Racialized Emotions, Trauma, and the Ethics of Feeling in Teacher Education

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium will explore how teacher education must reckon with race, trauma, and emotions as central dimensions of teaching and learning. Across three papers, we highlight how emotional experiences are often pathologized, ignored, or weaponized in teacher preparation. Drawing from trauma-informed practices, racialized emotion theories, and critical pedagogies, the presenters reveal how teachers and teacher educators of color navigate affective harm while cultivating healing-centered, emotionally literate pedagogies. This session speaks directly to Division K’s call to “unforget” histories and reimagine teacher education through liberatory and humanizing frameworks. We conclude with a discussion on how emotional literacies can support collective liberation and racially just teacher preparation in the face of intersecting social traumas.

Sub Unit

• Division K - Teaching and Teacher Education / Division K - Section 04: Foundations of Teaching and Teacher Education for Socio-Cultural, Racial, and Intersecting Minoritized Identities

Chair

• Cheryl E. Matias, University of San Diego

Papers

• You Can’t Heal What You Won’t Feel’: Centering Emotions as Embodiment as Trauma-Informed Praxis - Sharim Hannegan-Martinez, University of Michigan

• At the Frontlines of Healing: Educator Perspectives on Addressing Racial Stress and Trauma in Schools - Sophie D'Souza, Stanford University; Farzana Tabitha Saleem Adjah, Stanford University; Lionel Howard, The George Washington University

• Teaching with a Racialized Heart: Reclaiming Emotion as Theory and Praxis in Trauma-Informed Education - Adam J. Alvarez, Texas A&M University; Cheryl E. Matias, University of San Diego

Session Organizer

• Adam J. Alvarez, Texas A&M University

Discussant

• Tyrone C. Howard, University of California - Los Angeles