A Role for English Language Teachers in Trauma Healing


Communities of Participation in TESOL

A Role for English Language
Teachers in Trauma Healing

MICHAEL MEDLEY
Eastern Mennonite University

Because English language teachers should take into account the
social-psychological situation of the students they teach, they
must be sensitive to the effects of traumatic stress among learn-
ers. Refugee and immigrant children are frequently survivors of
trauma, along with their peers in crisis-torn English as a foreign
language settings around the world. Without experiencing some
measure of healing from trauma, children will be frustrated in
their language learning. This article explains how what we
know about trauma can be aligned with effective language
instructional practices. The author first provides information
about the effects of trauma and then identifies teaching
approaches that are sensitive to the needs of those affected by
trauma. The author suggests ways that teachers can (a) include
intelligences that may be neglected in traditional language class-
rooms as a way to address the needs of trauma-affected youth
in order to have multiple channels for self-expression and
language learning; (b) integrate language instruction with
self-expression and exploration of social relationships; and
(c) incorporate content-based language instruction that explains
the trauma healing process. Although further investigations are
needed, English language teachers can play a role in trauma
healing for learners because artful acts of instruction are thera-
peutic, promoting both wholeness and effective instruction for
all learners.
doi: 10.1002/tesj.6

Hussain (not his real name) is a 17-year-old placed in an
intensive English program at his U.S. high school. Having fled
Iraq 4 years ago, his family managed 10 months ago to reach the
United States. Hussain’s father was kidnapped in Iraq and has not
been seen or heard from. When asked to share anything about his

110 TESOL Journal 3.1, March 2012
© 2012 TESOL International Association



experience of coming to the United States, Hussain begins by
mentioning what happened to his father. In almost every
discussion, the topic of his father arises. Hussain likes to play
soccer, which prompts him to share the memory that he played
soccer with his father and his father’s friends when he was only
6 years old.

One thing that Hussain never mentions is that when his father
was kidnapped, Hussain also was taken by the kidnappers. He
was tortured and eventually released and reunited with his
mother and siblings. He never mentions such things, but his sister
has told me that he still wakes up sometimes screaming in the
night.

While his English lesson is in progress, Hussain often blurts
out remarks to other students in English or Arabic—even
sometimes in Spanish because he has many Latino/a classmates.
When it is his turn to do computer-assisted learning, he often
pesters those sitting near him. He rarely remains focused on his
own computer screen for more than a couple of minutes—in sharp
contrast to many others in this class.

Hussain is not a rare case. Many language learners around the
world suffer the after-effects of trauma induced by natural disaster
(tsunamis, earthquakes, etc.) or human cruelty (war, civil unrest,
displacement, gang or domestic violence, etc.). Even decades after
a disaster or crisis has ended, the trauma responses persist in the
minds and behavior of these people. The aftermath of trauma is
carried to countries of refuge, where those who have fled from
horrific situations are sometimes overwhelmed by the experiences
of immigration. Many of these sufferers are children enrolled in
schools where English is a required subject or the medium of
instruction.

FILLING A GAP
Many valuable resources are available for those working with
traumatically stressed adult language learners (e.g., Finn, 2010;
International Institute of Boston, 2000), but to date very little
research and almost no special resources for trauma-affected
younger language learners have been published. General resources
provided by Cole et al. (2005) and Levine and Kline (2007) are a

A Role for English Language Teachers in Trauma Healing 111



great help for those working with trauma-affected children, but
they do not focus on language and literacy acquisition.

Just as culturally and linguistically responsive teaching
approaches are necessary (e.g., Gibbons, 2002; Nykiel-Herbert,
2010; Santamaria, 2009), it is also necessary to address the special
needs created by learners’ past traumas. Young learners are not
disembodied cognitive devices for processing language input, but
persons with histories. They are the products of what they have
seen, heard, smelled, touched, acted on, and been subjected to—as
well as the products of their ancestors’ experiences. Through
stories passed down over generations, they have absorbed and
processed interpretations of who they are, how they have become
what they are, and what they have the potential to become. Their
personal histories have profoundly affected their psychological
states and their stakes in the classroom.

