Traumatized Students--But what about professors and staff?

I have received countless emails since March about COVID about any number of issues. Many are from vendors wanting to sell some software, platform, textbooks, or seminar/workshop about higher education at this time. And yes, we are hurting.

A couple of days this week I attended a REMOTE SUMMIT from a well known institution that has a mighty (and I mean mighty) online education program to complement its "brick and mortar" curriculum. One of the speakers in these (blessedly) short sessions was quite passionate about social justice in the classroom and at this time. I appreciated her passion and spirit, but she was quite fluent in buzzwords: interrogate, decolonize,  re-imagining, empowerment, deconstruct, co-create, intersectional, safety, community. All of these are either words I would not use or would have divergent meanings for than this speaker.

But one of the terms I've hear a great deal and scratch my head over is "trauma-informed pedagogy."

Whose trauma?

The answer is, the students. Granted, this has been tough on them. I wouldn't want to go through my college, and definitely not senior or freshman year, like this. I feel for their losses, which are many.

But does the trauma of the faculty and staff inform us?

Are we not allowed to admit to our trauma, talk about it, be understood in it? 

I say we are, and higher education is in trouble if it doesn't recognize that those who deliver the product we sell are as traumatized as the students.

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