Composting Grief Into Light

Building Agentive Healing Literacies with BIPOC Adolescent Writers

Abstract

Responding to a general recognition that teachers are often ill-prepared to address the intersections of healing, literacy learning, and grief, this paper offers an overview of classroom practices and curricula that support the co-creation of containers of safety for students to explore grief while building academic literacies. Acknowledgment that grief with layers of trauma can often be a subtext of classroom life requires that teachers consider and adopt suitable manners of healing-centered and trauma-informed instruction. Drawing on the voices of students and on fifteen years of experience working with embodiment practices in the classroom, this article provides descriptions of tangible approaches and curricula that organically weave together agentive healing literacies with academic literacies.