In this dissertation I investigate 1. What it is like to teach English language arts while grieving a death and 2. How the relational work of teaching influences teachers' engagement with English language arts curriculum while they are grieving a death. In order to understand experiences of grieving a death while teaching English language arts, I drew on phenomenological traditions to interview seven English teachers. I then transcribed their accounts of their experience. To analyze these interviews, I engaged in qualitative coding that yielded five main themes. A synthesis of these themes found that while grieving a death, teachers managed their emotions, worked to reconcile professional expectations with competing emotions, and endeavored to keep positive relationships with students and colleagues. The findings from this study also indicated that due to their perceptions of their professional roles, teachers did not have significant space or time at school to process their personal grieving. I argue that teachers' perceptions of their roles, especially their roles as professionals who work to build relationships with students, matter a great deal in understanding how teachers engage with curriculum. Educational research should therefore attend to the relational role of teaching, especially in explorations of how English teachers and students make personal connections to texts as part of engagement with ELA curriculum. Furthermore, I argue that teachers' experiences and their understandings of their roles as professionals, which are often grounded in historical discourses about the teaching profession, should be addressed more readily in teacher education curriculum. Finally, educational research should center teachers' voices and experiences to better understand what happens in schools and to help teachers to feel less alone in their navigation of healing from grievous personal circumstances while simultaneously fulfilling their professional roles as teachers.
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