covid | Rage Blogging is Therapy

I wrote quite a bit about a month ago about my tween’s experience with an abusive teacher at their school. While we finally got their 504 accommodations updated, and I’m guessing that teacher got a talking to, they continue to be unpleasant. They have continued to tell their students that they are emotionally underdeveloped because of their year (ostensibly slacking off and not dealing with any trauma or stress whatsoever with their perfectly stable and unstressed parents) off from in-person school due to Covid.

Recently this teacher decided to ask their students why they thought they were so emotionally impaired. (Who does that?) My kid raised their hand and said, we’re not impaired, we’re traumatized. This gave the teacher momentary pause, but then they responded by saying that all the students can’t be traumatized.

Really, Mary? In pandemonium? In a panorama? Two fucking years into a constantly mutating, killing people every day pandemic from hell? Just the fact that you said that indicates trauma. Our number one defense mechanism is usually denial. We ignore or minimize things that we can’t deal with. It’s the “This is fine” syndrome. And no shade to defense mechanisms — they help us function when everything is weird or horrible. We really do feel like everything is fine — until we don’t. Long-term trauma has long-term effects. We are less resilient. We have memory and sleep issues. If we have diagnoses like depression or anxiety, they can get harder to manage. When we inevitably encounter additional stressors or traumas, we don’t have the bandwidth to deal with them as well as we would during a time of relative peace and calm.

When my husband was hospitalized, people commented on how well I kept my shit together. And I did. Until I didn’t. We get this blast of hormones during emergencies that allow us to dissociate from the immediate horrors that we are dealing with and just function. But this is a temporary fix; afterward, you have to deal with all the emotions that your body helped you stuff down. I had an epic meltdown a few weeks after my husband got out of the hospital that was totally expected, and my resilience is still low while my anxiety is high. This is normal. But if you don’t understand the trajectory of trauma (and compounded trauma) you may think you are functioning because you are a superior life form and everyone else is weak. You are not and they are not.

This applies to EVERYONE. We are all living through collective trauma. Some people have been devastated by the effects of Covid, and some have just been inconvenienced, but nobody can ignore how terrifying and confusing and disruptive it has been.

However, Teacher of the Year, just because you haven’t experienced compounded, impossible-to-deny-trauma, doesn’t mean that your students haven’t. Kids have fewer defense mechanism tools in their psychological toolbox, even though they may seem super cool on the outside. Kids rely on adults for survival, so when we are unstable they often compensate by over-functioning or functioning for us. This does not make them extra great kids or mature beyond their years, or old souls. It makes them traumatized. Kids adapt because they have no choice. Adults have a choice. You can get therapy, scream into a pillow, journal, hike, whatever helps you get back into your body and your feelings, and then just fucking deal with the pain and fear and insecurity that comes up. Or you can blame your middle-schoolers for your own stress and make them feel like shit about themselves. Because apparently, that’s an option.

Once again I find myself saying to adults who parent or teach or take care of other people: unpack your shit. Your kids (and students) are an extremely convenient screen upon which to project your problems, issues, and flaws. Doing so is an abuse of power and you need to stop.

If you want to know more about how trauma passes through generations and how it plays out, I highly recommend learning about Family Systems Theory.

My teaching philosophy boils down to this: Don’t be an asshole. Give your students the benefit of the doubt.

College students are young adults or old adolescents, depending on who you ask. They go through a lot of brain and personality development during the four-ish years they spend in college. A few of them are entitled, or sociopathic, or just jerks who make your life harder. The vast majority are not. They are just young people who are trying to figure their shit out and get a degree.

When I talk to professors about the stuff I’m passionate about (Trauma Informed Pedagogy, Intersectionality, Critical Pedagogy) they are usually interested. But when I talk about my policies, or how I deal with students who are experiencing trauma, some get uncomfortable. “I don’t want students to come talk to me about their lives.” “What if they are taking advantage of you?” Some are openly adversarial and hostile towards students, though I don’t hang out with them much. Shocker.

If you want to see yourself as a nice person or a good teacher, ask yourself this:

What do you have to lose by giving students the benefit of the doubt?
What do you lose by being friendly and approachable?
And more importantly, what do you gain by being suspicious and judgemental?
Who are you helping?
Is your work more fulfilling when students are afraid of you?
Is it healthy or realistic to assume students are lying or manipulating you?

