March 12, 2025 • 36 mins
📖 Episode Synopsis:
In this episode of Classroom Narratives: Healing in Education, Dr. Joey Weisler sits down with Dr. Adam Wolfsdorf, lead author of Navigating Trauma in the English Classroom and a founding educator at Bayridge Prep in Brooklyn. With an extensive background in education, the humanities, and the performing arts, Adam shares how trauma-informed teaching fosters emotional intelligence, resilience, and deeper learning for students.
Together, they explore how literature gives language to trauma, the role of relational teaching, and how educators can navigate emotionally charged discussions in the classroom—without overstepping into the role of therapist. This conversation is a must-listen for teachers, education leaders, and anyone passionate about transforming education into a healing space.
📌 Show Notes (Key Takeaways):
✔ Trauma-Informed Teaching – Why understanding trauma makes educators more effective and responsive.
✔ The Power of Literature – How novels, plays, and poetry help students process emotions and build empathy.
✔ Relational Teaching – Moving from “What’s wrong with you?” to “How can I help you?” in student interactions.
✔ The Role of Emotional Intelligence – Why schools must teach the whole child, not just the brain.
✔ The Line Between Teaching & Therapy – Creating a classroom that’s therapeutic without becoming therapy.
✔ Engaging Every Student – Strategies to reach both vocal and silent learners.
✔ The Need for Emotional Learning in Schools – How to bring emotional intelligence into curriculum design.
✔ The Stigma Around Trauma Studies – How educators can shift the narrative to make these discussions more accepted.
✔ Active Listening & Classroom Presence – How to create a space where students feel heard and valued.
✔ Healing Through Stories – Why reading and discussing trauma in literature can be life-changing.
🔗 Referenced Books & Resources:
📖 Navigating Trauma in the English Classroom by Adam Wolfsdorf (Available via NCTE, Amazon, Target)
📖 The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
📖 Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman
📖 The Element by Ken Robinson
🎥 Ken Robinson’s TED Talk: "Do Schools Kill Creativity?"
🔗 Learn More About Dr. Adam Wolfsdorf: Bay Ridge Prep Staff Page
🔗 Get the Book: Navigating Trauma in the English Classroom (NCTE)
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to the Classroom Narratives Healing and Education Podcast, the space where education meets resilience.
(00:06):
I'm Dr. Joey Weisler, and in each episode, we dive deep into the personal stories of educators, students,
leaders, and frontline advocates who are navigating the complexities within modern education.
Whether you're just starting your teaching journey or are a seasoned professional looking for inspiration,
we'll explore how to foster meaningful change, prevent burnout, and build trauma-informed communities within our schools.
(00:33):
Now, let's take a seat at the front of the classroom as we get started.
Alright, welcome back to the podcast everyone, and thanks for tuning in today for a very special guest.
I'm so privileged today to have Dr. Adam Wolfstorff joining me for a powerful conversation on trauma-informed classrooms.
Dr. Wolfstorff is the lead author of the text, "Navigating Trauma in the English Classroom",
(00:55):
which was published in 2022 by the National Council of Teachers of English, otherwise known as the NCTE.
You can find that text in our show notes as well.
Dr. Wolfstorff is also one of the founding educators of 25 years at Bayridge Prep in Brooklyn,
which is a school reputed for its students' first approach to education.
(01:17):
Adam is also an adjunct professor at NYU's Steinhardt School of Education,
and a visiting assistant professor in Wesley Anne's Graduate Liberal Studies program.
And Adam has also worked professionally within the humanities through national tours for Broadway,
and in musicals such as Rent, where he's worked alongside Neil Patrick Harris on stage.
(01:38):
And Adam has also been a part of the rock band, The Energy.
And his variegated work and love for the humanities has been inspiring to audiences,
fellow colleagues in the field like myself, as well as his own students through the work that they seek to produce.
So a big thanks to him for joining us, and Adam, welcome to the show.
Thank you, happy to be here.
(02:00):
So Adam, the first thing I wanted to ask is, in terms of your work in the humanities,
tell us a little bit more about what you do and how your journey has taken you to where you are now.
Yeah, so I mean, you mentioned my performance in theater and music background,
which I grew up kind of a big time zealot of music, of performance, I did a ton of music theater.
(02:21):
And so I've always been really interested in drama.
And then my first couple years out of college, I did the national tour of Rent,
as you mentioned with Neil Patrick Harris.
And I did a national tour of Greece, and I did a bunch of other regional theater
productions for about two and a half years after graduating.
And then I kind of realized that as much as I love drama and I love performance,
(02:42):
I didn't want to do that as my main thing for the rest of my life.
And I started to think about what it might be that I would want to do.
And I had gone to a sleep-away camp as a kid for about seven years as a camper.
And then I had been a counselor for three years.
And I loved working with adolescents, being part of their development,
(03:02):
being a mentoring figure, an impact figure.
I studied literature at Harvard, and it just kind of felt like it would make sense for me to
try my hand at education.
And about that time, it was in 2000, I believe, there was a brand new school that was beginning
in Brooklyn, New York.
It's called Bayridge Prep.
(03:22):
And it was begun by a group of psychologists who believed in the intersectional living space
between positive psychology and education.
And I loved kind of what they were talking about and the vision that they had for a school.
And so I've been with Bayridge Prep since 2000.
And it's a school I've helped to build and design and grow.
(03:44):
And I'm the chair of the humanities department there.
That's incredible.
Yeah.
And so I didn't realize this when I did my research that psychologists formed the blueprint
to Bayridge.
Yeah.
So I mean, obviously, one of the things that we're going to talk about is my interest in trauma.
And what I will say, at any school in America, you're going to have kids who have had
(04:06):
traumatic histories.
Bayridge Prep isn't specific as a place for kids with traumatic history, right?
At any school, you're going to see this.
But the founders of Bayridge Prep, the two people in particular, Dr. Michael T. Dealy
and Dr. Charles Fasano, both of whom are my mentors and friends, had an idea of using
what we know about psychology to impact learning on levels that stretch far beyond kind of
(04:34):
like intellectual learning or just like content-driven learning, right?
So curriculum, I think, tends to be seen as the stuff that students learn that's kind
of in classical models imparted by the teacher or professor in this banking system.
And even 25 years ago, when I started, Dr. Fasano and Dr. Dealy were talking a lot about
(04:56):
emotional intelligence.
And I had gone to Harvard and studied a lot of stuff that would fall into the intellectual
realm. And one of the things that I actually always found missing was an emphasis on emotional
learning, because it seemed to me that the complete person was actually a lot more of
an emotional organism than an intellectual organism.
(05:18):
And that if you really wanted to impact people, you would impact them where they live
experientially, phenomenologically, right?
And so I'll say this, as somebody who went to a great public high school in Brooklyn
High School, I went to a pretty good college in Harvard University.
I went to a great PhD program at Columbia University, and I teach at NYU and at Wesleyan.
(05:39):
And I will say that Bayridge Prep is the most special learning culture I've ever been
involved with. It just has an incredible design and an incredible emphasis on emotional
learning in a way that really has a beautiful impact on the community.
I love hearing that so much, because I feel like, as you mentioned, these are the types
of schools that we need, since there needs to be a focus on teaching the whole child,
(06:04):
not just the brain of the child.
And I think until more schools go that way, education is going to continue remaining as
a stagnant institution. But once more schools focus on that kind of philosophy that you're
holding as well, we can really help the system survive once again.
That's right. And I think a lot about Ken Robinson's work. He has a great book called
(06:25):
The Element, which I've read and I teach from. He also has a great TED Talk where he talks
about the way that schools are killing creativity. And he talks a lot about the idea that most
kind of classical educational models are targeting the idea that we're teaching the brain.
