Over the years, Lesley Roessing has been a great friend to Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday. One of her many talents is creating book list on certain topic. She does this for teachers over and over again. Today, our Wednesday post falls of September 11, 2024. It is a perfect time to collect the three different posts that Lesley has written for us all in one place.
She really know has to curate a list!

We hope you will browse the links below. Let us know if there are other books we should add to the list.

Thanks for checking out these older posts. If you get a minute, share them around.

Every once and awhile I am required to write for my own blog. 

I am going to take the opportunity to talk about an area of YA Literature that I absolutely love. I love YA novels that are immersed in music.  It doesn't seem to matter if it is kids in a band, kids using music to connect, or a way of making social commentary. Even within this subgenre there are categories  that seems to be unique -- books about DJs, boys in the band, kids learning to play, classical music, popular music, books that become movies, books that are autobiographical, books that use music as a sound track, and who knows how many variations there might be.  I like them all. Yet there are five that come to mind every time I have this conversation with someone about this fabulous subgenre. 

I have admired these books for a long time. With four of these books I have meet and chatted with the authors about their book and the impact they have had on my reading life. They provide pure enjoyment. They hold up when I read them a second time. 

A couple of weeks ago I finally caught up with the author of the fifth book, This Song Will Save Your Life, Leila Sales. 

Below, I will briefly discuss the five books and, for the grand finale, I will discuss the fifth book and link to a conversation with Liela Sales who is featured in Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesay in Conversation on Aug. 29, 2024.

​Enjoy.

Bonus! Here is a slide show with these five books and several more.

I am sure some of you could add several other books to the list, Send me a note and let me know.

Until next week.

I find myself thinking a great deal about the power of the verse novel as the beginning of the school year comes around.  Marilyn Nelson is one of those verse novel authors who provide powerful texts for students and teachers as they think about what poetry can do.  I can appreciate the form of the sonnet but I can’t imagine trying to tell a story with it. When I teach it, my students sometimes struggle with it.  Using one of Marilyn Nelson’s verse novels provides sonnets that use more familiar language but they still pack a powerful narrative and poetic punch.  The poetic form and its rigid structure is very powerful as a tool for writers.  Marilyn Nelson uses the sonnet to provide insight and critique into particular moments in history.

​The rigid poetic forms in these novels provide a framework for the storytelling—a tool to highlight both the structure of the poem itself and the content of the poem.  Many of these poetic forms are the ones studied in school with tightly measured rhyme schemes and syllable counts. These forms may feel distant and unknowable to the adolescent reader who is learning both the form and unfamiliar language at the same time. Sonnets, for example, are more traditionally associated with Shakespeare than with young adult literature.  Marilyn Nelson, author of several YA novels in verse, uses the form of the sonnet to tell the story of Emmett Till. These authors disrupt the traditional expectations of the poetic forms in order to provide social commentary and emotional connection. 

A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter.  Nelson uses a Petrarchan rhyme scheme in the sonnets in this novel; this rhyme scheme is typically ABBA ABBA for the octet and CDCDCD or CDECDE for the sestet.  The rigid number of lines as well as the relatively rigid rhyme scheme creates a challenge for both the writer and the reader.  Increasing the challenge for this particular novel in verse is the additional structure of the heroic crown.  The heroic crown of sonnets is a sequence of fifteen sonnets.  The last line of one sonnet becomes the first line of the next sonnet. The final sonnet is comprised of the first lines of the previous fourteen sonnets.  

The sonnets are formal in their structure, but the language is less so.  In Sonnet III, the speaker of the poem is the tree who shares how it has lived for hundreds of years and witnessed both life and death as part of the natural cycle of the world.  The tree understood “two hundred years of deaths” but not the unnatural and brutal death of Emmett Till.  The tree, personified here, says his name “still catches in the throat.”  The language is rich in description but not so formal that adolescent readers get lost in the words.  The idea of a “shortened childhood” connects to adolescents and reminds them that Emmett was their age.  The “jackal laughter” highlights the animal-like behavior of the men chasing the young boy. The contrast between “running boy” and “five men” illustrates the violence of Emmett’s death. The formal structure of the sonnet emphasizes the lawlessness of the men’s behavior.  The tree serves as witness to the natural cycle of life and feels it is has been scarred by the unnatural death of the young boy.