This article suggests that (a) without experiencing some
measure of healing from trauma, most language learners will be
frustrated; (b) teaching approaches that are sensitive to the needs
of the trauma-affected comprise good instructional practice for all
learners; and (c) artful acts of instruction in themselves can be
therapeutic and build resilience in all language learners.

TRAUMA AND ITS EFFECTS
The opening anecdote about Hussain illustrates several important
points about trauma. His case shows us that trauma from the
infliction of torture can be overwhelming and long-lasting.
Hussain’s behavior, cognition, and emotions all manifest some
effects of trauma. Like Hussain, victims sometimes suppress
memories of their trauma or conceal information from others as a
mechanism for coping with pain or because they feel shame or
guilt for being victimized. As Levine and Kline (2007) emphasize,
however, trauma lies not in the event itself but in the response of
the person. This means, for example, that the trauma does not
have to involve physical harm. And certain events can overwhelm
one person’s capacity to cope, but leave others relatively
unscathed. Even though it was traumatic for Hussain’s sister to
lose her father, she appears not to have been overwhelmed in the
same way that Hussain has been.

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What Is Trauma?
According to Cole et al. (2005), trauma is “a response to a
stressful experience in which a person’s ability to cope is
dramatically undermined” (p. 18). For learners who are 18 and
younger, it is also worthwhile to note Terr’s definition of
“childhood trauma as the impact of external forces that ‘[render]
the young person temporarily helpless and [break] past ordinary
coping and defensive operation’” (as cited in Cole et al., 2005,
p. 18).

Trauma has both physical and psychological dimensions
(Levine & Kline, 2007). Cole et al. (2005) describe the three broad
classic symptoms of traumatic stress as “hyperarousal,
re-experiencing (i.e., involuntarily ‘reliving’ the traumatic
experience), and avoidance (i.e., avoiding traumatic reminders
and/or emotions associated with the initial traumatic event)”
(pp. 93–94).

The key point to remember is that traumatic stress is relatively
unpredictable: Its effects lie not in the traumatizing event itself but
in the capacity of the individual to cope—in that individual’s level
of resilience (Levine & Kline, 2007).

Responses of School-Aged Children and Youth
Responses to trauma exhibited by children vary with age and
oscillate between acting out (engaging in socially disruptive
behavior) and acting in (engaging in withdrawal or self-
destructive thought and behavior; Hart, 2007b; Levine & Kline,
2007). Kerka (2002) refers to these as forms of learning, what the
trauma has taught the child to do as a way of coping with the
overwhelming pain or loss. The learned responses of school-aged
children most relevant to classrooms include those suggested in
Table 1 (Hart, 2007b; Levine & Kline, 2007).

Many of the trauma responses listed in Table 1 relate directly
to issues of classroom management and methods of lesson
delivery. A teacher who responds to behavior problems simply by
clamping down on learners with tighter discipline ignores the
child’s inner wounds from which the behavior emanates.
Clamping down will probably not erase the behavior problems,
and the student will still face difficulties learning (Hart, 2007b).

A Role for English Language Teachers in Trauma Healing 113



What is needed, rather, is a consistent pedagogical strategy that
aspires to the following goals:

• including intelligences that may be neglected in traditional language class-
rooms, such as bodily-kinesthetic, musical, spatial, interpersonal and intra-
personal, and naturalist intelligences as a way to address the needs of
trauma-affected youth and to help them access multiple channels for self-
expression and language learning

• integrating language instruction with self-expression and exploration of
social relationships in order to build a community that will be a safe envi-
ronment for mourning traumas and considering nonviolent options for
transforming conflict

• incorporating content-based language instruction that explains the trauma
healing process and indirectly addresses local violence by examining similar
but geographically distant conflicts

INCLUSION OF MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES
The theory of multiple intelligences provides a compelling
response to the several competing discourses about educational
methods that disadvantage “special learners” of any kind,
including trauma-affected learners. Kerka (2002) identifies four
detrimental discourses. One is the familiar discourse of deficit,
which claims there is something wrong with the student; the
institution is blameless and doesn’t need to change. The medical
discourse, a variation of the deficit discourse, stipulates that
trauma victims first need therapeutic treatment, and then they can
be taught. Another perspective is what Kerka calls the discourse of

