My spouse and I were both working from home, and there were many days where I felt like a failure as both a teacher and a mother.

I eventually came to the realization that I was allowing my students flexibility that I did not allow myself. I needed to make changes – adjusting my Zoom schedule to coincide with my younger child’s nap schedule, for example, or creating time to do yoga and work in my garden. Many teachers have strong senses of empathy, and teachers who work with students who are dealing with trauma can suffer from secondary-PTSD. In addition, many teacher families are dealing with the same stressors that our students are dealing with. It is important to build routines of self-care so that we can maintain the emotional stamina to help our students. Our students deserve no less than our very best effort, and we cannot give them our best if we do not take care of ourselves.

3. Create hope, and involve students in a plan for the future

My students have many questions I cannot answer. Will we go back to school in the fall? Will we be able to do a musical? Will we be able to perform next year? It hurts my heart to have to tell them I don’t know. All students, but particularly students who have experienced trauma, need routine and structure to feel safe. So many of our routines are gone now. Nonetheless, I respect them too much to lie to them and promise them everything is going to be okay.

I cannot tell my students what the future holds, but I can give them some control over some of their circumstances. My student leadership board is currently in the process of choosing scripts for next year, as well as coming up with alternate plans in case the virus decides to make a resurgence. Young people are capable of coming up with those plans, and they deserve to have a seat at the table when those decisions are being made. There is very little we can control at this point in time, but offering our students the chance to help plan our future is one way we can give them some measure of certainty and agency. COVID-19 has transformed our reality in a matter of months, but one thing that has not changed is that we as teachers must put our students at the center of our practice. Whether we teach in classrooms or in packets or through Zoom, we can use trauma-informed strategies such as relationship building, self-care, and student-centered processes to better serve our students and ourselves as teachers.

About the Author

Kathleen Pennyway has been a professional drama educator, actor, and director for the past thirteen years, working for such organizations as the Windy City Players, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Childsplay. She has taught and performed in nine different states and worked with hundreds of young people. Ms. Pennyway graduated with a BA in Theatre from Northwestern University, and received her MFA in Theatre for Youth from Arizona State University. She currently teaches theatre at Dreher High School, and lives in Lexington with her husband Dee, her children, Harrison and Rosie, and her dog, Lily.

Finding Your Literacy Sweet Spot

Blog, Teaching

By: Salena Davis, South Carolina High School Social Studies Teacher

It’s spring, and I have to say that I’m missing the spring sounds of school—you know, prom chatter… concerts and plays…baseball… Instead, I’m sitting at home in my “new normal” pjs with every commercial reminding me about these “times of uncertainty” while I try to figure out how they are going to put fewer kids on busses, how it will affect my class sizes and will the students be able to take off their masks, if they end up eating in my classroom? Yes, I am way past sensory overload.

It has, however, helped me appreciate how difficult e-learning has been for my students. My daughter told me this week that she had over 1,300 school emails in her inbox—800 of them she never even opened. (We agreed that “delete” is an awesome button, and we could go look through the trash if there really was an email she desperately needed.)

Even the youngest among us are not immune. My elementary son brought me his school Chromebook this morning with at least ten tabs opened trying to figure out what was due today. It’s Monday…10:00am. I’m pretty sure I didn’t schedule our mental meltdowns until at least Tuesday afternoon this week.

Literacy during Covid-19

Many of our educational challenges have been logistic—do my students have a computer? Internet access? Printer? This week’s packet? If those were our only challenges, we would be doing pretty well. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. I would argue that our most significant challenges have been directly tied to literacy.

Literacy is more than defining terms and understanding of syntax. Literacy is first communication. Communication is easier when we are with our students. They can decode our messages through our expressions, animation and feedback. Our proximity and interaction help keep their minds focused and in sync with the material. With distance learning, they lose the audible, tangible, visual aspects of communication and have only the words to process—a skill which requires more mental focus and more self-discipline.

Comprehension occurs in the quiet of the mind. Students flit from texts to Instagram to Snapchat to whatever else pops up on their screen. They need a teacher (or parent) to actively keep them focused in order to understand what they are learning, especially if it is a skill they don’t necessarily desire of their own accord. It would be interesting—perhaps horrifying—to know when they last sat quietly and did one thing—whether that was playing an instrument or reading a book or painting a picture.

