Moving Beyond Personal Loss to Societal Grieving considers how secondary English language arts teachers and teacher educators can sensitively and thoughtfully teach pieces of literature in their classrooms in which large-scale deaths are a significant, if not central, aspect of the texts. As mass shootings and violence against black and brown bodies increase, and issues such as AIDS, war, and genocide remain important to discuss as part of a shared, critical, and social consciousness, this book provides resources for educators to directly tackle and discuss these topics through the texts they read in their ELA classrooms. Whether it is canonical or contemporary literature, middle grades or young adult literature, fiction, nonfiction, or graphic novels, literature provides a vehicle to have these difficult but needed conversations about not only the personal but social effects of death and grief in our society. Each chapter in this book focuses on 1-2 texts and provides practical activities that ask students to engage with death, dying, and loss through writing assignments, projects, activities, and discussion prompts in order to build empathy, understanding, and develop critically-minded and engaged students. Moving Beyond Personal Loss to Societal Grieving will be of interest to English language arts teachers, teacher educators, librarians, and scholars who wish to explore with their students the complex emotions that revolve around discussing deaths that occur in literature.

When Loss Gets Personal considers how secondary English language arts teachers and teacher educators can sensitively and thoughtfully teach pieces of literature in their classrooms in which death is a significant, if not central, aspect of the texts. Death is something that affects all people young and old, yet it is rarely discussed openly in classrooms despite its prevalence in texts read in ELA classrooms. Whether it is canonical or contemporary literature, middle grades or young adult literature, fiction, nonfiction, or graphic novels, literature provides a vehicle to have difficult but needed conversations about personal deaths such as cancer, accidents, suicide, etc. Each chapter in this book focuses on 1-2 texts and provides practical activities that ask students to engage with the loss through writing assignments, projects, activities, and discussion prompts in order to build empathy, understanding, and develop critically-minded and engaged students. When Loss Gets Personal will be of interest to English language arts teachers, teacher educators, librarians, and scholars who wish to explore with their students the complex emotions that revolve around discussing deaths that occur in literature.

In this groundbreaking and “poignant” (Los Angeles Times) book, David Kessler—praised for his work by Maria Shriver, Marianne Williamson, and Mother Teresa—journeys beyond the classic five stages to discover a sixth stage: meaning. In 1969, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross first identified the stages of dying in her transformative book On Death and Dying. Decades later, she and David Kessler wrote the classic On Grief and Grieving, introducing the stages of grief with the same transformative pragmatism and compassion. Now, based on hard-earned personal experiences, as well as knowledge and wisdom gained through decades of work with the grieving, Kessler introduces a critical sixth stage: meaning. Kessler’s insight is both professional and intensely personal. His journey with grief began when, as a child, he witnessed a mass shooting at the same time his mother was dying. For most of his life, Kessler taught physicians, nurses, counselors, police, and first responders about end of life, trauma, and grief, as well as leading talks and retreats for those experiencing grief. Despite his knowledge, his life was upended by the sudden death of his twenty-one-year-old son. How does the grief expert handle such a tragic loss? He knew he had to find a way through this unexpected, devastating loss, a way that would honor his son. That, ultimately, was the sixth stage of grief—meaning. In Finding Meaning, Kessler shares the insights, collective wisdom, and powerful tools that will help those experiencing loss. “Beautiful, tender, and wise” (Katy Butler, author of The Art of Dying Well), Finding Meaning is “an excellent addition to grief literature that helps pave the way for steps toward healing” (School Library Journal).

This book illustrates how teachers can draw upon young adult literature to facilitate students’ social action. Each chapter centers on one novel that represents a contemporary topic including police brutality, women’s rights, ecojustice, and bullying. In each, authors provide pre-, during-, and after reading strategies for teaching that connect the social issues in the texts to students’ lives and to the world around them. They then offer a multitude of avenues for student action, emphasizing the need to move readers from understanding and awareness to asserting their own agency and capacities to effect change in their local, national, and global communities. In addition to methods for scaffolding students’ analysis of texts and topics, authors also offer a plethora of additional resources such as documentaries, canonical companions for study, connected music, and supplementary lesson plans.