I’ve had some shitty teachers because I’ve had a whole lot of school. One yelled at the class and told us our ideas were “pablum” because we didn’t mimic his conclusions. He was special. One, a terrible writer, tried to convince me that accessible writing was bad writing. My sixth grade teacher hated smart kids and bullied and intimidated them in front of the class. They were all either adversarial towards students or easily threatened. They lacked ego strength. They were bullies who got off on the power distance between themselves and their students.

The thing that ties together the best of my teachers and professors is this: Grace. Assuming the best, but being able to critique in a concise but kind way. Having clear boundaries but being willing to hear critical feedback. Having compassion for students and genuinely liking or loving teaching. Having ego strength and being willing to deal with setbacks and failure as steps on the path towards being better rather than blaming students. They had humility and compassion mixed with a goodly amount of confidence in their own abilities and a willingness to learn and improve.

The last year, and particularly the last semester, has just absolutely sucked for students. It’s sucked for teachers too, but it’s REALLY sucked for college students. My students have had issues with housing, anxiety, depression, relapse, and the suicides of their classmates. Lots got COVID because they live together and they can’t control the practices of their roommates. Many are working full time to lessen financial strain on families hurt by the pandemic and our inability to provide anything like a social safety net for our population. They’ve lost friends and relatives to COVID, mental health issues, and other stuff worsened by the social upheaval and ongoing racism in our society. They are tired, stressed, and some are past their limits.

My university is usually pretty hands off when it comes to how we run our classrooms as long as we are in compliance with the law, and those of use who have been sounding the alarm on student mental health are often ignored. But this semester the shit really hit the fan in the form of Snowvid – the mass power, gas, and water outages in Texas due to a snowstorm and prolonged freeze. We were all affected, me included. It sucked. The university urged us to give students extra grace: time on assignments, absences, etc. Most of us did. Some didn’t. Too many of my students told me about teachers holding Zoom classes on days the university was closed due to the freeze (after explicitly telling faculty not to hold classes or give tests).

I got the highest student feedback scores ever this semester, and they are always pretty high. Here’s why: I didn’t assume students were trying to take advantage of me, BECAUSE I DON’T CARE. I am worried about students dying, not whether or not I’m a sucker. If I catch a student blatantly lying or cheating I will take action because it’s irresponsible to let them think it’s okay, and they may do much worse harm in the future if someone doesn’t hold them responsible. But beyond that I do not fucking care if a student asks for an extension for a hangover or a hospitalization. I really don’t. I still failed students this semester, despite a super lenient policy about late work and willingness to be flexible on attendance. If you don’t do the work, you don’t pass. That’s part of my job. But I do not regret helping the students who were able to pull their shit together at the last minute pass my classes. I don’t regret making accommodations for students who were having issues with depression but hadn’t gotten a letter from the disability office yet. I don’t regret letting students who were doing full time child care for bereaved relatives have a pass on Zoom.

If your main joy in teaching is really schadenfreude and you relish the power you have to make your students lives suck, please find another profession. If you are more concerned about being hoodwinked than you are about your students learning, why are you teaching? It can’t be the money.

Stressed out students don’t learn well. (Stressed out teachers have issues too – believe me. My memory this year has been shit.) Further stressing them out unnecessarily when you could extend them some grace is just sadistic bullshit. I am so tired of hearing about “weed-out” classes that result in students dropping out of school. The students who really don’t want to be there will leave, believe me. You should not have a free pass to be an asshole because you teach a difficult course.

If the culture of your department or school is adversarial towards students, say something. Do something. You CAN influence culture change over time. Showing students that they can expect compassion and humanity from teachers empowers them to make change. Giving students a place where they can be authentic has the advantage of making me a better teacher. When students trust me enough to tell me I fucked something up, I can fix it (or myself). You can effectively wield authority while still being a decent human being who treats students like decent human beings. I promise. I could post a ton of research from different fields on the minutiae of why trauma informed, growth mindset, inclusive, experiential, reflective teaching is better teaching, but it really boils down to this. Don’t be an asshole to your students.