When Teachers Lose Loved Ones: Affective Practices in Teachers’ Accounts of Addressing Loss in Literature Instruction

Abstract

Teachers’ efforts to build literacy classrooms inclusive of experiences of trauma and loss require attending to affective sensations and displayed emotions as culturally constructed and socially produced. Yet teachers’ personal loss experiences and their influence on literature instruction remain understudied, with literacy scholarship in this area typically focusing on students’ loss experiences. Using in-depth interviews with secondary English teachers who had lost a loved one, I analyzed how affect and emotion moved through teachers’ understandings of teaching literature following loss. Teachers’ accounts made visible their interpretations of emotional rules for addressing loss, including responsibility for students’ needs, care for students, and uncertainty surrounding emotions in the classroom. Teachers described emotions as attaching to particular bodies according to their understanding of their identities as teachers. This paper explains how teachers navigate the many sensations present when teachers and students read literature together, as human beings who also lose people they love.