As instructors and equity-minded practitioners, we strive to design courses and activities that support our students' learning and belonging. This workshop will consider how instructors can embrace trauma-aware teaching strategies that recognize and validate students’ lived experiences inside and outside our classrooms. This workshop’s content will cover strategies within an instructor’s scope of practice. Remember that well-meaning efforts to learn students’ life stories to gauge the potential effects of traumatic events may cause retraumatization and instructors’ vicarious trauma.

Participants in the Trauma-Aware Teaching Strategies workshop are expected to:

• Bring a copy of a syllabus, lesson plan, or class activity/assignment instructions. This document may or may not be of your own authorship. You will not be asked to share this information.
• Watch the video recordings for two previous sessions offered by Dr. Toya Jones.
  • Trauma-Aware Pedagogy (1h 15m): Covers current definitions of trauma, its impact on cognitive function, and an overview of our brain’s response to traumatic events.
  • Applying Trauma-Aware Pedagogical Practices (1h 38m): This course focuses on the effects of racial trauma, with case studies and a brief review of tools for self-awareness.

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Define the “scope of practice” of a trauma-aware higher ed instructor.
• Identify trauma-aware pedagogy as a lens to enhance inclusivity and equity in their classrooms.
• Revise an existing teaching tool (syllabus, activity, assignment, etc.) to align with at least one of SAMHSA’s six principles (p. 10) that guide trauma-aware approaches.