Bringing Trauma Informed Pedagogy to Campus: Exploring Strategies for Working with College Students

Presentation given at the Georgia Educational Research Association Conference .

With the advent of twin pandemics of COVID-19,college professors have been confronted with their responsibility for the physical, mental and socio-emotional well-being of learners.

Students dealt with the situation in a number of ways: some students quickly transitioned home . Other students (POC and low SES) seemed to disappear. Whatever personal solutions they worked out in response to the pandemic, there was some degree of trauma as their lives were not going as planned.

As students (and faculty) return to campus, we recognize we have all experienced fear of the unknown (Carelton, 2016), a lack of control of our external and internal environments (Pagan, 2018): our worlds turned upside-down .

Our presentation focuses on the impacts of trauma on the brain (Trayser, 2016, Blaustein & Kinniburgh, 2010) & on mental health and cognitive development (Blodgett, 2013), helping professors recognize characteristics and behaviors of traumatized students (Alexander, 2019; Finkelhor, Shattuck, Turner, and Hamby, 2015) Finally, this presentation will also present ways to engage in trauma-informed pedagogy (Gresham, 2017, Kavenaugh, 2016) to support student learning in the college setting.