If We Aren’t Grieving, We Aren’t Healing: Grief as a Trauma-Informed Praxis

• In Event: Grief as Remembrance: An Antidote to Institutional Trauma Across Educational Contexts

Abstract

The rates of child trauma continue to catapult exponentially year after year. In response to this health crisis, over the last decade there has been burgeoning research on trauma-informed pedagogies and practices in schools, and more recently, grief (e.g., Alvarez, 2020; Camangian & Cariaga, 2022; Cariaga, 2023; Everett & Dunn, 2021, Hannegan-Martinez, 2019, 2023; Shevrin Venet, 2021; Simmons, 2019). While this scholarship has made important contributions to the field of education and to educational practice at large, it often addresses these phenomena separately and does little to interrogate the relationship between grief and trauma or to situate grief as a trauma-informed and
healing practice. This paper adds to the growing body of trauma-informed and healing-centered scholarship by centering a component of healing from trauma that is often looked over in educational scholarship and practice: grief. As Hannegan & Cariaga (2023) state, “grief allows us to re-center what matters, who we have lost and still love, and what and whom we need to remember.” Through engaging in different iterations of Chicana Feminist Pláticas (individual, peer, communal) (Fierros & Delgado-Bernal, 2016; Hannegan-Martinez, 2023) with Teachers of Color from across different geographic regions, this study seeks to advance our understanding of the spatial and political landscape of grief and trauma for both Teachers and Students of Color. Findings highlight the power and utility of grief within the trauma-healing nexus and illuminate the ways in which ongoing genocide, climate catastrophes, federal policies, and educational gag orders serve as a legislation of grief and trauma.

Author

• Sharim Hannegan-Martinez, University of Michigan