Loss in The English Classroom: A Study of English Teachers' Emotion Management During Literature Instruction

Scholarship in English Education has suggested that English teachers can invite experiences of death and loss into English classrooms as part of curricular engagement because students' identities and experiences should be witnessed in classrooms (e.g., Dutro, 2019). Scholarship on literature response and instruction has emphasized that readers should make personal connections and respond emotionally to texts. Drawing on feminist understandings of emotion, this interview study investigated what work teachers do in efforts to engage the topics of death and loss as part of English language arts curriculum when they themselves are affected by personal loss. Findings revealed that amidst emotional responses to texts they characterized as "overwhelming," teachers do considerable emotion management to fulfill what they perceive as professional norms and to enact what they believe to be important to literature instruction. This study therefore attends to challenges teachers might face when asked to engage topics of death and loss as part of literature instruction and provides insight into how English Education researchers and educators might support teachers in efforts to address topics of death and loss in their English language arts curriculum.