TABLE 1. Responses of School-Aged Children to Emotional Trauma

Emotional Cognitive Behavioral

Fear,
moodiness,
anger,
depression

Loss of interest in school
Trouble with memory and
poor concentration

Possible desire to understand
why the trauma occurred or
thoughts about death

Aggressiveness toward
others

Hypervigilance/hyperarousal
Withdrawal/isolation
Attention-seeking behaviors
Difficulty trusting others or
loss of trust in others

Participation in high-risk or
illegal behaviors (e.g., substance
abuse)—adolescents

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educational practice, which explains trauma-affected learners’
taciturn withdrawal or chronic inattention or disruptive acting out
as a lack of motivation or self-discipline instead of viewing these
behaviors as learned responses to trauma. Finally, there is the
discourse of standards and accountability, which places simplistic
demands for achieving certain outcomes on learners without
understanding how their complex condition affects their
negotiation of the drill-and-test regime.

A fifth discourse type could be added to the list. This is the
discourse of teacher despair, which says, “You are adding
another kind of special learner to my classroom and expecting
me to make special accommodations for this learner? You’re
asking me to deal with mental health issues when I’m a teacher
and not a therapist!”

One response to these discourses is to embrace the theory
and practice of multiple intelligences (Christison, 1999; Gardner,
2006; Haley, 2010). This perspective demands an end to
unwarranted assumptions that language must be learned mainly
through linguistic and logico-mathematical approaches and that
“good” language learners must be strong in these forms of
intelligence. A multiple intelligences approach to language
teaching assumes that the full range of intelligences is
represented in every classroom—with most children having
strengths in more than one intelligence. It assumes that most
learners acquire a language best by accessing multiple avenues
for input. In short, this perspective affirms that trauma-affected
learners are like all the other learners in the classroom: They can
process new language better if they are able to draw on the
intelligences that work the best for them.

Because linguistic intelligence itself is of paramount
importance in a language classroom, the teaching profession
sometimes neglects incorporation of other intelligences identified
by Gardner (2006), such as bodily-kinesthetic, musical, visual-
spatial, naturalist, intrapersonal, and interpersonal, although
most classrooms that are moderately communicative make some
use of the last two in this list in providing for journaling and
pair or group work. Intentionally planning for multiple
intelligences offers learners multiple channels for self-expression,

A Role for English Language Teachers in Trauma Healing 115



such as music, journaling, art, drama, and movement (Yoder,
2005).

INTEGRATION OF LANGUAGE STUDY WITH
SELF-EXPLORATION AND SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS
Earl W. Stevick (1998) pithily identifies “what goes on inside and
between” (p. 4) people as foundational for understanding
successful language teaching and learning. Trauma-affected
language learners need a safe place in community with others
where they can do the internal work that brings healing.

Safety
Victims of trauma must believe that their lives are no longer under
threat. For healing to begin, they must live in a safe environment
(Hart, 2007b; Yoder, 2005). Language classrooms are inherently
risky places, but they can also become sanctuaries for the
traumatized. We know that learners who stick their necks out and
try using the new language are more likely to attain some measure
of proficiency, but the risks that a language teacher proposes need
to be measured by the capacity of the learners.

Making a language classroom safe for trauma-affected youth
creates a healthy environment for all members of the class. Steps
that can be taken include maintaining a predictable routine,
posting the daily schedule on the board and notifying students
ahead of time if there will be a major deviation from the schedule
(Cole et al., 2005), not introducing too many new task types too
quickly, using elicitation techniques that do not expose students to
high risk, engaging students in choral practice, using correction
techniques that do not expose learners to embarrassment, and
having students participate in small-group work as a way of
avoiding situations in which the whole class focuses attention on
one learner.