III
Pierced by the screams of a shortened childhood,
my heartwood has been scarred for fifty years
by what I heard, with hundreds of green ears.
That jackal laughter. Two hundred years I stood
listening to small struggles to find food,
to the songs of creature life, which disappears
and comes again, to the music of the spheres.
Two hundred years of deaths I understood.
Then slaughter axed one quiet summer night,
shivering the deep silence of the stars.
A running boy, five men in close pursuit.
One dark, five pale faces in the moonlight.
Noise, silence, back-slaps. One match, five cigars.
Emmett Till’s name still catches in the throat (n.p.).
 
IV
Emmett Till’s name still catches in my throat,
like syllables waylaid in a stutterer’s mouth.
A fourteen-year-old stutterer, in the South
to visit relatives and to be taught
the family’s ways. His mother had finally bought
that White Sox cap; she’d made him swear an oath
to be careful around white folks. She’s told him the truth
of many a Mississippi anecdote:
Some white folks have blind souls. In his suitcase
she’d packed dungarees, T-shirts, underwear,
and comic books. She’d given him a note
for the conductor, waved to his chubby face,
wondered if he’d remember to brush his hair.
Her only child. A body left to bloat (n.p.).
 
V
Your only child, a body thrown to bloat,
mother of sorrows, of justice denied.
Surely you must have thought of suicide,
seeing his gray flesh, chains around his throat.
Surely you didn’t know you would devote
the rest of your changed life to dignified
public remembrance of how Emmett died,
innocence slaughtered by the hands of hate.
If sudden loving light proclaimed you blest
would you bow your head in humility,
your healed heart overflow with gratitude?
Would you say yes, like the mother of Christ?
Or would you say no to your destiny,
mother of a boy martyr, if you could (n.p.)?

​The last and first lines serve as both a final thought and an opening of the idea that there is not an end.  The line “Her only child. A body left to bloat” ends Sonnet IV and opens Sonnet V. In Sonnet IV, the mother’s son becomes just a body to those who killed Emmett leaving him as a “body left to bloat.” For the people who killed him, his death is the end of the story. This is not so for his mother, and this develops in Sonnet V. Sonnet V repeats the last line of Sonnet IV and shifts to commiserating with Emmett’s mother as she continues to deal with her grief and loss. She is called the “mother of sorrows, of justice denied.” Emmett’s mother’s pain is compared to that of Mary, the mother of Christ.  The tree sees that both sons were martyred and that this pain is a shared pain. The sonnets here provide both the cycle of life and change and the cycle of grief and sacrifice.

The final sonnet in this heroic crown does more than just repeat the lines from the previous sonnets. It is also an acrostic that spells out “RIP EMMETT TILL” with the first letters of each line. Nelson uses the structure of the sonnets to provide a framework for the critique of what happened to Emmett Till.  The structure, though powerful, fades to the background as the content of the poems surges forward.  She opens and closes the crown cycle with the lines “Rosemary for remembrance” as both a nod to Shakespeare and also as a notice to society—the murder of Emmett Till needs to be remembered, not as a shrine to a racist past but as a current call to action. 

Nelson explains that for her, “the highpoint of the requiem is “Not My Bones.” Which [she] imagined Fortune singing in his own voice” (Nelson, 2003, p. 9).  Just as many YA novels in verse focus on providing a voice for those who are often overlooked, this novel interrupts the traditional funeral mass to provide Fortune an opportunity to speak.  He says, “I was not this body,/I was not these bones” (p. 25) meaning that his body was just a “temporary home” for him.  He speaks out against slavery saying, “You can own a man’s body,/ but you can’t own his mind.”  This interruption of the more formal structure becomes a moment of freedom for Fortune; he is not owned and he can speak out.  His voice, and the power of the interruption, becomes a way of saying there is more to life that the physical body and its existence.  Fortune says his soul is free and his bones, though left to tell his story, are not his home.  The structures of the poems in this text provide both a moment of connection and the recognition of freedom by disrupting a traditional structure. 

Both of these novels in verse challenge readers to see beyond the form to the message of the text. The messages, built in traditional poetic forms, highlight the power of history (structures) and the ways in which that history should be disrupted.  Whether it is using the very formal crown cycle to tell the story of a young man brutally murdered or the formal requiem to tell the story of a man who was a slave during his life, these forms and the way that they are used to connect the past and the present provide adolescent readers insight into historically traumatic moments. 

