When a Student Ends a Wounded Silence

Abstract

guess I ' ll read mine. The words came reluctantly from the back of my college night class, spoken by a middle-aged firefighter. had taken my developmental writing course for no other reason than its completion would put a l ittle more money in his pay­ check. His collar was decidedly blue, and, on the few occasions he spoke, his neck seemed a definite shade of red. H e came to my class to do the bare mini­ mum, but something happened on his way to the end of the term: He recounted a decades-old war story-one that for him was traumatic-and in the process largely healed his wound. I believe Mike's experience-how he came to be moved to tell a painful story, what occurred during his exchange with audiences, and the therapeutic benefits derived-is typical of students who write about their own trauma. Over the course of several weeks, Mike went through what Judith Herman ( 1 992) described as the three fundamental stages of recovery (p. 1 ): He felt safe, he told his ter­ rible story, and he restored connections between himself and his community. Mike revealed his haunting memory to readers who were caring and supportive, and the transaction eased his burden. For teachers, the handling of such emotion-laden text creates special chal­ lenges. Even teachers who view such writing as invasive of student privacy­ teachers who deliberately attempt to frame assignments to avoid what Robert Connors ( 1 987) called the emotional 'knockout punch' (p. 1 80)-may find themselves receiving trauma-inspired papers. Students will disclose painful episodes in their lives in c lasses taught by teachers they trust-regardless of the teacher 's theoretical or pedagogical paradigm. Sooner or later most teachers will encounter the phenomenon of writing as healing, and they should carefully consider how to respond. As for Mike, i t was certainly out of the ordinary for him to volunteer to read anything he wrote. On this November night, he had just completed a pre-writing exercise designed to help students generate i deas in advance of writing an Important Memory paper. Students wrote five sentences, each beginning with the words remember . . . . They then selected one of their topics and wrote quickly for about 10 minutes. The remembrance Mike chose to elaborate on had to do with Vietnam, and he produced a barely legible half-page beginning. He told of a certain day-the last day of 1 97 1-when the helicopter he was piloting was shot down and an American soldier lost his l ife.