Exploring the Use of Bibliotherapy with English as a Second Language Students

Studies in trauma healing and teaching ESL students have been done before. In addition, bibliotherapy has been used in educational and psychological disciplines. However, there are few studies that explore the use of bibliotherapy and trauma healing in ESL refugee students. My objective for this study was to explore bibliotherapy to see what experiences/stories surfaced from students' lives and what connections/reflections students made to the books we read in the bibliotherapy sessions. This was a qualitative single case study; I observed and worked with a group of ESL refugee students in an after-school program. However, for this study I followed the progress of one student over our bibliotherapy sessions. I used observations, interviews and artifacts analysis. Data was collected, triangulated and coded. I found out that the student Identified herself to some degree with the texts read during our bibliotherapy sessions. However, stories from past traumatic experiences surfaced during oral discussions but became more visible whenever she was writing.