​This past school year, my students and I began a journey to rectify the underrepresentation of Deaf culture in our school library. We read over 20 novels and narrowed them down to nine with honorable mentions. Before I start, I am compelled to mention that each of these stories is just one person’s reflections on d/Deaf culture as there is not ONE way to represent a multitude of people. The National Association of the Deaf reminds us that deaf communities are:  

For the purpose of clarity, I will use the names as described by the authors. 

These novels offer duel purposes: for Deaf and hard of hearing individuals, they provide much needed mirrors and gateways into our classrooms and provide windows into the culture for the rest of us as well as providing space to reflect on our own perceptions and misconceptions of Deaf culture. Hopefully, they will inspire a dialogue on how to become better allies or advocates. 

Another novel based upon real events, is Show Me A Sign by Ann Claire LeZotte and its follow-up novels Set Me Free and Sail Me Away Home. Set at the turn of the 19th Century, heroine Mary Lambert is a direct descendant from the first Deaf family who arrived on the Mayflower. They settled in Martha’s Vineyard and created Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language, a language used by both Deaf and hearing individuals all over the island. All three books incorporate intriguing historical facts on Deaf culture and their different languages. They conclude with historical information on various topics such as the first deaf schools, Laurent Clerc, The Wampanoag Tribe,and The Indian Child Welfare Act. Throughout the novels, Mary struggles with the confines of female gender roles as well as what happens when one is “othered” for the very essence of themselves. Throughout the three novels, Mary addresses these prejudices and triumphs as she defies the judgements and imposed limitations projected upon her.

​Give Me A Sign and On The Bright Side, written by Anna Sortino, feature characters learning how to navigate their final years at home. They broach the absurdity of insisting a d/Deaf individual use only one languge instead of being bilingual, leave space to select the language which enhances communication best. Give Me A Sign is an homage to the summer camp experience, first romances, and fighting for causes. This novel delicately addresses the how perceptions of well-intentioned individuals can “other”. In On The Bright Side, Ellie’s Deaf school closes and she returns to the isolation of her hometown. Throughout the book, she journeys outside of her comfort zone to construct a new community that leads to her falling in love, enrolling in college, and moving into her first apartment. 

Honorable Mentions:

• 2023 Alex Award winner True Biz (my favorite)
• Five Flavors of Dumb
• A Quiet Kind of Thunder
• “The Isolation of Being Deaf In Prison” in Disability Visilibity (Adapted for Young Adults): 17 First-Person Stories For Today

There are multitudes of reasons to read these novels in your classes and, at a time where so many educators are thinking about resiliency, each of these protagonists teaches a master class in resiliency, determination, and empathy. We also can see ourselves in the characters, whether in the teacher who is learning the best practices to accommodate students, in the feelings of being an outcast, or in the delight we experience when we are truly accepted for who we are and who we might become. These books shed light on one of the many cultures in our classrooms and represent voices that need to be heard.
 
National Association of the Deaf. (2024). Community and Culture- Frequently Asked Questions. National Association of the Deaf. https://www.nad.org/resources/american-sign-language/community-and-culture-frequently-asked-questions/

YA verse novelists are uniquely skilled at using various poetic forms to tell stories in ways that grab readers’ attention.  The emotionality that poetry allows is used to great effect in these novels.  The new school year is here and I find myself focusing on what texts I will use in which classes to encourage students to write.  I also find myself working with teachers as they are trying to get students in their classes to see poetry differently.  One student commented, “I know that books are being banned for being about people like me.  That’s dangerous.”  That comment is echoing in my head as I look at October Mourning—a powerful YA verse novel about the death of Matthew Shepard. This is a book that is banned in many areas but its message is so important. Messages of hate lead to dangerous actions.  

The only good fag is a fag that’s dead
He asked for it, you got that right
The fires of Hell burn hot and red
 
A boy who takes a boy to bed?
Where I come from that’s not polite
The only good fag is a fag that’s dead
 
A man and a woman, the Good Lord said
As sure as Eve took the first bite
The fires of Hell burn hot and red
 
I hear upon his knees he pled
Fairies don’t know how to fight
The only good fag is a fag that’s dead
 
Beneath the Hunter’s Moon he bled
That must have been a pretty sight
The fires of Hell burn hot and red
 
C’mon, kids, it’s time for bed
Say your prayers, kiss Dad goodnight
The only good fag is a fag that’s dead
The fires of Hell burn hot and red (p. 66)

The repetition of these lines creates a rhythm that seems almost hypnotic.  The lines increase in power and horror as they are repeated.  The contrasts between the seemingly simple good night ritual of a father putting his children to bed and the devastating effect of what has become the bedtime story for those children provides insight to how these men could justify their murder of a young, gay man.  The men, raised on steady diets of hatred and hell, would not see how killing someone who is gay could be wrong.  