As standard advice for creating a safe classroom environment
given in methods textbooks (e.g., Brown, 2007), these measures are
crucial for language learners recovering from trauma. Take, for
example, the maxim “maintain a predictable environment.” As
Cole et al. (2005), Hart (2007b), and others point out, children
suffering from traumatic stress have lived in unstable

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environments; whether through abuse, social violence, or natural
disaster, their expectations about how the world operates have
been turned upside down. As Cole et al. note, “children living in
circumstances that do not allow them to make connections
between their actions and the responses they trigger can be left
wary of the future, which feels to them both unpredictable and out
of their control” (p. 27).

This loss of connection between causes and effects can also
create problems for managing behavior, as motivation wanes and
children lose the will to persevere in academic tasks. To help
learners restore the link between cause and effect, the teacher
needs to build rewards into the system so that children can see
that effort results in positive effects. However, the rewards need to
be intrinsic, if possible, based on forming positive relationships
with the instructor who works to personalize the learning process
while building the learner’s self-confidence.

Community
Traumatized children need to redevelop trust with adults, peers,
and the world (Hart, 2007b). Teachers must work on community
building in a classroom, such that the teacher and learners
increasingly become more deeply acquainted with each other as
whole persons. Community building is part of the work of
creating a safe space for language learners. Community flourishes
as people grow to know, understand, and respect each other.

Hart (2007a) emphasizes the importance of playing ice-
breaker games as a way of building and sustaining rapport. She
points out that these games serve the multiple functions of
increasing trust and caring, evoking laughter, increasing ability
to focus, and bringing multiple intelligences into play. These
activities attenuate hypervigilance as children relax in the game
setting. They also serve multiple language learning functions,
allowing for repetition in listening and speaking and for
practicing a wide range of vocabulary. The Greeting Game, for
example, practices the names for body parts using total physical
response (Hart, 2007a). The teacher gives commands such as
“Greet each other with a handshake (a fist bump, an elbow
bump, a pat on the back, etc.).” The teacher begins with the

A Role for English Language Teachers in Trauma Healing 117



least embarrassing commands first, and participants have a right
to challenge what they think is an inappropriate greeting. This
game adds critical as well as interpersonal dimensions to a total
physical response technique in which language is wedded with
movement.

Another way of building community among class members
is to integrate language instruction with self-expression and
exploration of social relationships. The United States Institute of
Peace’s (USIP; n.d.) Peace Education for English Language Learners
presents many activities that promote interpersonal knowledge.
Through these activities, learners put English to use at levels
appropriate to their proficiency. For example, in the Name Game
participants share the meaning of their names, how they got
their names, and how they feel about their names. The
language required in this communicative activity is easily
accessible for intermediate-level learners and above, but those
whose English is more elementary could be supported with
sentence frames.

Another activity, We Belong to Many Groups (USIP, n.d.), allows
learners to explore those groups that play a role in shaping their
identities (e.g., family, clubs, teams, religious affiliations). It can be
done as a total physical response activity based on reading or
listening. The teacher either shows or says a series of statements
such as “One of the most important groups I belong to
is ____________ ,” filling in the blank with various group names.
Learners respond by standing or perhaps by grouping themselves
in different areas of the room that bear labels for the groups.
Students may respond positively to more than one of the
statements, signifying that they “belong to many groups.”

Building a classroom culture in which all class members
learn how to encourage and affirm each other is a good goal for
all language classrooms, but is especially important to trauma-
affected learners. Hart (personal communication) stresses
the importance of including, in addition to reflective types of
learning, actions that build healthy relationships, giving children
opportunities to “fill one another’s bucket” with happiness
and gratitude by doing acts of kindness or uttering kind
words. Resources available on the Bucket Fillers website

118 TESOL Journal



(www.bucketfillers101.com) suggest ways for teachers and
learners to say and write simple words that build up others and
integrate language practice with caring deeds.

Mourning
Victims of violence need to mourn their traumas. They need to
acknowledge that a trauma has occurred and be willing to talk
about it instead of hiding or suppressing it. Of course, teachers
should never force the trauma-affected learner to mourn, and
sometimes should even steer classroom topics away from
reminders of the trauma. But choosing not to mourn locks the
wounded person in a cycle of victimhood and potential violence
(STAR, 2008; Yoder, 2005). By contrast, Yoder (2005) points out
that “when all of the story is acknowledged and mourned—the
valor, heroism, sacrifice, pain, fear, resilience, betrayals,
humiliations, shortcomings, atrocities, and guilt—then shame and
humiliation can be shed, forgiveness sought, courage celebrated,
and reenactment ended” (p. 54).