What can we do to help students with these literacy challenges as they navigate their own trauma?

Now add a layer of COVID-crisis—with parents losing jobs, and social distancing, and caring for siblings, and worrying they may catch the virus… No wonder they’re struggling. They have lost their normalcy and much of their support network. We need them to discipline their minds and create routines, yet many of them have never done so without the structures of school and don’t know where to start.

Ask them how they are doing. Many of them they need the encouragement of knowing that someone cares before they are willing to do the hard work. (ex. https://bit.ly/2zemIjb )
Give them options. In a time when people lose control in some aspects of their lives, the ability to make a choice can help alleviate discomfort. (ex. https://bit.ly/3cz2cYU )
Limit communications. This may seem counterintuitive, but remember those 1,300+ emails in my daughter’s inbox? When people are feeling overwhelmed, less can be more. Consider doing one post with all of the assignments. The visual impact of having one new item in Google Classroom can be less discouraging than five new items for each class each week.
Encourage students to make a hand-written checklist or calendar to organize their assignments. Tabbing through multiple screens adds anxiety to students who are already feeling overwhelmed.
Remember they may be facing more hardship with fewer coping mechanisms. One of my students has not turned in any assignments, but she did fill out my “Checking In” Google Form. She told me she’s been a little busy—her grandmother, who was her only guardian, passed away. Maybe social studies isn’t going to be at the top of her list right now.

I believe this experience gives us the opportunity to reevaluate our goals for our students. While we may be in a temporary period of coping with COVID, the lessons we are learning can help us re-commit to our literacy goals for our students. When we go back this fall and get to hear those beautiful sounds of school again, let us continue to help our students learn how to find the sweet spot of their minds where they can focus, engage, learn, persevere and grow.

About the Author

Salena Davis has taught social studies and communication courses for 26 years on the elementary, middle, high, and post-secondary levels. She holds three Masters degrees in Secondary Educational Leadership, Political Science with a Comparative Government emphasis, and Dramatic Productions.

Beyond Teachers as Healers: Teachers, Students, and Reciprocal Care in Traumatic Times

Blog, Teaching

By: Dr. Elizabeth Dutro, University of Colorado Boulder

Toward the end of 2019, I was invited to write a column on the theme of teaching in troubled times. Sitting down to write that piece, I felt overwhelmed. I write often about the complexity of trauma in K-12 schools and the kinds of relationships, witnessing, and advocacy that difficult life experiences demand in literacy classrooms. So, it is not as though I hadn’t written about hard times before. But, that day, given all that had been and was occurring in the US, the troubles felt too heavy, the inequities too stark, the governmental accelerations of injustice too horrific to convey in words on a page. I think back to that time and try to reabsorb the explicit, violent, and policy-driven racism, xenophobia, and economic precarity that was already impacting so many youth and families. Trauma, inflicted by human-created systems, was all around us (while, whiteness, once again, like it always does, shielded me). Eventually, I moved my fingers across the keyboard and got some words on the page for that column about seeking hope and justice in teaching during troubled times. That was just a handful of months ago. We had no inkling of what was coming for us.

Now, here we are, and how do we even begin to approach the idea of trauma in a pandemic that is wreaking havoc on our communities, states, nation, and world? Trauma is always a complicated term that defies singular definitions. But, now, as teachers, students, and families face the emotional, financial, and physical devastations and anxieties of COVID-19, considering trauma is all the more crucial and all the more complex.

Literacy educators will need to think together about questions such as: What varied kinds of challenges are students bringing to their learning? How do we acknowledge and harness the pandemic as a shared experience, while recognizing the very different impacts it has inflicted? How is trauma both personal and political and how does that help us think about issues of justice in our classrooms, schools, and larger educational systems? How can we craft classroom communities that center compassion and care? How are teachers being positioned in discussions of students’ trauma during this time of crisis?

Positionality of teachers in discussions of students’ trauma

These are all questions I’m anxious to consider with fellow literacy educators over the coming weeks and months. For this post, though, I’ll turn to that last one, as I feel its importance in my bones as this crisis unfolds and see it in teacher colleagues’ eyes in our conversations on my screens.

By virtue of living through this time, teachers are facing overwhelm, fear, and anxiety. In addition, many are facing loss, grief, and financial upheaval. So, when we ask how teachers are being positioned in discussions of trauma and schools right now, teachers’ own humanity has to be integral to that question. One thing we know about many approaches to trauma-informed schooling is that teachers are often positioned as healers and helpers.