The companion villanelle, “An Angel,” provides an alternative perspective explaining angels need not fear evil.  The poem states that we should “love thy neighbor, as it’s said/ short of that, give them their space/ Lift your wings above your head.” The commandment stresses love and nonjudgment.  The contrasting villanelles provide alternative ways to be in the world—filled with hate and murder or filled with love and grace.  The repetition in both poems ensures that the messages illustrate what will happen when people follow those commandments. 

In addition to villanelles, Newman also uses poetic structures such as pantoums and haiku.  Pantoums, like villanelles, use the repetition of lines to help create meaning.  The pantoum consists of  four-line stanzas.  The second and fourth line of one stanza become the first and third line of the next stanza. 

Haiku are three-line verses that have a rigid syllable count—the first and third lines have 5 syllables and the second line contains seven syllables.  “The Fence (that night)” uses the repetition of the lines to show how an inanimate object had more humanity than the men who killed Matthew.  The second line of the first stanza, “He was as heavy as a broken heart” becomes the first line of the second stanza. The repeating of the lines becomes like a heartbeat in the poem.  The layering of words—heart/beating, dead/breathing, cradle/cradled—emphasizes Matthew’s humanity and his life and highlights how little humanity the men who attacked him showed. 

​To them, Matthew was not worthy of life; to the fence, Matthew deserved to be held, cradled by someone who loved him.   

​I held him all night long
He was heavy as a broken heart
Tears fell from his unblinking eyes
He was dead weight yet he kept breathing
 
He was heavy as a broken heart
His own heart wouldn’t stop beating
He was dead weight yet he kept breathing
His face streaked with moonlight and blood
 
His own heart wouldn’t stop beating
The cold wind wouldn’t stop blowing
His face streaked with moonlight and blood
I tightened my grip and held on
 
The cold wind wouldn’t stop blowing
We were out on the prairie alone
I tightened my grip and held on
I saw what was done to this child
 
We were out on the prairie alone
Their truck was the last thing he saw
I saw what was done to this child
I cradled him just like a mother
 
Their truck was the last thing he saw
Tears fell from his unblinking eyes
I cradled him just like a mother
I held him all night long (p. 16)

The horror of Matthew’s murder and the callous disposal of his body is developed in the layering and repetition of the lines in this poem.  Matthew’s slow death from his beating is contrasted with the openness of the prairie and the truck driving away.  Nature and the fence witness the horror of Matthew’s death while his murderers drive away.  

I find myself, ten years into my teaching career in New Orleans, Louisiana,finally  facing censorship possibilities that have been creeping up more and more violently as realities. My state passed its own version of Florida’s sadly renown “Don’t Say Gay Bill” as my ninth year in the classroom came to a close, joining a growing number of states where anti-LGBTIA bills have passed. ​

These new restrictions put hate into action, demanding more creative ways to make sure all identity stories are told in schools, and requiring teachers like me to think more deliberately about the rationales of including texts, like George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir Manifesto (2020), in classroom conversations. One way is by consistently grounding the use of the texts in course standards. 

Johnson’s evocative All Boys Aren’t Blue lends itself perfectly to rhetorical analysis, whether an introduction to the concept with younger students like 9th graders, or a refresher on the rhetorical situation for students enrolled in AP English Language and Composition. The very first standard (1.A) for AP Lang is: “Identify and describe components of the rhetorical situation: the exigence, audience, writer, purpose, context, and message.” ​

When I’ve used Johnson’s memoir in the past, I’ve used the story “Smile” as an essay option with English I students who have just been introduced to the elements of the rhetorical situation, and who have previously practiced identifying those elements with various TED talks. Students then select an essay to present on, first identifying the elements of the rhetorical situation, then identifying three choices made by the writer to further their purpose, finally constructing a thesis statement making an argument about the rhetorical situation of their selected essay. 

