When Loss Gets Personal considers how secondary English language arts teachers and teacher educators can sensitively and thoughtfully teach pieces of literature in their classrooms in which death is a significant, if not central, aspect of the texts. Death is something that affects all people young and old, yet it is rarely discussed openly in classrooms despite its prevalence in texts read in ELA classrooms. Whether it is canonical or contemporary literature, middle grades or young adult literature, fiction, nonfiction, or graphic novels, literature provides a vehicle to have difficult but needed conversations about personal deaths such as cancer, accidents, suicide, etc. Each chapter in this book focuses on 1-2 texts and provides practical activities that ask students to engage with the loss through writing assignments, projects, activities, and discussion prompts in order to build empathy, understanding, and develop critically-minded and engaged students. When Loss Gets Personal will be of interest to English language arts teachers, teacher educators, librarians, and scholars who wish to explore with their students the complex emotions that revolve around discussing deaths that occur in literature.
Foreword Author TBA Acknowledgements Introduction Michelle M. Falter Part I: Suicide Chapter 1- Death and the Digital: Student Voices and Small Stories as Supplemental Texts to Thirteen Reasons Why Emily C. Plummer Chapter 2- Young Adults "Step Out" of Thirteen Reasons Why and Impulse: Moving from Personal Connection to Analysis Alison Heron-Hruby, Mallory Aronhalt, Madison Beam, Hollibeth Francis, Danielle Jones, Haleigh Wells, and Brandie Trent Chapter 3- Pursuing Mystery in A Tale for the Time Being: A Pedagogical Framework for Reading about Suicide with High School Students Mark A. Sulzer Part II: Terminal Illness Chapter 4- Accepting the Deadline and Forging Ahead: Literature through the Lens of Palliative Care in a High School English Classroom Christian Z. Goering and Ginger Goering Chapter 5- Keeping it Real: Teaching Death Be Not Proud and This Star Won't Go Out as Adolescent Narratives of Loss Michelle M. Falter Chapter 6- The Healing Power of Stories: Reading and Re-Reading A Monster Calls Jon Ostenson Part III- Accidents Chapter 7- The Thing about Grieving: Intellectual and Emotional Work in Ali Benjamin's The Thing about Jellyfish Mary Harrell and Sharon Kane Chapter 8- "Grieving Like a Normal Person": Examining Responses to Grief in Nina LaCour's We Are Okay Jenna Spiering and Kate Kedley Chapter 9- Envisioning Alternate Realities of Loss: Using Imagination to Bridge Classroom Conversations about Grief through Peter Pan and The Wendy Project Nina R. Schoonover and Ashley A. Atkinson Chapter 10- Addressing Trauma and Death with Young Adolescents through Tears of a Tiger Melissa A. Baker, Laronda Brown, and Marisa A. Vicere Chapter 11- Dealing with Death through Dialogue: Existentialism & Looking for Alaska Katie Rybakova Part IV: Familial Death Chapter 12- The Intersectionality of Music and Mortality using Jason Reynold's The Boy in the Black Suit Latasha McKinney and Rebecca Maldonado Chapter 13- Loss and the Perfection Crucible in The Bell Jar and The Catcher in the Rye Antonia Alberga-Parisi and Brittany Pope Chapter 14- "My Mother is a Fish": Exploring Grief through As I Lay Dying Chea Parton About the Editors About the Contributors Index