ELT professionals working among trauma-affected populations
must learn to strike a balance between language learning goals
and sensitivity to the learners’ environment and their emergent
needs. In the English teaching that she did in postwar Kosovo in
2000, Paula Huntley (2003) learned the importance of creating
space for sharing stories. She flexibly allowed learners to tell their
stories even though that was not the direction she had planned for
the lesson. She devised writing assignments that allowed these
students, mainly adolescents, to document the horrors of their war
experiences. As Huntley learned to do, teachers can elicit stories
from learners related to their traumatic experiences. While
working on specific tenses or narrative structures, the teacher can
ask students to remember the routines they had while in the
environment where the trauma occurred: What was a day like in a
refugee camp? What was life like while they endured weeks of
bombing? What happened on the train journey? The teacher
becomes a learner in this situation, discovering what topics to
avoid for the moment because they might trigger trauma
responses, what additional content to integrate, and what to
recognize and affirm about students’ experiences. Healing can

A Role for English Language Teachers in Trauma Healing 119



begin when others stop pretending that a traumatic experience
never occurred and acknowledge the pain that is felt.

Hart (2007b) provides a structure for story sharing by asking
learners to create a dust cover for their biography. Learners identify
three or four defining moments in their life. They invent a title for
the book and design a picture for the cover. Then they narrate
one of the defining moments for the front inside flap. They write a
brief bio statement for the back inside flap and provide quotations
from reviewers or important persons in their lives for the back
cover. This assignment makes space for, but does not force, sharing
about traumatic experiences. In providing a chance for learners to
use their new language to (re)construct the meaning of their
experiences, this activity encourages intrapersonal intelligence. It
also exercises visual-spatial and kinesthetic intelligences in the
design of the cover and interpersonal intelligence as the developing
writers consider how best to attract and communicate with their
audience through the covers.

Integrating language instruction with self-expression and
exploration of social relationships addresses three issues important
for trauma healing to take place: creating a safe environment,
building trust among class members, and acknowledging traumas
so that they can be properly mourned. The self-exploration piece
also focuses learners’ attention on recovering meaning in their
lives. How language teachers deliver such lessons is as important
as the content focus.

INCORPORATION OF TRAUMA HEALING CONTENT
As already mentioned, responses to crises, catastrophes, or chronic
stressors are highly variable. The power to traumatize lies not in
the event itself, but in the individual’s inability to endure the
stress. Some individuals are more resilient than others. How did
they become resilient? If their secrets can be taught to children
who have been traumatized, then this might act as a road map
leading them out of the cycles of violence onto a path toward
complete healing (STAR, 2008). There are many stages in the
healing journey toward greater resilience for trauma-affected
youth. The two highlighted here are conflict transformation and
movement toward forgiveness.

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Conflict Transformation
Because many traumatized children have witnessed or
experienced violence being used to solve problems, they need
another model for resolving interpersonal and social conflicts.
Teaching about nonviolent ways of handling conflict can
become language course content as suitable as any other topic
that often appears in English language curricula—food,
fashions, marriage customs, environmental sustainability, and
so on. But the most powerful way of integrating language
teaching and conflict transformation is through providing
children with the language to solve practical problems in the
classroom.

Students should be invited to work collaboratively in
establishing class guidelines for behavior, arranging special events,
co-constructing the curriculum, and settling small conflicts and
matters of discipline in the classroom. Learning and experiencing
new ways of resolving conflicts takes learners several steps
forward in the healing journey. Related steps include developing a
concern for the truth about who harmed whom and for what
reasons, a concern for justice that brings restoration of right
relationships, and a concern for forgiveness that releases the
victim or survivor from the “dark ruminations that erode health
and enjoyment” (STAR, 2008, p. III. 9). This approach will have
immediate as well as long-term benefits for all learners.