In this reimagining of the project, I give students who have a similar exposure to the rhetorical situation as described above, six essays to read from Johnson’s text: “Identity” (chapter 2, pages 36 - 51), Honeychild” (chapter 3, pages 52-64), “Nanny: The Caregiver, The Hustler, My Best Friend” (chapter 7, pages 128-143), “Daddy’s Second Chance” (chapter 8, pages 144-159), “A Lesson Before Dying” (chapter 10, pages 182-192), “Setting Myself Free or Setting Myself Up?” (chapter 13, pages 224-239). These selected essays work beautifully with identifying purpose, context, and message, but are purposefully selected because they allow students to unpack Johnson’s identity in a multi-faceted way, layering his sexuality with his race, his family, and his home. ​

It feels important to acknowledge the gravity of the situation that many teachers are facing right now: choosing to expose their students to voices that are real and relatable over the safety of their careers. In this time, I find turning back to the why incredibly important. As Johnson notes in their text: “There were no books for me to read in order to understand what I was going through as a kid. There were no heroes or icons to look up to and emulate. There were no road maps or guidelines for the journey” (Johnson 295). How beautiful and important it is to be able to hand students texts that potentially give them a sense of understanding or, equally important, a sense of empathy for others. 

If you’re looking for ways to introduce the conversation of censorship in with your discussion of this book or author, I recommend starting with this NPR piece: “Banned Books: Author George M. Johnson on the need to tell all people's stories”.
​
I choose to continue to try to find ways to put those mirrors in the hands of my students, whether through projects like these that meet core standards while diversifying the voices of the authors my students encounter, or by keeping these books on my classroom shelves.

Last month I completed my doctoral work and successfully defended my dissertation which, in part, focused on teaching the Holocaust in my eighth grade ELA classes using Gholdy Muhammad’s framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy. Of the five pursuits Muhammad includes, the pursuit of joy was the one my students clung to the most. Since COVID, my students have routinely commented on the desire to read books with more “happiness”. Admittedly, our eighth grade curriculum includes four anchor texts that explore heavy topics: Ghost Boy by Jewell Parker Rhodes, Yellow Star by Jennifer Roy, The Giver by Lois Lowry, and Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson.

​In the fall of 2022, I participated in a two-day workshop with Gholdy Muhammad when her book Unearthing Joy was on the cusp of release. Muhammad states in her book that to follow the pursuit of joy, “[t]eachers and leaders must understand how to connect beauty, aesthetics, wellness, wholeness, solutions to problems, and/or happiness to their curricular, instructional, and leadership practices'' (50). This is exactly what my students have been asking for.
 
During her workshop, Muhammad took the time to sit with me and talk about how to include the pursuit of joy in our Ghost Boys unit, and from there I have begun to incorporate the pursuit of joy throughout the school year.
 
The following is a glimpse at some of the ways we have started intentionally pursuing joy in one of our novel units in our eighth grade ELA classes.

Jewell Parker Rhodes’s novel Ghost Boys tell the story of 12-year old Jerome who gets shot by a white police officer while playing with a toy gun in a Chicago neighborhood. Inspired by Tamir Rice, Rhodes begins the novel with the shooting and has Jerome tell his story as a ghost who can only communicate with one living person: his shooter’s 12-year old daughter, Sarah. By also including the story of Emmett Till, Ghost Boys explores violence against Black boys in America for a middle grade audience.

Gholdy Muhammad and I quickly decided to elevate Black Boy Joy and Black Girl Magic during this unit as a way for students to explore their own joy and magic regardless of their race identity. We begin the school year with this book, so we are already doing lots of identity story-telling via poems and other writing. It was an easy transition to create prompts for writing and discussion that asked students to talk about what sort of joy or magic they bring to their world.
 
I also moved to Black Boy Joy and Black Girl Magic specifically by giving each student a sticky note and having them jot down a word or two that tells what they think of when they hear one or both terms. About a quarter of our student population identifies as Black and an additional percentage identify as mixed race with one Black parent. Many responses were personal: sticky notes with “Me!”, “my family”, “my friends”, “my little brother”, etc. written on them. Non Black-identifying students also gave positive responses: “my best friend”, “Lizzo!”, “Black kids who are happy and doing cool things”, and “their awesome hairstyles!”

We went on to list things that are associated with joyous Black culture (without falling into stereotypes): hiphop, dancing, fashion, hair styles, Juneteenth, food, etc. Students then looked back at their own writing to find specific examples of the joy in their own youth culture.
 
