Making sense of a student’s arrest for sexual assault: The need for talking and teaching in response to violent acts
Location
Educators and Trauma - Preston 1
Proposal Track
Research Project
Session Format
Presentation
Abstract
Reports of sexual assault are frequently in the news and many news stories are about adolescents. Coverage of adolescent sexual assaults focuses on the perpetrator and the victim(s), without much attention to the community where the violence occurred. These events are magnified in the discourse of the #MeToo Movement. In reporting the crime, “the media and other social institutions (e.g. schooling) often turn trauma into a form of spectacle, in which the pain of others is commodified” and neglected (Zembylas, 2008, p. 8).
Teachers who are invested in nurturing their students’ development likely respond emotionally when learning of students’ arrests for sexual assault. This study seeks to look beyond the “spectacle” to the experiences of two teachers who navigated these difficult moments with students while making sense their emotions through an intensive interview study (Lofland & Lofland, 1995). I address the following questions: 1) What were the emotional experiences of teachers who learned that students had been arrested for sexual assault? 2) How did teachers respond to these critical incidents? I will share how these teachers mediated the communal traumatic experiences through conversation and curriculum to make sense of the emotional, material, and political realities of these critical incidents.
Keywords
Teacher lives, interview study, sexual violence
Professional Bio
Stacia L. Long is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Language and Literacy at the University of Georgia. Her research and teaching interests include the social-emotional realities of teachers and writing instruction. She is the Co-Conference Chair for the Journal of Language and Literacy Education for 2019–2020.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Long, Stacia L., "Making sense of a student’s arrest for sexual assault: The need for talking and teaching in response to violent acts" (2019). Georgia Educational Research Association Conference. 12.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gera/2019/2019/12
Making sense of a student’s arrest for sexual assault: The need for talking and teaching in response to violent acts
Educators and Trauma - Preston 1
Reports of sexual assault are frequently in the news and many news stories are about adolescents. Coverage of adolescent sexual assaults focuses on the perpetrator and the victim(s), without much attention to the community where the violence occurred. These events are magnified in the discourse of the #MeToo Movement. In reporting the crime, “the media and other social institutions (e.g. schooling) often turn trauma into a form of spectacle, in which the pain of others is commodified” and neglected (Zembylas, 2008, p. 8).
Teachers who are invested in nurturing their students’ development likely respond emotionally when learning of students’ arrests for sexual assault. This study seeks to look beyond the “spectacle” to the experiences of two teachers who navigated these difficult moments with students while making sense their emotions through an intensive interview study (Lofland & Lofland, 1995). I address the following questions: 1) What were the emotional experiences of teachers who learned that students had been arrested for sexual assault? 2) How did teachers respond to these critical incidents? I will share how these teachers mediated the communal traumatic experiences through conversation and curriculum to make sense of the emotional, material, and political realities of these critical incidents.