Being deemed a healer implies that it is students who are the wounded. We, of course, know this is a false dichotomy. We know through our own lives and our friends’ and colleagues’ experiences that teachers bring pain, sorrow, fear, and struggle to our work. It couldn’t be any other way. No one goes through life unscathed.

But, teachers are often told that trauma is something students bring to school. No wonder it can be hard to shake the idea that, as teachers, we are expected to convey only that we are fine, we are well, and our sole vigilance is toward students’ lives and learning. No wonder the focus on trauma can and does exacerbate pathologizing narratives about students. It is not that those messages of needing to be attentive to students’ traumas are false, but it is that those messages are simplified and incomplete. Indeed, the healer vs. wounded ethos surrounding teaching and trauma is so entrenched, in part, because so many teachers are so committed to supporting students that acknowledging one’s own struggles can feel self-indulgent or inappropriate. But, I believe we have to wrest free of that dichotomy because it is harmful for anyone, teacher or student, to be stuck on either side of it. We can embrace a more reciprocal approach to what it means to witness one another.

So, how might teachers reframe how they position themselves and students in relation to trauma?

In my book on centering trauma as powerful literacy pedagogy, I share an analogy related to this question that I have found helpful in my own thinking and teaching. I’ll share a version of it here.

At times throughout my life, I’ve had a chance to be around recently hatched baby chicks. And when invited to hold one, I don’t hesitate—I didn’t as a 5-year-old and I don’t now. I step up and hold my hands out, cupped and ready to cradle the tiny, fragile, cheeping ball of yellow fluff. My heart leaps a little with what it will require—care, gentleness, keen attention. It is a moment suffused with responsibility. Yet with some coaching and support from those who surround me, even 5-year-old me can step up, willingly, and nurture, not harm. And given the chance, I could do that every day. Each time would require the exact same measure of care and attention. But it would, at the same time, become more familiar, something I could come to expect and assume as part of my everyday experience.

At this point in my description of this metaphor, I need to be clear: students in our classrooms are not the baby chick. The chick is the difficult experiences, the traumas, that anyone in the classroom community carries into that shared space. To position students as the fragile creature is central to the problem of how students and teachers are often positioned in relation to trauma. Viewing students as the chick implies an adult as the only participant with agency; an adult who, in this metaphor, is not only the strong one, but also looms largest as the protagonist in the story. One reason I include my child self in this image is to emphasize students as active subjects in reciprocally sharing and witnessing the kinds of hard stories that will accumulate for them and their teachers during this crisis. In being allowed to witness teachers’ vulnerability—their stories of challenge, fear, grief—students will know those stories belong in school and that their experiences will matter in how they are seen, heard, and valued in the classroom. The students, and the teacher, are the hands that gently, but without trepidation, cradle those stories in their classroom.

In being allowed to witness teachers’ vulnerability—their stories of challenge, fear, grief—students will know those stories belong in school and that their experiences will matter in how they are seen, heard, and valued in the classroom.

Photo by S O C I A L . C U T on Unsplash

In whatever capacity teachers and students are together next year, everybody that enters the literacy classroom or accesses a screen will be bringing stories that require critical care and humanity. Some of those stories will be shared in explicit ways through discussions, writing, art, digital creations, one on one connections with between students and teachers. Other stories will be shared through an empty desk, a bowed head, a missed login, a quavering voice or trembling hand, a simmering sense of rage. And, as we know, some stories from students’ lives are shared and circulated in schools in ways beyond a students’ view or control. As literacy classrooms fill with stories of this crisis, let’s ensure that teachers’ experiences are present too—as signal of reciprocal witnessing, as opportunity and invitation to bring lived knowledge to school literacies, as source of connection and humanity, as acknowledgement that it can be hard to focus when feelings are overflowing, and as reminders of the far-from-equitable impacts of this crisis.

About the Author

Elizabeth Dutro is professor and chair of Literacy Studies at University of Colorado Boulder and former K-12 classroom teacher. She collaborates closely with teacher colleagues and youth in her research on the intersections of students’ lives and literacy classrooms, particularly critical approaches to trauma, and issues of justice and equity in K-12 classrooms, teacher education, and policy. She is the author of the recent book, The Vulnerable Heart of Literacy: Centering Trauma as Powerful Pedagogy (Teachers College Press). She would love to connect at Elizabeth.dutro@colorado.edu; elizabethdutro.com; or @lifeasstory on Twitter.

