Research on Adverse Childhood Experiences has found that 61% of adults in the US have suffered at least one traumatic childhood experience, with women and BIPOC at greater risk for four or more such experiences. It is safe to suggest that a majority of our students (and faculty!) carry unhealed trauma that, even if it does not manifest in a psychological diagnosis, affects their/our imaginative and emotional lives. Gabor Maté M.D. describes this traumatic material we carry as “explosive,” sensitive to inadvertent triggers. And this was before 2020.

 Working on the assumption that most, if not all of us, enter the classroom space as carrying this explosive material inside us, we will explore in this workshop: How do we create and facilitate learning spaces where students (and ourselves) can be safe without necessarily comfortable, heard and seen without it being a therapy session (which calls for a different training and skillset beyond what faculty have)? What are the practices, skills, methods, and structures that can serve in this time, where wounds demand a place in our consciousness and teaching, regardless of whether we want them there or not? 

In this experiential, fun and dialogical series of 3 workshops, we will explore principles and strategies for trauma-informed teaching, curriculum development and delivery, so that students are lifted up and we can teach, as poet/performer Cecilia Vicuña expresses it, with “healing intent.”

You may attend all of these sessions to complete the series, or come to any one as a stand-alone.

1. Saturday October 9th, 10am – 12pm in person, lunch provided following the program! Location: CoLab
2. Thursday October 21st, 5pm – 6pm in person. Location: CoLab
3. Tuesday November 2nd, 5pm – 6pm remote, on Zoom

Open to all faculty and staff at PSU.