"Now That I Realize...I Can Grow": Adolescent Scholars Self-Authoring Through Trauma (Re)Positioning Literacy

• In Event: 25.081 - Reframing, Reshaping, Repositioning: Critical Approaches to Literacy and Transformation

Abstract

This paper explores the ways in which adolescent scholars are both positioned and position themselves in a trauma-informed, place-based urban alternative learning program. Analysis of narratives shared by seven Mexican-American participants in the Conexiónes program demonstrate the adolescent scholars drawing on trauma discourse as they work to create new meanings of their pasts and build desired life paths. Navigating ethno-racialized, gendered, and classed hierarchies alongside labels positioning them as “bad” students, the adolescent scholars re-interpret significant life experiences through an educator-proffered trauma discourse. This meaning-making practice, which we term Trauma (Re)Positioning Literacy, alongside educator moves that position learners as capable and trusted scholars with worthy desires, was found to support self-authoring at this “second-chance” program.

Authors

• Noah Asher Golden, California State University - Long Beach

• Jennifer James, Chapman University