But there's this whole other thing. Students have a body, students have emotions, students
have a history, students have a psychology. So thinking more deeply and comprehensively
(06:49):
and expansively about what it means to educate somebody.
Yeah, absolutely. And in terms of the way that you have approached teaching according to
your own text is that you say that one of the key takeaways is with what we call to be
relational teaching. And relational teaching is the ability to form relationships with
students and teachers amongst each other. And what relational teaching does is that it
(07:14):
switches the mindset and the paradigm of, "what's wrong with you?" to, "how can I help you?",
especially when approaching students who may be in distress, as a way to still build and
enhance the partnership that can survive and thrive with learning between the teacher and
the student. How can educators really try to form those authentic relationships with
(07:35):
students in their classroom, especially in spaces where a trauma may be present but unspoken?
It's a great question. I mean, I think a lot about the kind of fallacy of building a syllabus
prior to meeting your students, which I think is what we're kind of compelled to do, right?
Because we're supposed to come two day one ready to go with kind of like this map of what the year
(07:56):
is going to look like. And I do it because I do think there's value to it, but I also resist it.
And I also like whatever syllabus I have, and this is whether I'm teaching at the high school
level, the college level, or the graduate level, I always am ostensible with my students and say that
whatever it is that I've designed or I imagine for the work that we're going to do is subject to
(08:17):
change. And the reason why is that we haven't met each other yet, right? So I always have this pretty
meaningful idea that the curriculum is really the students and getting to know them, get a feel for
them. I would say that when you're in front of a room dealing with an audience of people, whether
it's 15 people, 30 people, whatever it is, a hundred people, it's a little harder as the numbers get
(08:38):
bigger. But I really try to get a sense of who the people are in the room, what they're interested in.
I'm sensitive to what I might perceive as their moods, which can change day to day, student to
student can even at the adolescent level, can change hour to hour and even minute to minute.
Right. But I try to establish a really deep respect for what we're doing together as a community.
(09:02):
I try to show regard. I try to notice subtle things. So like you're obviously going to notice
your students who are raising their hands and like super engaged and like ready to go. But I also
notice very small things. Like if I ask a question to the group and like a kid who typically is not
involved might like kind of perk their head up a little bit or like gesture towards picking their
(09:23):
hand up. And I might at that instance stop and actually call on that person, even if they haven't
fully raised their hand, because I can kind of gauge like this might be a moment this person
really wants to participate. I feel like when students intuit that you have a deep level of
regard for them. And the other part of this that I think is really important is listening, listening
actively. I think the danger of educators is that they're talking heads who have mouths and like to
(09:49):
use them to show how much they know. I think a really great educator oftentimes is expert in
creating a space where the students can run the show. That might take a little bit of time,
depending upon the group that you're working with. But invariably, I love it when students are just
really engaged and really involved and leading the interpretive process, especially when we're
(10:13):
looking at a literary text and we're discussing a topic that is really rich and vibrant.
Yeah. And it sounds like the most important thing that educators can maintain is their with it-ness
within the classroom. And part of that with it-ness is just knowing what's going on around you,
how students are reacting and having that nonverbal communication really, really down solid.
(10:33):
And as a result, that can, as you hint at them, lead the instructor to be a subject area expert,
but still allow the students to act as the content masters, if you will, as the instructor plays the
role of a facilitator that lets others learn from outside just that one person. Because I'm sure you
say the same to your students too. On day one, when I walk in, I say, there are 27 minds in this room,
(10:58):
not one, but 27. And if one of you doesn't participate, we're going to crumble. So however,
you choose to participate, whether it's through written response, verbal response, whatever that
means for you and what you're comfortable to do. Yeah. Voice matters in this classroom. For sure.
I like what you just said about the idea that some students are not going to open their mouths
(11:22):
and say anything almost ever. Like they're shy for whatever reason, or they don't like public speaking
or whatever it is. But that doesn't necessarily mean at all that that student isn't deeply engaged,
really kind of communicating and communing with the work. And so we'll see that come out in a bunch
of different ways. One of which, as you said, is their writing. Absolutely. And I've learned that
some of my best classes work best on flexibility and choice, where if I tell them, you don't really
(11:45):
have to vocalize in this unit, but if you write it out, I will pull the top responses and I'll read
anonymously and say, this is what a classmate said, let's talk about these thoughts. And that still
allows the silent peer to participate and vocalize without them having to physically do so on their
own. It gives them the support and the lifeline to still get them a part of the class. Yep. And with
(12:07):
some of the materials that you and I both talk about, Adam, in our classroom, we have a really
solid trauma-based curriculum. And you've mentioned this paradox where in the real world,
trauma hits us head on, that in the classroom, we're so hesitant as a field to really try and
(12:28):
talk about it as a humanities body. So there's this paradox that students are fighting because
they're going to face trauma out there, but they can't talk about it in here. What are some ways
to bridge that gap and safely invite trauma as part of a classroom environment? I guess what I
want to set out by saying is that if we look at humanities as if we talk about social studies or
(12:48):
history, and then if we talk about English, it's kind of two spaces within the humanities. In
history or social studies, I think it's a little bit easier because I think the content is pretty
clearly traumatic, right? So if you're talking about World War I, if you're talking about World
War II, if you're talking about COVID, if you're talking about 9-11, if you're talking about
America's history with racial injustice or civil rights, it's pretty clear what's on the table.
(13:11):
And to not talk about it as traumatic is almost missing the whole point of what it is, right? And
how we can learn from it. I think English is a little bit more nuanced in the sense that I think
the reason why you can read a book like A Great Gatsby and not even realize on some level how much
heavy traumatic content exists in the book is that it's so beautifully written. And so I think the
(13:35):
same applies to certain songs. You might listen to a really beautiful lyrical piece of music.
And then if you stop and like you start to consider the lyrics, what you notice is that
that thing is packed with horrible stuff. I've asked students at the college level and at the
graduate level, can you name one piece of literature that you studied or would teach
(13:56):
that doesn't have really traumatic content in it? And they can't really name one. And that it's not
just true for adult texts. It's true for Harry Potter, for Charlotte's Web, for The Lion, the
Witch, and the Wardrobe. I mean, there's things that are happening in these books, right?
It's a conundrum to think about how we enable children to approach that kind of context when
(14:17):
their view of the world is still so innocent. I mean, I've mentioned this throughout several
podcasts, but one of my favorite texts is The Giver written for an elementary middle schooler.
And even there, you're euthanizing babies. I mean, there's going to be trauma in every single story.
That's right. And as you mentioned, it's also timeless because Shakespeare is running about this
centuries ago and all of his tragedies, even up to Leon Juliet. Or go back to ancient Greece, right?
(14:44):
Homer, go to Sophocles, right? It's all over the place. Yeah. Yeah. So we can't hide from that.
But as a field, we try to. And what can we do to combat that as a field of scholars?
So when I was doing my dissertation work, I read a lot of Bessel van der Kolk's work. I read a lot
of Judith Herman's work. I would really recommend for anybody who's interested in trauma, Judith
(15:07):
Herman books, Trauma and Recovery, and then van der Kolk's book, The Body Keeps the Score.
And in The Body Keeps the Score, van der Kolk says, we're on the verge of becoming a trauma
conscious society. So like the history of trauma and like talking about trauma, it's like this weird
conundrum where on some level it's like, we can't talk about it. It's taboo. It's rare. It's unusual.
(15:32):
You know, you kind of bury it. But the reality is, and van der Kolk is very specific about this at
the start of The Body Keeps the Score, is he references the CDC statistics about trauma.