Students referred back to joy with all the young characters in the book: Jerome and Emmet Till for Black Boy Joy and Jerome’s sister Kim for Black Girl Magic, but also Sarah (the white cop’s daughter) and Carlos (his friend who he learns about el Dia de los Muertos from).
 
This allows us to look at the violence against Black boys as something that is extinguishing joy and magic from our collective culture of the United States. Students are able to think about our own reality in our small, urban school district and what might contribute to the destruction of their joy and magic.

We do not end the unit in despair, however. Jerome’s friend Carlos decides to memorialize Jerome via a Dia de los Muertos celebration bringing together his and Jerome’s families. Sarah decides to begin a website about Jerome and other Black boys who have been killed by bias-influenced violence. Both of these bring a sense of healing and joy to Jerome.
 
Joy in the face of violence and despair leads us into the idea of informed action and how they might identify similar issues of joy destruction and form ways to enact change.
 
We still have a lot of work ahead of us to completely reframe our curriculum to align with Muhammad’s five pursuits (identity, skills, intellect, criticality, and joy), but just shifting our focus from the destructive results of human injustices to the actual joy-filled humans is a healthy start for us and most especially for our 8th graders.

Works Cited
 
Muhammad, Gholdy. Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and
            Historically Responsive Literacy. Scholastic, 2021.
Muhammad, Gholdy. Unearthing Joy: A Guide to Culturally and Historically Responsive
            Teaching and Learning. Scholastic, 2023.
Rhodes, Jewell Parker. Ghost Boys. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2018.

    Class Act (2020) is a sequel to Jerry Craft’s award winning novel New Kid, which Craft published in 2019. New Kid followed the storyline of Jordan Banks, a light skinned Black student who was new to the Riverdale Academy Day School, a wealthy and well-regarded private school in New York at which the student body is predominately white. Jordan’s story continues in Class Act, as he tries to navigate being younger than most of his peers, hitting puberty late, and finding a balance between meeting his parents’ high academic expectations with pursuing his passion for the visual arts. ​

However, the primary character of the novel is Drew Ellis, one of Jordan’s best friends. Drew is an intelligent student athlete who wants to do well in school, yet has to balance these desires with the expectations that he will perform as an athlete. Drew lives with his grandmother, who is a single parent, and faces microaggressions in part due to his tall stature and his darker skin. Jordan’s periodic comic drawing interludes show his empathy for Drew as he witnesses these experiences, and empathy is an important life skill for young adolescents to learn. Despite having different life experiences, Jordan and Drew both learn to feel empathy for their good friend Liam, who is white and wealthy, yet still feels isolated at times because of difficult family issues. ​

    The following scene below from page 169 shows how Drew and Jordan are both struggling to find a balance as they navigate middle school life: ​

Drew feels pressure to keep his grades up because of his scholarship to the school. However, as he discusses with Jordan, the hardest part of school is actually the social and emotional part of it, such as navigating relationships with friends, crushes, and teachers. Using Melissa Shieble’s (2014), concept of critical visual literacy, we can notice that the picture of Drew and Jordan walking on the school grounds looks like a maze or a labyrinth. For middle and young high school students, navigating social situations can feel like being in a maze: there are many obstacles, and sometimes, there is not a clear way out. Part of finding the solution, then, is continuing on the journey, even when it is challenging. ​

A large part of conversations in my classroom with my Grade 7 students is around one of their teachers, Mr. Roche. Mr. Roche is a well intentioned, but sometimes misguided white man who often ends up leading diversity awareness programs that he is not equipped to run on his own. This powerful scene from page 95 of the book demonstrates how Drew often feels invisible at some of Mr. Roche’s gatherings and events: ​

This particular scene takes place after Mr. Roche asked Drew to be a tour guide for students coming from the more racially diverse public sister school to the RAD day academy. Drew felt that he was chosen not because of common interests with the students, but because of his race, although he did manage to make a strong connection to one female student in particular. Mr. Roche is reflecting on the tour experience, during which he made a few missteps and left the students from the sister school feeling that they did not belong at RAD. He looked for solace, and while Drew might have wanted to give it, he just didn’t feel he could. The panel series of Drew fading away from the conversation exemplifies his feelings of invisibility in a way that words alone could not. ​

Later in the novel, Mr. Roche and some of his colleagues are preparing to go to a diversity conference, showing their commitment to learning new information about forming connections. As both Jordan and Drew point out, this commitment shows that Mr. Roche and his colleagues are trying, despite these occasional missteps. Through this part of the novel as well as in other key scenes, students can learn to be empathetic with the adults in their lives, as they also are learning. ​

