Teaching in the Midst of Trauma

Abstract

This was the title of my presentation at the 2021 AALS Annual Meeting as a part of a larger panel presented by the Wellness Section titled, “The Power of Now: A Mindset for Teaching in Times of Uncertainty.” I chose this title because as an African-American woman, who had just lost my mother (who had lived in my home for 10 years) and moved academic institutions (after 15 years at a former institution), teaching in the midst of Covid-19, I wanted to sound the alarm! We are NOT alright! I was quite aware that I was not “alright,” and suspected that many of my students and my colleagues weren’t either.

However, I noticed an almost frantic attempt by many people in the academy to pretend that we were. These attempts also went beyond my institution’s doors: it was palpable on the listservs of which I was a member; it was equally palpable in the larger news media’s reports. We all wanted to be “alright,” but we were not. We were living during a pandemic! And if you were fortunate, there were no other traumatic events occurring in your life.

But for my first-year legal writing students, I realized that the pandemic + the first year of law school (with its myriad changes and challenges) = TRAUMA. Because of that, I began to think of some ways to modify my teaching to embrace the fact that we were existing in traumatic times. My essay will embrace my decision to be okay with not being “alright” as an African-American woman academic, my journey to helping my students be okay with it as well, and what that looked like in and outside of my classroom teaching.

Keywords: teaching; pedagogy; andragogy; trauma; soft skills; lawyering skills