And his whole point is just to show how incredibly ubiquitous, right? So, and then Mark Epstein,
who writes Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart, he's a Buddhist psychoanalyst at NYU.
(15:54):
He says, if you're not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder,
you're suffering from pre-post-traumatic stress disorder. So it's like, we have this
subliminal knowledge that if we live long enough, we're going to encounter traumatic stuff, right?
It's just part of the human experience. And so we live on some level with that embedded anxiety,
(16:14):
because we know that it's just a matter of when. And I think the beautiful thing about literature
is that when we read texts like The Kite Runner or Hamlet or Beloved, there's such beautiful,
meaningful ways to look at and experience traumatic content. There's something about reading these
books and talking about them with students, that even though it's really heavy stuff,
(16:38):
it's actually like life promoting in a way. So it gives kind of a space for these very
rich and meaningful conversations. So The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel
van der Kolk was actually written in 2015. I think that it was only a decade ago where we had a
scholar say trauma goes beyond being someone on the battlefield and facing combat. And Judith
(16:59):
Herman who echoes that says trauma goes beyond being just a victim of rape, right? Those two
years together say that these are phenomenons that people can subjectively classify and put
into their own lives on a daily basis or on a moment's basis because of how their body reacts.
They say it's the physical experience that also alerts how a person responds to trauma.
(17:24):
And those together are a part of inevitable life experiences. And Adam, as you quote in your text,
you say that, though in life it is wise to actively avoid trauma, in the English classroom,
we deliberately seek it out, find the books, the poems, and the plays that give trauma the
opportunity to speak. And I think we do that, like you say, in texts such as Catching the Rye,
(17:47):
To Kill a Mockingbird, The Hate U Give, Shakespearean Plays. And through all of these
different texts, trauma just becomes a part of how we communicate because it's something that we
can't avoid. So I guess my next question, which you've already mentioned, but I wanted to hear
a little bit more, is to how can we make these types of subjects less taboo? Because actually,
I mentioned this. When I did a dissertation on trauma studies, I went to my advisor, who may
(18:12):
be listening to this at some point, and he cautioned me. And he said, just be very careful, because
when you're on the job market and you say the word trauma in an interview, it's going to shake a lot
of people up. What can we do to lower that stigma and change the narrative as to what this topic's
all about? A great question. You know, I think that when we avoid traumatic experiences in the real
(18:34):
world because they hurt us, but I think we seek traumatic content in the classroom because it
helps us. And I think that's a really important paradox. If we're learning about trauma, I think
we're learning about it because somehow it makes us stronger. It makes us more aware. It makes us
more conscientious. And I think it teaches us how to embrace the human experience more. And I think
(18:57):
that it teaches us how to regard each other with more empathy. So I think that probably relates to
this idea of in the classroom or like in an interview or something like that, do you avoid
talking about your interest in trauma because somehow that's going to be perceived as being
taboo? I would say that if you lean into it too much, yeah, I could understand that. I think on
another level, as Van der Kalk says, as you said, 10 years ago, we're on the verge of becoming a
(19:21):
trauma conscious society. I mean, I think this stuff is more in the vernacular than it has been
historically, right? So there's another way that I think you can talk about it if you're in the job
market. I think you can talk about conflict because trauma is just like really pretty extreme
conflict. And the reason why literary texts work, if they work, is because characters are pushed to
(19:42):
the far recesses of what is humanly possible for them to endure. And in those kinds of corners,
when they're placed into those very intense traumatic corners, the question becomes,
how do you survive and grow given the obstacle that you're confronted with? And that's how,
by the way, obviously you don't teach kids anything by traumatizing them, but you do teach kids a lot
(20:03):
by challenging them. So you have to find meaningful challenges. And I think that when we're reading
really dramatic texts, you mentioned the hate you give, or you mentioned the giver. I think that when
we watch characters confronting really complicated scenarios and we empathically align with them,
all the research supports that when we read literature, we enhance our empathy. So I think
(20:26):
that that experience deepens us, makes us more complex. And we shouldn't confuse somebody who's
interested in trauma as somebody who's going to be promoting trauma in some way. I think maybe
that's part of where the confusion is. I think from what I understand, and I could be wrong,
my students would have to get on your podcast and let you know. But my understanding is that
(20:50):
my students feel that when we talk about some really intense stuff that characters are going
through, it helps to give them in a way, a better sense of who they are, some of their own challenges,
and it helps them identify deeply with what people are going through so that they can better
navigate and explore the world. When we read these kind of heavy texts of intense stories,
(21:13):
I actually think it does a lot for the community because it's almost like the community wraps
empathically around the narratives. And we kind of get a sense of belonging and interconnectedness
through that experience, through narrative, which going back to the conversation about theater and
plays and like drama, I mean, if you've ever been in a show with other people, like you can really
(21:34):
unite with these people kind of for the rest of your life because you've gone on a type of
journey together. Yeah. And there is a lot of literature that exists or rather research that
exists that says how literature is that universal experience in unifying through empathy because when
students are reading about different characters in the text, they're now comparing their own
life decisions to what the characters in the books have done, which creates the sense of unity and
(21:58):
validation as to the types of journeys that they want to take as well in their own lives. And in
doing so, I think one thing that Adam, you and I will both agree on in our classrooms that are
focused on this trauma-informed practicum is that what we're doing is providing students with this
toolkit for survival and growth. And that toolkit is just the mindsets that they need where even as
(22:21):
Van der Kolk would say, is just talking about it. Van der Kolk says that when you talk about
experiences or talk about stories, even when they're fiction, you're triggering a part of
your brain that can rewire how you see your own traumas. And that can be a way to find one's
healing. So I think the most important work that we do is forming that toolkit within our own classes.
(22:44):
Absolutely. And I think that's such a great point. And I want to tie in one other thing is that
the literature and the research seems to show that a lot of traumatic content is, we don't have words
for it. So like, if you look at PET scans and MRI studies of people who are triggered by a traumatic
memory, what we see is that Broca's region shuts down and Broca's region is a language center.
(23:08):
So the narrative that's written by, you know, you pick the author, gives language to the experience.
And I think to your point about rewiring, language is one of the ways that we can rewire
the brain. So to give narrative voice to these kind of nonverbal traumatic memories. There was
a New York Times article showing that a treatment for PTSD is writing a novel because it gives
(23:35):
language and structure and space for traumatic experience that has probably never been processed
adequately or spoken about or articulated adequately. I believe it. I was actually on
a call this morning, recorded on the same day with Mario Conejo, who I'll also hear from in the month
(23:56):
of March. And he was talking about the necessity to just be among others in your network and just
talk about different situations as a way to heal. And I think that journaling is a way of self-talking.
