ABSTRACT
From the perspectives of an international student-teacher and Teaching English to speakers of other languages scholar studying and researching in the context of U.S. higher education, I engage in a poetic autoethnography to explore art-based education as a medium for healing and emotional recovery. Informed by the personal interpretive framework, I used poetry in the purview of healing pedagogy and second language acquisition (SLA), fostering a healthy and supportive language learning and teaching environment. This chapter concludes with a critical reflection on how poetry-informed pedagogy and andragogy demonstrate unique affordances in SLA, making language teaching more comforting for both teachers and students. Findings from my study suggest that the act of reading and writing poetry can be the next step toward healing-centered education. However, those affordances go beyond benefiting learners’ language acquisition as it also helps emotionally vulnerable teachers such as myself. In the findings, I also elaborate on my experiences of finding solace in poetry when there was emotional uncertainty in my life as an early career teacher and international doctoral student during the COVID-19 pandemic.
