Keywords
teenage life experiences, healing-centered teaching, writing about personal trauma
Preview
As I began the 2013-14 school year, I encountered students with a full range of life experiences. My students’ lives ran the gamut from having the 1950s version of traditional middle- class families to being part of the Utah foster care system. Their challenges included depression over not making the school dance team, dyslexia or other learning disabilities, and responding to trauma with self-harm by using a heated curling iron. I wondered what I could do to help struggling students make it through the minefields in their lives, and remembered the character of Ponyboy, who writes about his friends’ traumatic lives in The Outsiders, telling the real story behind their deaths (Hinton, 1967). Perhaps even the teenage Hinton recognized that writing about personal trauma helps a person recover from it? As my students write every day, there should be a way to utilize that practice and experience some benefits from writing about their challenges.
Recommended Citation
Hancock, Elizabeth
(2025)
"Writing Prompts in the Healing-centered Classroom,"
The Utah English Journal: Vol. 53, Article 7.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/uej/vol53/iss1/7