It's a way of looking inwards and talking to yourself or writing to yourself as a way to
express the same emotions that maybe one would do with a peer or even up to being into a talk
(24:19):
therapy session, which leads me to a point as English teachers that, Adam, you speak about in
great depth in your text. I wanted to bring that up. When it comes to the therapeutic classroom,
you say that the central argument of even the research that you do is that English teachers
who understand trauma-informed pedagogy are far better off both for their curricular content and
(24:41):
for their students. There are English teachers who do not take the time to learn how trauma operates
and can get triggered through reading and writing. And while English teachers are trauma-informed,
they are not playing the role of the therapist. So I wanted you to help define for us, if you would,
the difference between an English classroom that can be therapeutic but is not therapy and how the
(25:06):
teacher can really help maintain their boundary between being that educator and that pseudo-psychologist
that they're not really qualified to actually do. Yeah. To me, it's a great question. And I think
that invariably, I want to say two things. The first thing I want to say is that it's impossible
to fully answer because this is a really hard question. The next thing I want to say is that I
(25:28):
think it has to do somehow with limits and boundaries and disclosure. If we're processing
the mindset of, let's say, Daisy or Myrtle or Tom or Gatsby or Nick, and we're trying to live in
their minds and understand their motivations and the things that they've gone through. And of course,
I'm talking about The Great Gatsby, right? If we're working to put ourselves in their shoes and
(25:56):
connect with them in the ways that we can and facilitate discussions that are centered around
the novel or the poem or the play or the discussion, then I think we're working therapeutically
because we're providing a vehicle and a container for rich discussion that, of course, is going to
(26:16):
get into the emotional fabric of the people in the room but is contained within the metaphysical
space of the text, as it were. I think when it gets overly personalized and when either the teacher
or the student starts bringing up their own traumatic histories in a way that at times is
(26:37):
getting witnessed and experienced by everybody in the space, that's where there's kind of bleed,
right? So let's say if we're reading Streetcar Named Desire and there's sexual assault in the
Streetcar Named Desire, right? And let's say that a student raises their hand and says that they've
been sexually assaulted. Now, all of a sudden, it's no longer about the Streetcar Named Desire
phenomenon. It's no longer Stanley and Blanche and Stella. Now it's this person in the room.
(27:03):
And now all of a sudden, as an educator, you have to make a choice. It's an instantaneous choice that
you have to make because now that content is in the room and you have to validate it and you have
to express empathy, but you also have to know on some level how to create a limit around it.
So that that student doesn't get the sense that now for the next X number of minutes,
(27:27):
it's going to be about them and their experience in part because it's actually not healthy for them.
It's not healthy for that student to now share this information with 25 other people who can
take it in any direction that they want to. And it may not be necessarily healthy for them to
share it with you, but now they've already shared it. So what are you supposed to do with that
(27:48):
content? So I think it's about being empathic, being other directed and using the knowledge
that a student might give you or the content that a student might give you to meaningfully
engage with them in positive appropriate ways for the rest of the school year and beyond.
But it's also about not being too indulgent and knowing what your boundaries are. And also,
(28:11):
and this is very important, knowing that in the institutions where you work, there's probably
like a social work division, there's probably a mental health division. And if you sense that
that student is in like some pretty acute distress versus like, you know, it happened and they've
come to terms with it in whatever way you possibly can. But if you feel like that student really
might need a space to talk and process this, it's about knowing how to redirect the student in a
(28:36):
meaningful way that keeps them safe and everybody else safe as well. So how do you be empathic,
engaged and responsive, but also know your limitations, right? Like this isn't the right
space for therapy. It's not going to do anybody any good. I wish I knew you five and a half years
ago, Adam. You're reminding me of after the Parkland shooting when I saw myself in a middle
(29:00):
school, the feeder middle school, as this comrade who was able to bleed pain alongside the students
and using like of mice and men to make that be done. And what it did for me as an educator
is that all it did was put me in a lose lose situation because I knew that I could not
live up to this narrative I built for my students and that I could pull the pain from them.
(29:23):
Yeah. It was going to upset my administration if I tried to do so.
That I think is such a key point that you just said there. Like it's a lose lose situation
because you can't over promise. You're not going to heal anybody. Like you, I'm sorry,
you can be healing. You can provide a healing space and you can be a healing figure,
but you can't over promise. Like when somebody goes to therapy, they're relying on the therapist
(29:46):
in some ways to be the portal for their healing. And oftentimes in a therapeutic context, it can
be pretty comprehensive healing, but in a classroom you can be a therapeutic force, but you should not
convey to the student that you're going to heal them. I think that's where this illusory line
gets broken down as it were. If in a sense, an educator is almost over promising something
(30:09):
to students. And then what winds up happening is there's a sense of betrayal because the student
almost feels on some implicit level, like why did you suggest that this was going to happen?
And now I have to leave your class in two months and I'm not healed. And you didn't give me enough
space for it. So it's complicated because it's that fine line between empathy and enmeshment.
(30:31):
So sometimes you got to direct them to the nearest port to get help there.
And keep them safe for now. Adam, this must be why people in leadership shutter at the thought of a
trauma based classroom, because this is why they must be afraid that they're going to fall into
this exact narrative. That's right. They've seen it before. That's right. Yeah. And I also just
think that feelings are messy things, right? If you have a multiple choice exam and you can pick D
(30:57):
or C, that's a lot easier than allowing someone's emotional content to come to the fore. And yet,
if we're in language arts or if you're in the humanities, our emotions are going to rise because
the purpose of art is to arouse emotional response. Yeah. And I think some of the best ways to stick
with this is to just continue tying content back onto the text. Like as you mentioned,
(31:18):
if a student vocalizes something personal, validate that, but then say, tell us how this relates back
to Gatsby, Daisy, and what the emotions of the characters in the text are going through as well.
And in doing so, I also like to use a rubric so students know that there is a baseline in which
they can and will be assessed. Yeah. By keeping checkboxes, not to standardize thinking, but to
(31:43):
adhere to learning. I think that helps students remain within that boundary as well. And something
else you mentioned, Adam, that I think is worth highlighting is that healing based narrative. I
think even one thing that my advisor just said to me when I was submitting my dissertation,
he said, remove the language from your work that caused the teacher, the hero, especially in
(32:03):
Hollywood, we highlight the hero teacher a lot. Totally. Yep. As if you remove that word and
replace it with something like caretaker, you're going to really humanize what the teacher is
capable of over that phrase that consistently tries to put the teacher in the savior-like role
where they don't belong. It makes total sense. What could be one mega takeaway that you'd want
(32:28):
our listeners to say with from our conversation here? And also where can our listeners go to
learn more about and support the work that you do? Thank you. Yeah. So I think that's
so I think the most important thing is really listening to your students. And I mean that like
actively listening, like the classroom is a complicated space because you're up there and
you're in front of a group of people and you're quote unquote, the de facto leader and you make
(32:52):
a lot of choices. And I think that the teachers who have really impressed me are not just people
who are like really bright and really interesting, but people who are like are really interested in
what students have to say and like genuinely take joy and delight in really hearing their perspectives,
even if those perspectives are already things that we've thought of because we've taught,
(33:14):
you know, catch her in the rye for 20 years or whatever it is, but there's something delightful
about having a student come to those ideas for the first time. So I think being a really active
listener and really promoting community, I mean, in a world like we're living where there's so much
political division and there's so much economic disparity, you know, like creating community
(33:34):
spaces where students come to the classroom excited to be together and to learn together
and to have that be like a highlight for them is really rich and meaningful. And then in terms of
my work, well, I guess I would say if you're interested in my book, my book, Navigating Trauma
in the English Classroom with Kristen Park Wedlock and Cassandra Lo is available through NCTE,
(33:55):
which published the book also on Amazon and Target and all sorts of stores. And then I also have,
looks to be hopefully crossing fingers, a second book coming out with Lauren Porosoff.
It's a book that looks at subversive situations that have happened in the classroom space. So
maybe when that's published and come back on and we can talk about that, if you'd have me again.
(34:16):
Just going to say, I can't wait. You're already looking forward to that.
That one looks at basically situations where really unexpected things happen in the classroom
that completely pull the rug out from underneath you and have you scratching your head.
It's interesting because in a lot of graduate programs on education, some of which I teach in,
training teachers are taught about curriculum and rubrics and classroom management and theory,
(34:41):
but they're often not taught what really happens in the classroom, which is a great book that I
think speaks to this. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it is Rademacher's book. "It Won't
Be Easy", where it calls it like a love affair to his experience as an English teacher, but like
looking at like the nitty gritty and like the granular day-to-day realities of being a teacher.