Is grief overshadowing your ability to live your life? The death of a loved one can be one of the most challenging things well ever have to deal with. Our whole world is ripped apart, and we are left floundering as waves of overwhelming emotions wash over us. Through a combination of personal stories and empathetic advice, certified professional coach Tabitha Jayne, CPC, ACC reveals how you can not merely survive after the death of a loved one but transform your grief, live fully and thrive. Learn to use the Tree of Transformation, the five-step process that enables you to let go of the pain of loss forever. As you do, youll discover how to: create and maintain the necessary supportive roots to allow you to transform grief; express and release your emotions; understand who you are now after loss, as well as who you want to be; reconnect to your loved one and yourself; see the gifts and growth that can come from loss; identify the beliefs that stop you from letting go of pain; create the necessary steps to maintain your grief transformation; use the power of nature to deepen your experience.

This text offers 6th - 12th grade educators guided instructional approaches for including diverse young adult (YA) literature in the classroom as a form of social justice teaching and learning. Through the YA books spotlighted in this text, educators are provided pre-, during-, and after reading activities that guide students to a deeper understanding of topics that are often considered taboo in the classroom - race, racism, mental health, immigration, gender, sexuality, sexual assault - while increasing their literacy practices.

This book offers readers opportunities to explore the most common universal themes taught in secondary English Language Arts classrooms using contemporary young adult literature. Authors discuss adolescence and adolescent readers, young adult literature and its possibilities in the classroom, and ways to teach thematic analysis. The book provides context, traditional approaches to teaching and examples of thematic explorations of each of the chosen themes. Chapters include developed teaching instructional units to study three universal themes: a journey of self-discovery; good vs. bad, right vs. wrong, and making difficult choices, and developing positive self-perception. Each instructional unit includes rationale, essential questions and objectives, calendar plans for up to six weeks, examples of introductory, reading and discussing, and enrichment activities and assessments. The activities target academic skills for ELA curricula and create safe spaces for exploring topics of identity struggles and personal growth complicated by social issues, all of which adolescents face today. Each instructional chapter suggests a wide range of additional texts and resources for theme explorations.

Grief overload is what you feel when you experience too many significant losses all at once, in a relatively short period of time, or cumulatively. In addition to the deaths of loved ones, such losses can also include divorce, estrangement, illness, relocation, job changes, and more. Our minds and hearts have enough trouble coping with a single loss, so when the losses pile up, the grief often seems especially chaotic and defeating. The good news is that through intentional, active mourning, you can and will find your way back to hope and healing. This compassionate guide will show you how.

This spiritual companion for mourners affirms their need to mourn and invites them to journey through their very unique and personal grief. Detailed are the six needs that all mourners must yield to and eventually embrace if they are to go on to find continued meaning in life and living, including the need to remember the deceased loved one and the need for support from others. Short explanations of each mourning need are followed by brief, spiritual passages that, when read slowly and reflectively, help mourners work through their unique thoughts and feelings. Also included in this revised edition are journaling sections for mourners to write out their personal responses to each of the six needs. This replaces 1879651114.

By introducing a framework for culturally sustaining Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) praxis, Harman, Burke and other contributing authors guide readers through a practical and analytic exploration of youth participatory work in classroom and community settings. Applying an SFL lens to critical literacy and schooling, this book articulates a vision for youth learning and civic engagement that focuses on the power of performance, spatial learning, community activism and student agency. The book offers a range of research-driven, multimodal resources and methods for teachers to encourage students’ meaning-making. The authors share how teachers and community activists can interact and support diverse and multilingual youth, fostering a dynamic environment that deepens inquiry of the arts and disciplinary area of knowledge. Research in this book provides a model for collaborative engagement and community partnerships, featuring the voices of students and teachers to highlight the importance of agency and action research in supporting literacy learning and transformative inquiry. Demonstrating theoretically and practically how SFL praxis can be applied broadly and deeply in the field, this book is suitable for preservice teachers, teacher educators, graduate students and scholars in bilingual and multilingual education, literacy education and language policy.