Professor Pressure: Self-disclosure in a Post-Pandemic Classroom

by Xen Bossard

Trauma is a universal human experience. Abuse. Sickness. Death. No matter who you are, you will experience or witness some form of trauma in your lifetime. One look at the

short-term and long-term effects of the Coronavirus Pandemic is enough to solidify that. It is natural to reflect on trauma in an effort to work through it. However, I cannot help but wonder if some educators hinder more than they help in this regard. More specifically, I am against the practice of posing students prompts or questions about their Pandemic trauma for grades.

Whether an educator is a teacher or a professor or something else, they want to help their students. That is admirable, and as an educator myself, I completely understand the desire to help your students succeed and grow both academically and personally. I believe that these are goals that every educator should strive for. However, I take issue with the way some will incidentally exploit the position of power an educator has relative to a student.

Prompting

Said exploitation is found quite often in the questions students must answer. Here are some examples of real prompts from classes here at The University of Delaware.

“What was something you struggled with during the pandemic?”

“How were you challenged by the pandemic?”

“How did the pandemic affect your highschool experience?”

While seemingly harmless, by asking for students to speak about their negative experiences, they are being coerced. Students are posed with an unenviable cach-22. They can not do the question but accept that they will receive a lower overall grade, or they can do the question at the price of self-disclosure. Either way, it is the student who loses. Defendants of such questioning will be quick to point out that in such questions, trauma is used as a framing device to set up and test other ideas and say it is the content, not the trauma being graded. To that notion, I respectfully disagree, as said questions still call on students to open up and share their trauma to frame their answers whether they want to or not. That is coercion; the student, under the threat of a lower grade, will have to self-disclose to frame their answers. Without question, it is coercion!

Trauma-Informed Teaching

That is not to say this coercion is intentional nor malicious. There is evidence that suggests structuring your pedagogy (art and manner of teaching) in a manner that addresses student trauma can be very successful. Trauma-Informed Teaching is intended to empower students and make them feel safe in their learning environment. When implemented correctly it can have a positive impact on students, especially those affected heavily by trauma. By asking students to reflect on their negative experiences, they may learn to cope with them in a healthy manner. Trauma-Informed Teaching has its merits, but it does not begin nor end with asking students about their trauma.

It calls on teachers to structure everything with trauma in mind. From the language used in a class syllabus to the manner in which they organize their classrooms. Trauma-Informed Teaching requires a commitment to helping students cope with trauma. The work that goes into that pedagogy earns the ability to ask questions that may call on students to reflect on their trauma, and even then, if they follow the principles of Trauma-Informed Teaching, then no such questions would be graded.

Helping students learn to cope is admirable, but it is not realistic to expect every classroom to follow this pedagogy. Boxing all educators into one specific approach like that would cut off the beautiful diversity of thought that is found within classrooms. In fact, I would call such an idea dystopian. However, because we cannot expect this, we also cannot enable educators to grade the trauma of their students. Yet, it is happening as you read this article.

Pandemic Normalization

I am against the idea of prompting students to recall some form of trauma and grading them at all, but I have noticed that the pandemic has seemingly normalized this behavior when framed through the scope of said pandemic. I cannot count how many questions I have answered asking me to reflect or think about my experiences during the pandemic. The pandemic inflicted trauma on us all. Millions died, and through lockdowns, we were all isolated within our homes, uncertain of if things would ever go back to normal. This universal trauma is fresh on the minds of all students, and as a universal experience, it is easy to turn into an assignment. Everyone remembers it, after all.

That universality does not change the trauma it inflicted on students. Yes, it is universal, but what is universal is still trauma. Trauma that we share is trauma all the same. Just because it is universal does not make it a free game to speak with others about. As it is not fair game to speak about,it is also not fair game to grade a question about. As stated before, doing so would be coercion and ultimately be negative for the classroom.

Post-Traumatic Growth

In the interest of fairness, I shall still point out the biggest potential benefit of prompts surrounding Coronavirus trauma: Post-Traumatic Growth. An Indiana University journal suggests that working through the trauma of COVID-19 is necessary for growth and development from. It states, “Initially, processing a traumatic event is intrusive and unwelcome, as one’s assumptive world is shattered,” before going on to explain how after resistance to processing begins to break down, one becomes stronger mentally and grows from the ordeal.” In other words, it is a net positive to work through such prompts.

Retraumitization

It is possible for a net positive to occur, but this is not a guarantee. In fact, such writing could have a plethora of negative consequences. The s elf-disclosure of such responses alone risks hurting others as well as the students answering the questions. More than that, it is possible that retraumatization may occur as a result of these questions being answered for a grade.

 Retraumitization is the creation of a new trauma as a result of some other form of past trauma. Under a COVID-19-specific lens as an example as an example, we could expect a student suffering from retraumatization and developing a new trauma of people due to the pressures they would feel from others to conform and self-disclose. to see a person attempt to answer a personal question posed by their professor and resultingly develop new trauma is extremely saddening. Retraumitization is clearly a phenomenon that should be avoided at all costs.

Closing Thoughts: A Better Future

So, the fact that so many students will feel pressure to self-disclose and potentially retraumatize themselves is truly disheartening. I have no doubt that any professor posing questions to their students about their negative COVID-19 experiences has the best intentions in mind for helping them, and it is possible that asking those questions may be helpful. However, these risks are too much to ignore. They can be life-altering, and it is not hard to imagine how they could become fatal.

As modern-day classrooms evolve to meet the needs of the students within them, educators have to be exceedingly careful with how they go about helping their students. As it is said, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” I do concede that there are numerous potential benefits to writing about your negative experiences during the Coronavirus Pandemic as a way of healing from it. However, the risks it poses can not simply be ignored.

The gravity of the risks is serious, and any educator who broaches the topic of COVID-19 must consider them. Moving forward, I hope there will be a day when traumatization and retraumatization are a thing of the past. But for now, educators must keep in mind the power they have relative to their students and exercise that power responsibly.