(35:02):
I'm thinking of Eileen Moore, who talks about that trajectory of the five phases of a teacher,
who says that they start with anticipation, then they break into survival and then disillusionment.
And I'm hoping that different anthologies like the one you're working toward Adam can help
shift that narrative and let us understand it at the graduate teaching level because as students,
(35:24):
we don't get it and we won't see that until we are the instructor of record all on our own.
That's it. That's true. Yeah. So when I got in touch with Adam, I was over the moon because I
said, this is a scholar who advocates for everything that we do as trauma informed educators.
So Adam, the big things for joining us for this very powerful and insightful conversation.
(35:44):
And for those of you who are listening and want to learn more about our trauma informed practices,
check out our showing us to learn more. And until then, just keep using your classroom as a way to
spread the stories that truly matter. Thank you for joining us on the classroom narratives,
healing and education podcast. If today's episode inspired you or made you think differently,
I'd love to hear from you. Drop a comment or review wherever you listen to podcasts
(36:09):
and stay connected with us on the at classroom narratives podcast over Instagram and Facebook.
Remember together we can transform our scars into stars in education, one conversation at a time.
Welcome to the Classroom Narratives Healing and Education Podcast, the space where education meets resilience.
(00:06):
I'm Dr. Joey Weisler, and in each episode, we dive deep into the personal stories of educators, students,
leaders, and frontline advocates who are navigating the complexities within modern education.
Whether you're just starting your teaching journey or are a seasoned professional looking for inspiration,
we'll explore how to foster meaningful change, prevent burnout, and build trauma-informed communities within our schools.
(00:33):
Now, let's take a seat at the front of the classroom as we get started.
Alright, welcome back to the podcast everyone, and thanks for tuning in today for a very special guest.
I'm so privileged today to have Dr. Adam Wolfstorff joining me for a powerful conversation on trauma-informed classrooms.
Dr. Wolfstorff is the lead author of the text, "Navigating Trauma in the English Classroom",
(00:55):
which was published in 2022 by the National Council of Teachers of English, otherwise known as the NCTE.
You can find that text in our show notes as well.
Dr. Wolfstorff is also one of the founding educators of 25 years at Bayridge Prep in Brooklyn,
which is a school reputed for its students' first approach to education.
(01:17):
Adam is also an adjunct professor at NYU's Steinhardt School of Education,
and a visiting assistant professor in Wesley Anne's Graduate Liberal Studies program.
And Adam has also worked professionally within the humanities through national tours for Broadway,
and in musicals such as Rent, where he's worked alongside Neil Patrick Harris on stage.
(01:38):
And Adam has also been a part of the rock band, The Energy.
And his variegated work and love for the humanities has been inspiring to audiences,
fellow colleagues in the field like myself, as well as his own students through the work that they seek to produce.
So a big thanks to him for joining us, and Adam, welcome to the show.
Thank you, happy to be here.
(02:00):
So Adam, the first thing I wanted to ask is, in terms of your work in the humanities,
tell us a little bit more about what you do and how your journey has taken you to where you are now.
Yeah, so I mean, you mentioned my performance in theater and music background,
which I grew up kind of a big time zealot of music, of performance, I did a ton of music theater.
(02:21):
And so I've always been really interested in drama.
And then my first couple years out of college, I did the national tour of Rent,
as you mentioned with Neil Patrick Harris.
And I did a national tour of Greece, and I did a bunch of other regional theater
productions for about two and a half years after graduating.
And then I kind of realized that as much as I love drama and I love performance,
(02:42):
I didn't want to do that as my main thing for the rest of my life.
And I started to think about what it might be that I would want to do.
And I had gone to a sleep-away camp as a kid for about seven years as a camper.
And then I had been a counselor for three years.
And I loved working with adolescents, being part of their development,
(03:02):
being a mentoring figure, an impact figure.
I studied literature at Harvard, and it just kind of felt like it would make sense for me to
try my hand at education.
And about that time, it was in 2000, I believe, there was a brand new school that was beginning
in Brooklyn, New York.
It's called Bayridge Prep.
(03:22):
And it was begun by a group of psychologists who believed in the intersectional living space
between positive psychology and education.
And I loved kind of what they were talking about and the vision that they had for a school.
And so I've been with Bayridge Prep since 2000.
And it's a school I've helped to build and design and grow.
(03:44):
And I'm the chair of the humanities department there.
That's incredible.
Yeah.
And so I didn't realize this when I did my research that psychologists formed the blueprint
to Bayridge.
Yeah.
So I mean, obviously, one of the things that we're going to talk about is my interest in trauma.
And what I will say, at any school in America, you're going to have kids who have had
(04:06):
traumatic histories.
Bayridge Prep isn't specific as a place for kids with traumatic history, right?
At any school, you're going to see this.
But the founders of Bayridge Prep, the two people in particular, Dr. Michael T. Dealy
and Dr. Charles Fasano, both of whom are my mentors and friends, had an idea of using
what we know about psychology to impact learning on levels that stretch far beyond kind of
(04:34):
like intellectual learning or just like content-driven learning, right?
So curriculum, I think, tends to be seen as the stuff that students learn that's kind
of in classical models imparted by the teacher or professor in this banking system.
And even 25 years ago, when I started, Dr. Fasano and Dr. Dealy were talking a lot about
(04:56):
emotional intelligence.
And I had gone to Harvard and studied a lot of stuff that would fall into the intellectual
realm. And one of the things that I actually always found missing was an emphasis on emotional
learning, because it seemed to me that the complete person was actually a lot more of
an emotional organism than an intellectual organism.
(05:18):
And that if you really wanted to impact people, you would impact them where they live
experientially, phenomenologically, right?
And so I'll say this, as somebody who went to a great public high school in Brooklyn
High School, I went to a pretty good college in Harvard University.
I went to a great PhD program at Columbia University, and I teach at NYU and at Wesleyan.
(05:39):
And I will say that Bayridge Prep is the most special learning culture I've ever been
involved with. It just has an incredible design and an incredible emphasis on emotional
learning in a way that really has a beautiful impact on the community.
I love hearing that so much, because I feel like, as you mentioned, these are the types
of schools that we need, since there needs to be a focus on teaching the whole child,
(06:04):
not just the brain of the child.
And I think until more schools go that way, education is going to continue remaining as
a stagnant institution. But once more schools focus on that kind of philosophy that you're
holding as well, we can really help the system survive once again.
That's right. And I think a lot about Ken Robinson's work. He has a great book called
(06:25):
The Element, which I've read and I teach from. He also has a great TED Talk where he talks
about the way that schools are killing creativity. And he talks a lot about the idea that most
kind of classical educational models are targeting the idea that we're teaching the brain.
But there's this whole other thing. Students have a body, students have emotions, students
have a history, students have a psychology. So thinking more deeply and comprehensively
(06:49):
and expansively about what it means to educate somebody.
Yeah, absolutely. And in terms of the way that you have approached teaching according to
your own text is that you say that one of the key takeaways is with what we call to be
relational teaching. And relational teaching is the ability to form relationships with
students and teachers amongst each other. And what relational teaching does is that it
(07:14):
switches the mindset and the paradigm of, "what's wrong with you?" to, "how can I help you?",
especially when approaching students who may be in distress, as a way to still build and
enhance the partnership that can survive and thrive with learning between the teacher and
the student. How can educators really try to form those authentic relationships with
(07:35):
students in their classroom, especially in spaces where a trauma may be present but unspoken?
It's a great question. I mean, I think a lot about the kind of fallacy of building a syllabus
prior to meeting your students, which I think is what we're kind of compelled to do, right?
Because we're supposed to come two day one ready to go with kind of like this map of what the year
(07:56):
is going to look like. And I do it because I do think there's value to it, but I also resist it.