Reflections of a school counselor during the 2020 school closures: “If this continues into the Fall semester, I cannot mentally sustain.”

Blog, Teacher Self-Care

By: Dr. Guy Ilagan, Associate Professor of Counselor Education at the Citadel

It has been about 40 days since Ms. West learned that her workplace closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ms. West is an experienced school counselor in a middle school. She is married and has three young children. She is known and respected as a humble, helpful, effective school counselor. She is active in her state organization for school counselors and is beloved by her peers and the graduate students she has mentored along the way. She loves her students and her school and reports that she has an effective relationship with the school principal.

I asked Ms. West to reflect on her experiences since the school closures and specifically about the most difficult aspects. She said her biggest concerns were for her student’s unmet needs, e.g., “availability of food, abuse, neglect, and witnessing domestic violence.” She paused and added, “when we return, we’ll be dealing with their concerns and trauma. Right now I have no control, no real way to help them.” As she spoke these words she paused and added, “and there will be no decrease in workload when we return, and see the results of these concerns.”

Ms. West also cited concerns about the suicide risk assessment (SRA) process. Ms. West and her peers have noticed that when conducting risk assessments via teleconference, caregivers are not always willing to permit the students to have privacy (by leaving the room) for parts of the risk assessment. Thus, they have little control over the assessments, especially where privacy is concerned. Also, some schools require a second counselor or staff member to be present during the SRA, which adds a time consuming logistical layer. Whereas, at the school they can promptly find a second staff member and ask caregivers to step outside for a moment. Also, district administrators currently send messages over weekends and after hours that a student needs a “check-in.” Check-ins are prompted by keywords in search or communication functions of their school-provided tablets.

Ms. West is connected to other school counselors via peer groups. She is in a peer group with peers from across the US. She also connects with local school counselor colleagues throughout the week. Some of her peers found support groups on social media or initiated informal local groups. In her peer group she noticed one school counselor in another state was told not to talk to students or do anything else. Otherwise, Ms. West’s US peers are all working harder now. Some of them are micromanaged. Many are required to call each student who is not completing their academic work.

Office hours for Ms. West are set from 8:00AM to 4:00PM. She emailed each household about office hours and contact information. She was also required to provide social emotional curriculum to students and continue to conduct Individual Graduation Plans (IGPs). Throughout the closure, Ms. West stated other school counselors she had spoken with described their current roles as “vague, having received minimal direction” and an “open-ended hot mess.” Many of her peers feel “pretty lost,” especially with connecting and collaborating with peers.

“If this continues into the Fall semester, I cannot mentally sustain,” she confessed with a laugh. She told me about her usual process of figuring out who will watch the kids when she and her spouse have conference calls at the same time. She knows she is deep into compassion fatigue. Compassion fatigue is a secondary traumatization that affects our mood, health, and regard for our students and work. Providing empathy and understanding to students in crisis can lead to compassion fatigue. “There is just not enough time in the day,” she said. “I’m not on my A game, more like a C game.” Without hesitation she said that due to her workload she has been unable to assist her own children in completing their school work.

When asked what has sustained her in her work thus far, she paused and referred to her support group with peers. She also said “finding breaks from the kids (her own).” In one of our video chats, I noticed a very human and touching moment when one of her children came into view. The child did not want to be apart from her mother at that moment. Finally, she said with a look of accomplishment that working out and eating healthy has helped her keep her mood up. She seemed pleased that she was using the time at home to boost her wellness and restart a few good habits.

Ms. West was relieved to have her real name excluded so that she could feel more freedom to discuss her experiences.

About the Author

Guy teaches graduate students in The Citadel’s Counselor Education Programs. He earned a PHD from Clemson University, Master’s Degree from The Citadel, and Undergraduate Degree from College of Charleston. Guy has been a counselor in a variety of educational and community settings and has published studies on counselor effectiveness, suicide prevention, and the mental health effects of wilderness backpacking on college women. Guy, his wife Jill, and their dog Dottie reside in Charleston, SC and enjoy riding bikes, going to the beach, watching TV, and camping.