    Before having these and other conversations related to diversity and identity in the secondary classroom, it is important to set up class norms related to civil discourse and respectful discussions. I have found that Essential Partners norms related to the dialogic classroom are helpful. Additionally, the fishbowl discussion technique, similar to Socratic seminars, is a productive way to involve all students, whether or not they are likely to speak up in a larger class environment. Some students need to be reminded to “move up” if they are more likely to be hesitant to speak or to “move back” if they are more likely to be vocal to allow a chance for quieter students to speak up. I’ve found this technique a rewarding way to ensure that all students have a chance to participate in the discussion about this important novel. The discussion questions are student generated, although I occasionally re-word or eliminate questions if they sound too similar to each other.  ​

Jerry Craft and Kwame Alexander are now collaborating on a middle grades book project called J vs K, which will be released in 2025. I look forward to reading that novel and seeing how I might bring it into classroom and writing spaces. Through its combination of relevant themes and visual techniques, Class Act by Jerry Craft has been one of my favorite novels to teach in recent years. ​

Students in 2024 have lived through a huge amount of trauma, whether first or second hand. Almost all have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent disruptions to their lives. In addition, most have access to first-hand accounts of genocide, racism, sexism, and violent crime through social media at any given time. Beyond these external pressures, research indicates that “approximately 25% of American children will experience at least one traumatic event by the age of 16” (The National Child Traumatic Stress Network, n.d.), be it an instance of gun violence in schools, the traumatic loss of a loved one, abuse, or any other of the myriad instances which can cause a person to experience trauma or grief. All of these facts indicate that in the average American classroom, at least one quarter of the individuals in that room have experienced, or will experience, trauma, either in the own lives, or by second-hand witnessing trauma. 

We know that there exists YAL on a wide variety of topics which could be labeled as traumatic. For example, there exists young adult novels on the topic of rape, like Speak, by Anderson (1999), police brutality, like The Hate U Give by Thomas (2017), and suicide, like All the Bright Places by Niven (2015), along with so many other texts, ranging in traumatic topics from the more commonplace to the more extreme. One need only visit the YAL section of a library or a book store to see the wide variety of traumatic topics on display within books for teens. Missing, however, seems to be a larger examination of how books on these topics, and books on other similarly traumatic topics, are used with alignment to trauma-informed pedagogy. In essence, how can, or should, a secondary ELA teacher utilize these books within an educational space to further a trauma-informed pedagogical stance?

While being somewhat new to the scene, trauma-informed pedagogy has a wide-reaching impact on the field of education at all levels. Defined by the American Library Association as “striv[ing] to understand how various forms of trauma may have impacted the lives of learners and us[ing] that understanding to accommodate learners’ needs, prevent[ing] further or retraumatization, and promot[ing] resilience and growth” (Zingarelli-Sweet, 2021), trauma-informed pedagogy is rooted within the idea that the behaviors of people are often rooted in traumatic experiences, and that by purposefully engaging in specific practices, an educator can help learners succeed on an academic, social, and emotional level. There is a great amount of literature and guidance about how to adopt such a stance within one’s teaching practice, and many k-12 and postsecondary institutes of education provide training or recommendations for practice. 

As a professor of literacy in the state of Maryland, my colleagues in the school of education have often discussed the expansion of trauma-informed pedagogy expectations at the k-12 level. Recent guidance provided by the Maryland State Department of Education (or MSDE), titled “A Trauma-Informed Approach for Maryland Schools” (2021) serves as the perfect example of the ways in which k-12 teachers are now being asked to include aspects of trauma-informed pedagogy in regular teaching practices. For example, MSDE recommends that faculty and staff within k-12 spaces utilize a trauma-informed care model as “a standard of care across not only health professions but in school settings, regardless of whether a given individual has reported or experienced trauma and without requiring school staff to know whether a specific individual has a trauma history” (p. 17). In this way, it is becoming an expectation in Maryland that all k-12 faculty and staff are “trauma-informed,” and are mindful in the ways in which students may express traumatic grief within educational spaces. 

Anecdotally, I know that many other states and education systems are having similar conversations, both with and without state guidance. The missing piece, it would seem, is guidance regarding the use of young adult literature within this conversation. To my mind, YAL seems to help bridge the gap between making such heavy content like gun violence in schools, with a teacher’s ability to help students process and reflect on traumatic incidents, perhaps in the hopes of change-making. However, again, an important element is missing: how, if at all, can teachers use YAL written about traumatic events in their trauma-informed teaching practices?

