Rachelle S. Savitz – författare

Huge numbers of our students are caught in storms of trauma—whether stemming from abuse, homelessness, poverty, discrimination, violent neighborhoods, or fears of school shootings or family deportations. This practical book focuses on actions that teachers can take to facilitate learning for these students. Identifying positive, connected teacher–student relationships as foundational, the authors offer direction for creating an emotionally safe classroom environment in which students find a refuge from trauma and a space in which to process events. The text shows how social and emotional learning can be woven into the school day; how literacies can be used to help students see a path through challenges; how to empower learners through debate, civic action, and service learning; and how to use the vital nature of the school community as an agent of change. This book will serve as a roadmap for creating uniformly consistent and excellent classrooms and schools that better serve children who experience trauma in their lives.Book Features:Makes a clear case for the need and responsibility of schools to equip students with tools to learn despite the trauma in their lives.Shows practical classroom instructional and curricular interactions that address trauma while advancing student academic learning.Uses literacy and civic action as pathways to empowerment.Provides a method and tools for developing a coherent plan for creating a trauma-sensitive school.

It is vital for educators to be aware of how traumatic experiences affect today's students, yet few teachers learn the tools needed to successfully teach these students. This book highlights how English Language Arts teachers, who are typically not licensed or specifically trained to work with trauma issues, can design and implement instruction that helps students see that they are supported. This book provides specific strategies for teaching literacy based on the authors' extensive knowledge and experience in trauma-sensitive instruction, adolescent literacy, and culturally responsive–sustaining pedagogies. The authors show how to support middle and high school students with specific literacy practices (reading, speaking, listening, and writing) that build resilience. Trauma-Sensitive Literacy Instruction is for the many teachers who are unsure how to invite students and their traumas into classroom instruction and embed critical discussions and learning within their teaching practices and pedagogy. It will help ELA teachers navigate student trauma in a way that empowers both students and teachers.Book Features:Responds to research that consistently shows how schools are often places that marginalize-and sometimes traumatize or retraumatize-children.Offers specific information related to literature, writing, discussion, and inquiry activities focused on various traumatic experiences. Provides rationales and research, along with examples, teacher vignettes, and steps for incorporating relevant practices in classrooms (grades 6–12).

It is vital for educators to be aware of how traumatic experiences affect today's students, yet few teachers learn the tools needed to successfully teach these students. This book highlights how English Language Arts teachers, who are typically not licensed or specifically trained to work with trauma issues, can design and implement instruction that helps students see that they are supported. This book provides specific strategies for teaching literacy based on the authors' extensive knowledge and experience in trauma-sensitive instruction, adolescent literacy, and culturally responsive–sustaining pedagogies. The authors show how to support middle and high school students with specific literacy practices (reading, speaking, listening, and writing) that build resilience. Trauma-Sensitive Literacy Instruction is for the many teachers who are unsure how to invite students and their traumas into classroom instruction and embed critical discussions and learning within their teaching practices and pedagogy. It will help ELA teachers navigate student trauma in a way that empowers both students and teachers.Book Features:Responds to research that consistently shows how schools are often places that marginalize-and sometimes traumatize or retraumatize-children.Offers specific information related to literature, writing, discussion, and inquiry activities focused on various traumatic experiences. Provides rationales and research, along with examples, teacher vignettes, and steps for incorporating relevant practices in classrooms (grades 6–12).

This book offers educators actionable models for creating responsive, affirming learning environments that cultivate student agency, joy, and commitment to social transformation.These essays show how pre-K–12 educators enact culturally sustaining literacy pedagogies (CSLP)—drawing on students’ cultural and linguistic knowledge to foster identity, critical consciousness, and academic skills.Each chapter features a practitioner coauthor and highlights concrete classroom strategies that challenge whiteness and center the experiences of communities of Color. The authors also provide a practical discussion of how each teaching practice can be levelled across the grades, and what it might look like when used with different age groups. Topics range from family and community literacies to critical language practices and multimodal assessment.With many user-friendly tools, Making Student Voices Matter is a valuable resource for inservice professional learning, teacher preparation programs, and equity-centered coaching.Book Features:Bridges Critical Theory and Everyday Practice: Theoretical concepts—such as critical consciousness, cultural humility, and reflexivity—are translated into concrete, classroom-tested practices.Centers Practitioner Voices and Lived Experience: Teacher-authored chapters offer firsthand accounts of implementing CSLP in real-world school contexts.Expands the Definition of Literacy: Offers an interdisciplinary and multimodal understanding of literacy that includes language, arts, digital media, oral traditions, and nature-based literacies.Disrupts Whiteness in Instructional Practice: Shows how educators can actively challenge whiteness, white ideology, and curricular erasure by affirming the identities of students from historically marginalized communities.Includes User-Friendly Features for Immediate Application: Provides tools such as instructional snapshots, classroom vignettes, student work samples, and reflection prompts.

This book offers educators actionable models for creating responsive, affirming learning environments that cultivate student agency, joy, and commitment to social transformation.These essays show how pre-K–12 educators enact culturally sustaining literacy pedagogies (CSLP)—drawing on students’ cultural and linguistic knowledge to foster identity, critical consciousness, and academic skills.Each chapter features a practitioner coauthor and highlights concrete classroom strategies that challenge whiteness and center the experiences of communities of Color. The authors also provide a practical discussion of how each teaching practice can be levelled across the grades, and what it might look like when used with different age groups. Topics range from family and community literacies to critical language practices and multimodal assessment.With many user-friendly tools, Making Student Voices Matter is a valuable resource for inservice professional learning, teacher preparation programs, and equity-centered coaching.Book Features:Bridges Critical Theory and Everyday Practice: Theoretical concepts—such as critical consciousness, cultural humility, and reflexivity—are translated into concrete, classroom-tested practices.Centers Practitioner Voices and Lived Experience: Teacher-authored chapters offer firsthand accounts of implementing CSLP in real-world school contexts.Expands the Definition of Literacy: Offers an interdisciplinary and multimodal understanding of literacy that includes language, arts, digital media, oral traditions, and nature-based literacies.Disrupts Whiteness in Instructional Practice: Shows how educators can actively challenge whiteness, white ideology, and curricular erasure by affirming the identities of students from historically marginalized communities.Includes User-Friendly Features for Immediate Application: Provides tools such as instructional snapshots, classroom vignettes, student work samples, and reflection prompts.

This groundbreaking text provides practical, contextualized methods for teaching and discussing topics that are considered "taboo" in the classroom in ways that support students’ lived experiences. In times when teachers are scapegoated for adopting culturally sustaining teaching practices and are pressured to "whitewash" the curriculum, it becomes more challenging to create an environment where students and teachers can have conversations about complex, uncomfortable topics in the classroom. With contributions from scholars and K-12 teachers who have used young adult literature to engage with their students, chapters confront this issue and focus on themes such as multilingualism, culturally responsive teaching, dis/ability, racism, linguicism, and gender identity. Using approaches grounded in socioemotional learning, trauma-informed practices, and historical and racial literacy, this text explores the ways in which books with complicated themes can interact positively with students’ own lives and perspectives. Ideal for courses on ELA and literature instruction, this book provides a fresh set of perspectives and methods for approaching and engaging with difficult topics. As young adult literature that addresses difficult subjects is more liable to be considered "controversial" to teach, teachers will benefit from the additional guidance this volume provides, so that they can effectively reach the very students these themes address.