And I also like whatever syllabus I have, and this is whether I'm teaching at the high school
level, the college level, or the graduate level, I always am ostensible with my students and say that
whatever it is that I've designed or I imagine for the work that we're going to do is subject to
(08:17):
change. And the reason why is that we haven't met each other yet, right? So I always have this pretty
meaningful idea that the curriculum is really the students and getting to know them, get a feel for
them. I would say that when you're in front of a room dealing with an audience of people, whether
it's 15 people, 30 people, whatever it is, a hundred people, it's a little harder as the numbers get
(08:38):
bigger. But I really try to get a sense of who the people are in the room, what they're interested in.
I'm sensitive to what I might perceive as their moods, which can change day to day, student to
student can even at the adolescent level, can change hour to hour and even minute to minute.
Right. But I try to establish a really deep respect for what we're doing together as a community.
(09:02):
I try to show regard. I try to notice subtle things. So like you're obviously going to notice
your students who are raising their hands and like super engaged and like ready to go. But I also
notice very small things. Like if I ask a question to the group and like a kid who typically is not
involved might like kind of perk their head up a little bit or like gesture towards picking their
(09:23):
hand up. And I might at that instance stop and actually call on that person, even if they haven't
fully raised their hand, because I can kind of gauge like this might be a moment this person
really wants to participate. I feel like when students intuit that you have a deep level of
regard for them. And the other part of this that I think is really important is listening, listening
actively. I think the danger of educators is that they're talking heads who have mouths and like to
(09:49):
use them to show how much they know. I think a really great educator oftentimes is expert in
creating a space where the students can run the show. That might take a little bit of time,
depending upon the group that you're working with. But invariably, I love it when students are just
really engaged and really involved and leading the interpretive process, especially when we're
(10:13):
looking at a literary text and we're discussing a topic that is really rich and vibrant.
Yeah. And it sounds like the most important thing that educators can maintain is their with it-ness
within the classroom. And part of that with it-ness is just knowing what's going on around you,
how students are reacting and having that nonverbal communication really, really down solid.
(10:33):
And as a result, that can, as you hint at them, lead the instructor to be a subject area expert,
but still allow the students to act as the content masters, if you will, as the instructor plays the
role of a facilitator that lets others learn from outside just that one person. Because I'm sure you
say the same to your students too. On day one, when I walk in, I say, there are 27 minds in this room,
(10:58):
not one, but 27. And if one of you doesn't participate, we're going to crumble. So however,
you choose to participate, whether it's through written response, verbal response, whatever that
means for you and what you're comfortable to do. Yeah. Voice matters in this classroom. For sure.
I like what you just said about the idea that some students are not going to open their mouths
(11:22):
and say anything almost ever. Like they're shy for whatever reason, or they don't like public speaking
or whatever it is. But that doesn't necessarily mean at all that that student isn't deeply engaged,
really kind of communicating and communing with the work. And so we'll see that come out in a bunch
of different ways. One of which, as you said, is their writing. Absolutely. And I've learned that
some of my best classes work best on flexibility and choice, where if I tell them, you don't really
(11:45):
have to vocalize in this unit, but if you write it out, I will pull the top responses and I'll read
anonymously and say, this is what a classmate said, let's talk about these thoughts. And that still
allows the silent peer to participate and vocalize without them having to physically do so on their
own. It gives them the support and the lifeline to still get them a part of the class. Yep. And with
(12:07):
some of the materials that you and I both talk about, Adam, in our classroom, we have a really
solid trauma-based curriculum. And you've mentioned this paradox where in the real world,
trauma hits us head on, that in the classroom, we're so hesitant as a field to really try and
(12:28):
talk about it as a humanities body. So there's this paradox that students are fighting because
they're going to face trauma out there, but they can't talk about it in here. What are some ways
to bridge that gap and safely invite trauma as part of a classroom environment? I guess what I
want to set out by saying is that if we look at humanities as if we talk about social studies or
(12:48):
history, and then if we talk about English, it's kind of two spaces within the humanities. In
history or social studies, I think it's a little bit easier because I think the content is pretty
clearly traumatic, right? So if you're talking about World War I, if you're talking about World
War II, if you're talking about COVID, if you're talking about 9-11, if you're talking about
America's history with racial injustice or civil rights, it's pretty clear what's on the table.
(13:11):
And to not talk about it as traumatic is almost missing the whole point of what it is, right? And
how we can learn from it. I think English is a little bit more nuanced in the sense that I think
the reason why you can read a book like A Great Gatsby and not even realize on some level how much
heavy traumatic content exists in the book is that it's so beautifully written. And so I think the
(13:35):
same applies to certain songs. You might listen to a really beautiful lyrical piece of music.
And then if you stop and like you start to consider the lyrics, what you notice is that
that thing is packed with horrible stuff. I've asked students at the college level and at the
graduate level, can you name one piece of literature that you studied or would teach
(13:56):
that doesn't have really traumatic content in it? And they can't really name one. And that it's not
just true for adult texts. It's true for Harry Potter, for Charlotte's Web, for The Lion, the
Witch, and the Wardrobe. I mean, there's things that are happening in these books, right?
It's a conundrum to think about how we enable children to approach that kind of context when
(14:17):
their view of the world is still so innocent. I mean, I've mentioned this throughout several
podcasts, but one of my favorite texts is The Giver written for an elementary middle schooler.
And even there, you're euthanizing babies. I mean, there's going to be trauma in every single story.
That's right. And as you mentioned, it's also timeless because Shakespeare is running about this
centuries ago and all of his tragedies, even up to Leon Juliet. Or go back to ancient Greece, right?
(14:44):
Homer, go to Sophocles, right? It's all over the place. Yeah. Yeah. So we can't hide from that.
But as a field, we try to. And what can we do to combat that as a field of scholars?
So when I was doing my dissertation work, I read a lot of Bessel van der Kolk's work. I read a lot
of Judith Herman's work. I would really recommend for anybody who's interested in trauma, Judith
(15:07):
Herman books, Trauma and Recovery, and then van der Kolk's book, The Body Keeps the Score.
And in The Body Keeps the Score, van der Kolk says, we're on the verge of becoming a trauma
conscious society. So like the history of trauma and like talking about trauma, it's like this weird
conundrum where on some level it's like, we can't talk about it. It's taboo. It's rare. It's unusual.
(15:32):
You know, you kind of bury it. But the reality is, and van der Kolk is very specific about this at
the start of The Body Keeps the Score, is he references the CDC statistics about trauma.
And his whole point is just to show how incredibly ubiquitous, right? So, and then Mark Epstein,
who writes Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart, he's a Buddhist psychoanalyst at NYU.
(15:54):
He says, if you're not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder,
you're suffering from pre-post-traumatic stress disorder. So it's like, we have this
subliminal knowledge that if we live long enough, we're going to encounter traumatic stuff, right?
It's just part of the human experience. And so we live on some level with that embedded anxiety,
(16:14):
because we know that it's just a matter of when. And I think the beautiful thing about literature
is that when we read texts like The Kite Runner or Hamlet or Beloved, there's such beautiful,
meaningful ways to look at and experience traumatic content. There's something about reading these
books and talking about them with students, that even though it's really heavy stuff,
(16:38):
it's actually like life promoting in a way. So it gives kind of a space for these very
rich and meaningful conversations. So The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel
van der Kolk was actually written in 2015. I think that it was only a decade ago where we had a
scholar say trauma goes beyond being someone on the battlefield and facing combat. And Judith
(16:59):
Herman who echoes that says trauma goes beyond being just a victim of rape, right? Those two
years together say that these are phenomenons that people can subjectively classify and put
into their own lives on a daily basis or on a moment's basis because of how their body reacts.
