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Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century | Showcasing UJ Teaching and Learning 2021
Young people in our classes have experienced forms of violence, poverty and trauma. Many of our students have experienced forms of psychic wounding ‘that shows up as depression, despair, hopelessness, fear, anger, and pain’ (Ginwright 2021: 99). Trauma permeates every aspect of our lives and affects learning in school. I have explored various ways to support students in trauma-informed ways. This includes the creation of WhatsApp groups, availing my number to students, being flexible with deadlines among a number of other strategies that account for the sometimes traumatic lives and experiences that our students are exposed to. Van der Kolk (2014) shares that while there is not one way we can assist people recover from trauma, it is through story sharing, providing understanding and building human connections in addition to biomedical modalities that ultimately help people to recover from trauma.
Conclusion: ‘Today I felt like a human being’
Marc Lamont-Hill (2021: 77) writes, as ‘long as we are not living in our full humanity, we cannot create a world for humanity’. Our students are dealing with a lot of historical and generationally transmitted forms of trauma. As such, I actively work to build humane and humanising interactions and pedagogical engagements with my students because I recognise neglect is as toxic as trauma (Perry & Winfrey 2021a).
We can use the classroom for humanising and healing (hooks 1989). As Ginwright (2021: 103) shares,
Healing-centred engagement is akin to the South African term ‘Ubuntu,’ meaning that humanness is found through our interdependence, collective engagement, and service to others. The healing-centred approach comes from the idea that young people are not harmed in a vacuum, and therefore their healing cannot happen in one. Healing comes from sharing our stories and holding space to hear one another’s pain, and joy, without judgement.”
At the beginning of 2020, I hosted a book launch and invited the third-year students to attend. Bulelani, one of them, at the end of the book launch said, ‘Today I felt like a human being.’ He was sharing how the event (re)humanised him. Through engagements with the speakers, myself and his peers in the education setting,
he said this is the first time he felt like a whole human being. I believe we can use education to bring students back into their humanity.
Our students are dealing with a lot of historical and generationally transmitted forms of trauma. As such, I actively work to build humane and humanising interactions and pedagogical engagements with my students because I recognise neglect is as toxic as trauma (Perry & Winfrey 2021a).