Teachers and students alike begin their day as humans, and they must all end their day as humans. Experiences of pain, sorrow, loss, fear, disruption, and systemic and institutional oppression are an inevitable presence in schools and classrooms. Editors Elizabeth Dutro and Bre Pacheco have edited this collection of original essays with the belief that trauma-informed teaching, with all of the complex layers that term contains, can and must be harnessed to propel movements toward equity and justice in English language arts classrooms. Woven throughout, authors in this volume share stories from life and literature that aptly show the power and possibility of ELA classrooms for enacting the deepest hopes that fuel the year-to-year, day-to-day, moment-to-moment enactment of humanizing, healing teaching.

Pacheco, Bre

BRE PACHECO is a social emotional learning specialist at a Title I elementary school in Northglenn, CO. She is an advocate for trauma-informed practices in schools. Her background includes ten years of elementary classroom experience, four years of instructional coaching, and new teacher mentorship.

Dutro, Elizabeth

ELIZABETH DUTRO is professor of literacy studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a former elementary teacher. Her recent research and writing focus on critical, humanizing pedagogies in response to trauma, the poetics of children's writing, and teachers' collaborative learning. She is the author of The Vulnerable Heart of Literacy: Centering Trauma as Powerful Pedagogy (Teachers College Press, 2019). She can be contacted at elizabeth.dutro@colorado.edu.