They say it's the physical experience that also alerts how a person responds to trauma.
(17:24):
And those together are a part of inevitable life experiences. And Adam, as you quote in your text,
you say that, though in life it is wise to actively avoid trauma, in the English classroom,
we deliberately seek it out, find the books, the poems, and the plays that give trauma the
opportunity to speak. And I think we do that, like you say, in texts such as Catching the Rye,
(17:47):
To Kill a Mockingbird, The Hate U Give, Shakespearean Plays. And through all of these
different texts, trauma just becomes a part of how we communicate because it's something that we
can't avoid. So I guess my next question, which you've already mentioned, but I wanted to hear
a little bit more, is to how can we make these types of subjects less taboo? Because actually,
I mentioned this. When I did a dissertation on trauma studies, I went to my advisor, who may
(18:12):
be listening to this at some point, and he cautioned me. And he said, just be very careful, because
when you're on the job market and you say the word trauma in an interview, it's going to shake a lot
of people up. What can we do to lower that stigma and change the narrative as to what this topic's
all about? A great question. You know, I think that when we avoid traumatic experiences in the real
(18:34):
world because they hurt us, but I think we seek traumatic content in the classroom because it
helps us. And I think that's a really important paradox. If we're learning about trauma, I think
we're learning about it because somehow it makes us stronger. It makes us more aware. It makes us
more conscientious. And I think it teaches us how to embrace the human experience more. And I think
(18:57):
that it teaches us how to regard each other with more empathy. So I think that probably relates to
this idea of in the classroom or like in an interview or something like that, do you avoid
talking about your interest in trauma because somehow that's going to be perceived as being
taboo? I would say that if you lean into it too much, yeah, I could understand that. I think on
another level, as Van der Kalk says, as you said, 10 years ago, we're on the verge of becoming a
(19:21):
trauma conscious society. I mean, I think this stuff is more in the vernacular than it has been
historically, right? So there's another way that I think you can talk about it if you're in the job
market. I think you can talk about conflict because trauma is just like really pretty extreme
conflict. And the reason why literary texts work, if they work, is because characters are pushed to
(19:42):
the far recesses of what is humanly possible for them to endure. And in those kinds of corners,
when they're placed into those very intense traumatic corners, the question becomes,
how do you survive and grow given the obstacle that you're confronted with? And that's how,
by the way, obviously you don't teach kids anything by traumatizing them, but you do teach kids a lot
(20:03):
by challenging them. So you have to find meaningful challenges. And I think that when we're reading
really dramatic texts, you mentioned the hate you give, or you mentioned the giver. I think that when
we watch characters confronting really complicated scenarios and we empathically align with them,
all the research supports that when we read literature, we enhance our empathy. So I think
(20:26):
that that experience deepens us, makes us more complex. And we shouldn't confuse somebody who's
interested in trauma as somebody who's going to be promoting trauma in some way. I think maybe
that's part of where the confusion is. I think from what I understand, and I could be wrong,
my students would have to get on your podcast and let you know. But my understanding is that
(20:50):
my students feel that when we talk about some really intense stuff that characters are going
through, it helps to give them in a way, a better sense of who they are, some of their own challenges,
and it helps them identify deeply with what people are going through so that they can better
navigate and explore the world. When we read these kind of heavy texts of intense stories,
(21:13):
I actually think it does a lot for the community because it's almost like the community wraps
empathically around the narratives. And we kind of get a sense of belonging and interconnectedness
through that experience, through narrative, which going back to the conversation about theater and
plays and like drama, I mean, if you've ever been in a show with other people, like you can really
(21:34):
unite with these people kind of for the rest of your life because you've gone on a type of
journey together. Yeah. And there is a lot of literature that exists or rather research that
exists that says how literature is that universal experience in unifying through empathy because when
students are reading about different characters in the text, they're now comparing their own
life decisions to what the characters in the books have done, which creates the sense of unity and
(21:58):
validation as to the types of journeys that they want to take as well in their own lives. And in
doing so, I think one thing that Adam, you and I will both agree on in our classrooms that are
focused on this trauma-informed practicum is that what we're doing is providing students with this
toolkit for survival and growth. And that toolkit is just the mindsets that they need where even as
(22:21):
Van der Kolk would say, is just talking about it. Van der Kolk says that when you talk about
experiences or talk about stories, even when they're fiction, you're triggering a part of
your brain that can rewire how you see your own traumas. And that can be a way to find one's
healing. So I think the most important work that we do is forming that toolkit within our own classes.
(22:44):
Absolutely. And I think that's such a great point. And I want to tie in one other thing is that
the literature and the research seems to show that a lot of traumatic content is, we don't have words
for it. So like, if you look at PET scans and MRI studies of people who are triggered by a traumatic
memory, what we see is that Broca's region shuts down and Broca's region is a language center.
(23:08):
So the narrative that's written by, you know, you pick the author, gives language to the experience.
And I think to your point about rewiring, language is one of the ways that we can rewire
the brain. So to give narrative voice to these kind of nonverbal traumatic memories. There was
a New York Times article showing that a treatment for PTSD is writing a novel because it gives
(23:35):
language and structure and space for traumatic experience that has probably never been processed
adequately or spoken about or articulated adequately. I believe it. I was actually on
a call this morning, recorded on the same day with Mario Conejo, who I'll also hear from in the month
(23:56):
of March. And he was talking about the necessity to just be among others in your network and just
talk about different situations as a way to heal. And I think that journaling is a way of self-talking.
It's a way of looking inwards and talking to yourself or writing to yourself as a way to
express the same emotions that maybe one would do with a peer or even up to being into a talk
(24:19):
therapy session, which leads me to a point as English teachers that, Adam, you speak about in
great depth in your text. I wanted to bring that up. When it comes to the therapeutic classroom,
you say that the central argument of even the research that you do is that English teachers
who understand trauma-informed pedagogy are far better off both for their curricular content and
(24:41):
for their students. There are English teachers who do not take the time to learn how trauma operates
and can get triggered through reading and writing. And while English teachers are trauma-informed,
they are not playing the role of the therapist. So I wanted you to help define for us, if you would,
the difference between an English classroom that can be therapeutic but is not therapy and how the
(25:06):
teacher can really help maintain their boundary between being that educator and that pseudo-psychologist
that they're not really qualified to actually do. Yeah. To me, it's a great question. And I think
that invariably, I want to say two things. The first thing I want to say is that it's impossible
to fully answer because this is a really hard question. The next thing I want to say is that I
(25:28):
think it has to do somehow with limits and boundaries and disclosure. If we're processing
the mindset of, let's say, Daisy or Myrtle or Tom or Gatsby or Nick, and we're trying to live in
their minds and understand their motivations and the things that they've gone through. And of course,
I'm talking about The Great Gatsby, right? If we're working to put ourselves in their shoes and
(25:56):
connect with them in the ways that we can and facilitate discussions that are centered around
the novel or the poem or the play or the discussion, then I think we're working therapeutically
because we're providing a vehicle and a container for rich discussion that, of course, is going to
(26:16):
get into the emotional fabric of the people in the room but is contained within the metaphysical
space of the text, as it were. I think when it gets overly personalized and when either the teacher
or the student starts bringing up their own traumatic histories in a way that at times is
(26:37):
getting witnessed and experienced by everybody in the space, that's where there's kind of bleed,
right? So let's say if we're reading Streetcar Named Desire and there's sexual assault in the
Streetcar Named Desire, right? And let's say that a student raises their hand and says that they've
been sexually assaulted. Now, all of a sudden, it's no longer about the Streetcar Named Desire
phenomenon. It's no longer Stanley and Blanche and Stella. Now it's this person in the room.
