Supporting the Social/Emotional Needs of College Students through Trauma Informed Practice (TIP)

The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic raised awareness on college campuses of the importance of recognizing that we must engage in trauma-informed practices to meet the social and emotional needs of college students in order to educate them. In this paper, we provide practical suggestions through a lens of trauma-informed pedagogy (TIP) for faculty seeking to support their students’ success in post-secondary classrooms. These suggestions include: realizing the existence of trauma in the lives of our college students, recognizing the signs of trauma, responding to the needs of those who have experienced trauma, and avoiding re-traumatization by establishing safe and supportive classroom environments. This paper presents some practical ways to focus attention at the institutional, and classroom levels to address the needs of students. While many of the suggestions included in this paper are designed to support students who have experienced some level of traumatic event, we argue that all students can benefit from approaching our work in college teaching through a TIP lens.