Teaching while traumatized: an autoethnographic account of teaching, triggers, and the higher education classroom

ABSTRACT

With this paper, we present an autoethnographic account of how two higher education teachers have navigated the classroom as they deal with their own traumatic experiences. This includes discussions of how each individual’s trauma developed and manifests in the classroom, as well as discussions of various pedagogical implications/strategies for other higher education teachers dealing with trauma. To begin, we outline the research on trauma, highlighting the ways in which the research landscape characteristically looks at how teachers (typically K-12) might better educate students dealing with trauma and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Next, we discuss autoethnography as one methodology that articulates embedded experience that is informed by power and personal reactions, responses, and experiences. We then discuss how these traumatic experiences impact our pedagogy and overall feelings of safety on college campuses, which also includes strategies that we use to mitigate the harmful effects of our traumas.

KEYWORDS:

• Trauma
• autoethnography
• higher education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s.

Notes

1 Brett Kavanaugh, a Supreme Court nominee, was accused by academic Christine Blasey Ford of sexual assault when they were both youths. As a result, there were a series of televised hearings to determine, amongst other things, the validity of Blasey Ford’s claims and whether or not Kavanaugh was fit for such a high position in the US legal system. Following the hearings and an investigation, Kavanaugh was confirmed to the highest court in the country.

2 We recognize that there are many forms of trauma and that we are limited in our tellings as the result of our positionalities as white women in the academy. We do not claim to speak for everyone; rather, we are sharing our experiences with traumatic sexual violence and how that has impacted how we personally navigate higher education teaching.

3 Carter (2015) writes:

Trauma must also be understood as unequivocally political. As with all disabilities, living with trauma means negotiating life in a world established by and for bodyminds that do not experience the affect of trauma. The sociopolitical inequalities surrounding race, class, gender, and citizenship undoubtedly shape the unequal access to healthcare and other resources needed to live with and/or through trauma. In fact, the ability to be recognized as a person living with trauma is in many ways a political privilege. (para. 14)

4 IRB approval was not required for this study in that, within the stories and elsewhere, identifiable private information about others, either direct or indirect, was not included. If such info about individuals other than the teller of the story were to appear, those individuals would be considered participants, and IRB review would be required.

5 Title IX, a statute under the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, states that ‘No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance’ (U.S. Department of Education 2015). In practice in institutions of higher education, there exist offices of Title IX, where complaints (usually relating to sexual assaults) can be reported. When that happens, at least at our institution, instructors are alerted of, for example, potential absences by complainants.

6 According to Carter (2015),

To be triggered is to mentally and physically re-experience a past trauma in such an embodied manner that one’s affective response literally takes over the ability to be present in one’s bodymind. When this occurs, the triggered individuals often feel a complete loss of control and disassociation from the bodymind. This is not a state of injury, but rather a state of disability. (para. 7)

7 Other physical manifestations include, for example: feeling targeted by males with the same phenotypic markers as my abusers; defectiveness, self-loathing, and shame; hypersensitivity to criticism, self-consciousness, and insecurity; feeling that I’m being talked about or laughed at; anger, rigidity, and intolerance; panic attacks; difficulty concentrating; obsessive thoughts; frequent triggers that result in freezing (vs. fight/flight), racing heartbeat, sweating, panic, etc.; racing mind and difficulty maintaining train of thought; excessive emotionality, especially when triggered; crying; 100-yard stare; difficulty looking people in the eye.