Collective stories: the application of sociodrama with high school immigrant students

Abstract

ABSTRACT Immigrant students often deal with a great deal of trauma not only from home country challenges but also with immigration and resettlement issues. The provision of therapeutic work in school settings comes with a number of challenges. In many cases, school systems can make it difficult to implement appropriate interventions due to logistical constraints such as time, space, and academic pressures, or more complex fears of re-traumatizing a student or lacking appropriate socio-emotional support staff. Informed by the author’s experiences working in a high school for newly arrived immigrants as a psychotherapist, creative arts therapist and psychodramatist, this article outlines how using the aesthetics of sociodrama provides a way to balance in-depth trauma work with enough distance that a student can reengage with the classroom following sessions.