(27:03):
And now all of a sudden, as an educator, you have to make a choice. It's an instantaneous choice that
you have to make because now that content is in the room and you have to validate it and you have
to express empathy, but you also have to know on some level how to create a limit around it.
So that that student doesn't get the sense that now for the next X number of minutes,
(27:27):
it's going to be about them and their experience in part because it's actually not healthy for them.
It's not healthy for that student to now share this information with 25 other people who can
take it in any direction that they want to. And it may not be necessarily healthy for them to
share it with you, but now they've already shared it. So what are you supposed to do with that
(27:48):
content? So I think it's about being empathic, being other directed and using the knowledge
that a student might give you or the content that a student might give you to meaningfully
engage with them in positive appropriate ways for the rest of the school year and beyond.
But it's also about not being too indulgent and knowing what your boundaries are. And also,
(28:11):
and this is very important, knowing that in the institutions where you work, there's probably
like a social work division, there's probably a mental health division. And if you sense that
that student is in like some pretty acute distress versus like, you know, it happened and they've
come to terms with it in whatever way you possibly can. But if you feel like that student really
might need a space to talk and process this, it's about knowing how to redirect the student in a
(28:36):
meaningful way that keeps them safe and everybody else safe as well. So how do you be empathic,
engaged and responsive, but also know your limitations, right? Like this isn't the right
space for therapy. It's not going to do anybody any good. I wish I knew you five and a half years
ago, Adam. You're reminding me of after the Parkland shooting when I saw myself in a middle
(29:00):
school, the feeder middle school, as this comrade who was able to bleed pain alongside the students
and using like of mice and men to make that be done. And what it did for me as an educator
is that all it did was put me in a lose lose situation because I knew that I could not
live up to this narrative I built for my students and that I could pull the pain from them.
(29:23):
Yeah. It was going to upset my administration if I tried to do so.
That I think is such a key point that you just said there. Like it's a lose lose situation
because you can't over promise. You're not going to heal anybody. Like you, I'm sorry,
you can be healing. You can provide a healing space and you can be a healing figure,
but you can't over promise. Like when somebody goes to therapy, they're relying on the therapist
(29:46):
in some ways to be the portal for their healing. And oftentimes in a therapeutic context, it can
be pretty comprehensive healing, but in a classroom you can be a therapeutic force, but you should not
convey to the student that you're going to heal them. I think that's where this illusory line
gets broken down as it were. If in a sense, an educator is almost over promising something
(30:09):
to students. And then what winds up happening is there's a sense of betrayal because the student
almost feels on some implicit level, like why did you suggest that this was going to happen?
And now I have to leave your class in two months and I'm not healed. And you didn't give me enough
space for it. So it's complicated because it's that fine line between empathy and enmeshment.
(30:31):
So sometimes you got to direct them to the nearest port to get help there.
And keep them safe for now. Adam, this must be why people in leadership shutter at the thought of a
trauma based classroom, because this is why they must be afraid that they're going to fall into
this exact narrative. That's right. They've seen it before. That's right. Yeah. And I also just
think that feelings are messy things, right? If you have a multiple choice exam and you can pick D
(30:57):
or C, that's a lot easier than allowing someone's emotional content to come to the fore. And yet,
if we're in language arts or if you're in the humanities, our emotions are going to rise because
the purpose of art is to arouse emotional response. Yeah. And I think some of the best ways to stick
with this is to just continue tying content back onto the text. Like as you mentioned,
(31:18):
if a student vocalizes something personal, validate that, but then say, tell us how this relates back
to Gatsby, Daisy, and what the emotions of the characters in the text are going through as well.
And in doing so, I also like to use a rubric so students know that there is a baseline in which
they can and will be assessed. Yeah. By keeping checkboxes, not to standardize thinking, but to
(31:43):
adhere to learning. I think that helps students remain within that boundary as well. And something
else you mentioned, Adam, that I think is worth highlighting is that healing based narrative. I
think even one thing that my advisor just said to me when I was submitting my dissertation,
he said, remove the language from your work that caused the teacher, the hero, especially in
(32:03):
Hollywood, we highlight the hero teacher a lot. Totally. Yep. As if you remove that word and
replace it with something like caretaker, you're going to really humanize what the teacher is
capable of over that phrase that consistently tries to put the teacher in the savior-like role
where they don't belong. It makes total sense. What could be one mega takeaway that you'd want
(32:28):
our listeners to say with from our conversation here? And also where can our listeners go to
learn more about and support the work that you do? Thank you. Yeah. So I think that's
so I think the most important thing is really listening to your students. And I mean that like
actively listening, like the classroom is a complicated space because you're up there and
you're in front of a group of people and you're quote unquote, the de facto leader and you make
(32:52):
a lot of choices. And I think that the teachers who have really impressed me are not just people
who are like really bright and really interesting, but people who are like are really interested in
what students have to say and like genuinely take joy and delight in really hearing their perspectives,
even if those perspectives are already things that we've thought of because we've taught,
(33:14):
you know, catch her in the rye for 20 years or whatever it is, but there's something delightful
about having a student come to those ideas for the first time. So I think being a really active
listener and really promoting community, I mean, in a world like we're living where there's so much
political division and there's so much economic disparity, you know, like creating community
(33:34):
spaces where students come to the classroom excited to be together and to learn together
and to have that be like a highlight for them is really rich and meaningful. And then in terms of
my work, well, I guess I would say if you're interested in my book, my book, Navigating Trauma
in the English Classroom with Kristen Park Wedlock and Cassandra Lo is available through NCTE,
(33:55):
which published the book also on Amazon and Target and all sorts of stores. And then I also have,
looks to be hopefully crossing fingers, a second book coming out with Lauren Porosoff.
It's a book that looks at subversive situations that have happened in the classroom space. So
maybe when that's published and come back on and we can talk about that, if you'd have me again.
(34:16):
Just going to say, I can't wait. You're already looking forward to that.
That one looks at basically situations where really unexpected things happen in the classroom
that completely pull the rug out from underneath you and have you scratching your head.
It's interesting because in a lot of graduate programs on education, some of which I teach in,
training teachers are taught about curriculum and rubrics and classroom management and theory,
(34:41):
but they're often not taught what really happens in the classroom, which is a great book that I
think speaks to this. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it is Rademacher's book. "It Won't
Be Easy", where it calls it like a love affair to his experience as an English teacher, but like
looking at like the nitty gritty and like the granular day-to-day realities of being a teacher.
(35:02):
I'm thinking of Eileen Moore, who talks about that trajectory of the five phases of a teacher,
who says that they start with anticipation, then they break into survival and then disillusionment.
And I'm hoping that different anthologies like the one you're working toward Adam can help
shift that narrative and let us understand it at the graduate teaching level because as students,
(35:24):
we don't get it and we won't see that until we are the instructor of record all on our own.
That's it. That's true. Yeah. So when I got in touch with Adam, I was over the moon because I
said, this is a scholar who advocates for everything that we do as trauma informed educators.
So Adam, the big things for joining us for this very powerful and insightful conversation.
(35:44):
And for those of you who are listening and want to learn more about our trauma informed practices,
check out our showing us to learn more. And until then, just keep using your classroom as a way to
spread the stories that truly matter. Thank you for joining us on the classroom narratives,
healing and education podcast. If today's episode inspired you or made you think differently,
I'd love to hear from you. Drop a comment or review wherever you listen to podcasts
(36:09):
and stay connected with us on the at classroom narratives podcast over Instagram and Facebook.
Remember together we can transform our scars into stars in education, one conversation at a time.
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