While organizations like Lee and Low Books (a recent recipient of the 2024 ALAN Award) have resources like a Trauma-Informed Diverse Reading List (2019) to support k-8 teachers, there seems to be a distinct lack of guidance or resources for ELA teachers in grades 6-12 with regards to best practices regarding the use of YAL in trauma-informed pedagogy. In the coming years of research on YAL, our field must explore the ways in which YAL on traumatic topics can be used within education spaces in a way that is responsible, trauma-informed, and beneficial to all involved. 

References

Anderson, L. H. (1999). Speak. Farrar Straus Giroux.

Bickmore, W., Rumohr, G., Shaffer, S., & Sluiter, K. (2020). Empowering English teachers to content with gun violence: A COVID-19 conference cancellation story. Language Arts Journal of Michigan, 35(2). https://doi.org/10.9707/2168-149X.2281

Brown, L. A. (2022). School Gun Violence in YA Literature: Representing Environments, Motives, and Impacts. Lexington Books.

Jensen, K. (2018). YA books about school shootings to build empathy, sympathy and understanding. Book Riot. https://bookriot.com/ya-books-about-school-shootings-to-build-empathy-sympathy-and-understanding/

Lee & Low Books. (2019). Trauma-informed diverse reading list. https://www.leeandlow.com/educators/reading-lists/trauma-informed-diverse-reading-list
​
Lockhart, E. (2014). We were liars. Delacorte Press.

Maryland State Department of Education. (2021). A trauma-informed approach for Maryland schools.
https://www.marylandpublicschools.org/about/Documents/DSFSS/SSSP/MSDE-Trauma-Informed-Guidance.pdf

The National Child Traumatic Stress Network. School personnel. https://www.nctsn.org/audiences/school-personnel#:~:text=Research%20suggests%20that%20approximately%2025,and%2For%20behavior%20at%20school.

Niven, J. (2015). All the bright places. Knopf Publishing Group.

Raymond, B. (2021). Creating a safe space for students to explore trauma and build resilience through young adult literature, creative composing, and personal experiences. In M. F. Rice & A. K. Dallacqua (Eds.) Luminous literacies: Localized teaching and teacher education (pp.  71-83). Emerald Publishing.

Shaffer, S. (2016). Humanizing and understanding school shootings: How YA “school shooting” literature provides multiple insights. Dr. Bickmore’s YA Wednesday. http://www.drbickmoresyawednesday.com/weekly-posts/humanizing-and-understanding-school-shootings-how-ya-school-shooting-literature-provides-multiple-insights

Shaffer, S., Rumohr-Voskuil, G., & Bickmore, S. T. (2019a). Contending with gun violence in the English language classroom. Dr. Bickmore’s YA Wednesday. http://www.drbickmoresyawednesday.com/weekly-posts/contending-with-gun-violence-in-the-english-language-classroom

Shaffer, S., Rumohr-Voskuil, G., & Bickmore, S. T. (2019b). Contending with gun violence in the English language classroom. Routledge.

Stefan, H. C. (2021). Mad violence, white victims, and other gun violence fictions: The gap between school shootings and systemic gun violence. Research on Diversity in Youth Literature, 3(9).

Thomas, A. (2017). The hate u give. Balzer + Bray.

VanSlyke-Briggs, K., Rhodes, S., & Turner, J. (2020). The darkest themes: Perceptions of teen-on-teen gun violence in schools as portrayed in teen literature. Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults, 11(2). https://www.yalsa.ala.org/jrlya/2020/04/the-darkest-themes-perceptions-of-teen-on-teen-gun-violence-in-schools-as-portrayed-in-teen-literature/

VanSlyke-Briggs, K., Rhodes, S., & Turner, J. (2021). Pearl clutching and the normalization of school shootings in young adult literature. In K. VanSlyke-Briggs & E. A. Bloom (Eds.), Dress rehearsals for gun violence: Confronting trauma and anxiety in America’s schools (pp. 17-42). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
​
Zingarelli-Sweet, D. (2021). Keeping up with…trauma-informed pedagogy. American Library Association. https://www.ala.org/acrl/publications/keeping_up_with/trauma-informed-pedagogy