This reflection on the first chapter of To Be a Slave felt like something I had to make space and time for during class. I was very explicit about wanting to create a space that welcomed the emotions students were feelings as they read about slavery into the classroom so that we could hold them and make sense of them.  It's important for students (middle school students especially) to recognize and work through their emotions.  Naming the emotions that are involved within studying slavery begins the work of historical empathy.  Centering the emotions of students created a pathways to center the emotions of the enslaved Africans and African Americans we were reading about and this was vital to understanding slavery as a deeply traumatic institution.  I sat down with students on the carpet and shared my own feelings while reading, thus modeling vulnerability.  This reflection allowed us to enter the text affectively since we had previously discussed the African Slave Trade and the context of slave narratives.  Furthermore, I asked students to be honest about the difficulty of reading the text also speaking to the language the book uses.  I was able to start to see which students struggle with reading difficult texts and whether they use strategies when this happens. We then collectively named some of the reading and emotional strategies we could use to get through difficult texts.