Trauma-informed teaching and young adult literature on traumatic topics by Heather Matthews
| Heather J. Matthews is an assistant professor of literacy in the Department of Early and Elementary Education at Salisbury University. She specializes in diverse representation within children’s and young adult literature. Heather can be reached at [email protected]. |  |
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.
| Perhaps in an act of life mirror art, or art mirroring life, traumatic topics within young adult literature are common. Take, for example, the topic of gun violence in schools; there are entire listicles of YAL on the topic of school shootings (Jensen, 2018), detailing the titles of books dating back to the late 1990s depicting gun violence in schools. For teachers, there is research regarding the ways in which YAL represent gun violence in schools (Brown, 2022), the ways in which gun violence in schools has become normalized in YAL (VanSlyke-Briggs et al., 2021), ways to empower English teachers using gun violence YAL (Bickmore et al., 2020), the perceptions of teachers and librarians of YAL portraying school gun violence (VanSlyke-Briggs et al., 2020), and even the gap that exists between school shootings as portrayed in literature for young people and the reality of gun violence in schools (Stefan, 2021). In fact, a post on this blog (Shaffer et al., 2019a) announced the release of a book titled Contending with Gun Violence in the English Language Classroom (Shaffer et al., 2019b), and an earlier post examined how YAL about school shootings allows readers to view the topic from multiple perspectives of those involved (Shaffer, 2016). |  |
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?
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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?
| Ultimately, this gap in the bridge between trauma-informed pedagogy and YAL on traumatic topics leaves space for a new frontier. Some publishing has been done on the topic – take, for example, Raymond’s 2021 book chapter titled “Creating a Safe Space for Students to Explore Trauma and Build Resilience through Young Adult Literature, Creative Composing, and Personal Experiences,” in which Raymond had her advanced eighth-grade ELA students respond to traumatic literature through assignments using artistic modalities. More specifically, Raymond’s students were asked to reflect on their experiences of reading the book We Were Liars (Lockhart, 2014) through the task of “finding a trinket that was indicative of someone or something they had lost” (Raymond, p. 79) and then representing that item through a variety of art supplies on a canvas. Afterward, students journaled about “their experience with the task and how it made them feel” (p. 80), with the option to share these responses aloud. While this is certainly one way that teachers can approach using traumatic YAL in the classroom that may be aligned to trauma-informed pedagogy, this isn’t to suggest that teachers should be holding full-blown bibliotherapy sessions within ELA classrooms – teachers must balance trauma-informed care within the limits of the teaching profession and professional capabilities and sensibilities. Despite this publication, and a few others, research and publishing on this particular topic remains relatively sparse, let alone research that more concretely ties YAL to trauma-informed pedagogy practices in ways that are ethical and responsible. |  |
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
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