Movement Toward Forgiveness
Arriving at the ability to forgive the perpetrators of violence is a
point far along in the trauma healing journey; it is nothing to be
rushed, and not something that can be demanded from the victim.
Although the act of forgiving may be supported by an active faith,
religion is not needed to justify forgiveness as “an act of great
courage” through which survivors of violence gain “freedom from
the power [and] control the offender or another group has over”
them (STAR, 2008, p. III. 9; see also resources provide by the
Forgiveness Project, http://theforgivenessproject.com).

Teachers from outside the conflict area must tread very
delicately in working with the traumatized on this issue. For
example, when Paula Huntley (2003) broached the issue of

A Role for English Language Teachers in Trauma Healing 121



negative stereotypes of “the other” (i.e., Serbian perpetrators) held
by the Kosovar Albanian students in her Hemingway book club,
she realized, “I am in way over my head. Who can read another’s
heart? Who am I to try to teach tolerance to these who have
suffered so much so recently?” (p. 114). Yet, as Yoder (2005)
argues, forgiveness is one of those desirable steps that a
traumatized person may take to escape the survivor/victim cycle,
achieve freedom from self-harm, and avoid the perpetuation of
violence through revenge.

One way that I have tried to raise awareness of the need
to forgive is through developing a unit of material on the
horrors of apartheid in South Africa and how South Africans
responded through the work of the Truth and Reconciliation
Committee to the traumas they had collectively suffered. The
most powerful experiences I have had with this material have
occurred when students read brief excerpts adapted from
Desmond Tutu’s (1999) book No Future Without Forgiveness.
Learners recast the excerpts into dialogue and acted them out.
It was a moving experience to hear students who had suffered
voicing the sufferings of South Africans, requesting and
granting forgiveness. Collaboratively preparing the script and
then physically staging the scene draws on class members’
linguistic, interpersonal, visual-spatial, and kinesthetic
intelligences.

CONCLUSION
This article invites English language educators to exchange their
discourse of despair about trauma-affected learners for a discourse
of multiple intelligences that not only meets the needs of all
learners but offers an opportunity for healing to trauma-affected
youth by opening up alternative avenues for expression.
Integrating language instruction with self-expression and
exploration of social relationships creates a safe environment and
supportive community in which all learners thrive and the
trauma-affected among them learn to trust others and regain self-
efficacy. Incorporating content-based language instruction related
to conflict transformation and forgiveness can fortify students’
resilience while facilitating language learning.

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Many teachers may feel that none of this matters to them
because they aren’t aware of any trauma-affected learners in
their classrooms. But what about that child whose attention
continually wanders? We should not let ourselves be fooled by
learners’ silence about their past traumas. Neither should we
squander the chance to build resilience proactively by following
the approaches suggested here. As teachers, we might also
consider how we have successfully weathered traumatic events
and become wiser and more compassionate persons. In so
reflecting, we may become better equipped to walk beside
students and build them up.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
The Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture, in Australia,
has produced some comprehensive materials for welcoming and
orienting refugee children and families that take into account
the effects of traumatic experiences. These materials contain
lesson plans and activities that could be adapted by an English
language or mainstream classroom teacher. The publications The
Rainbow Program for Children in Refugee Families and A Guide to
Working With Young People Who Are Refugees may be
downloaded from the foundation’s website (www.
foundationhouse.org.au).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indebted to Elaine Zook Barge, Vesna Hart, and Carolyn
Yoder for sharing their knowledge of trauma and for their
encouragement. Tom Scovel, Don Snow, Vesna Hart, and Christi
Kramer provided helpful critiques of an early draft of this article.
My deepest thanks go to the trauma-affected learners who
originally inspired me—Neris, J.C., and Hero.

THE AUTHOR
Michael Medley coordinates the minor in TESOL and regularly
teaches TESOL-related courses in both the graduate and
undergraduate divisions at Eastern Mennonite University, in
Harrisonburg, Virginia, in the United States. His current projects
are creation of an ENL course book based on the content of

A Role for English Language Teachers in Trauma Healing 123



Eastern Mennonite University’s trauma healing curriculum and a
multiple case study of trauma-affected adolescent English
language learners.

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