📘 TLC Guide Available
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► Trauma-Aware and Wellness-Oriented Teaching Practices
Fostering Care and Resilience in the Classroom
Trauma awareness in teaching involves understanding how individual and collective trauma shape the ways we learn and teach. A wellness-oriented approach invites instructors to design environments that help both students and educators thrive, nurturing mutual care and collective well-being.
Addressing Trauma’s Impact on Learning
- Trauma affects learning and brain function. It can impact higher-order thinking and executive functioning, making it harder to focus, manage time, make decisions, cope with stressors, and perform academically or professionally.
- Trauma is widespread. Collective experiences such as the Covid-19 pandemic, racialized violence, and climate disasters affect everyone, though not in the same ways.
- Impacts are not evenly distributed. Students and colleagues of color, first-generation college students, and low-income students often experience compounding effects.
- Wellness-based approaches matter. UC Irvine’s Dr. Theresa Duong describes them as creating “a culture of mutual care, compassion, and respect among instructors and students.” Intentional teaching choices can support the well-being of both students and educators.
TLC Guide
The TLC Guide on Trauma-Aware and Wellness-Oriented Teaching Practices offers strategies to bridge trauma awareness with wellness-oriented approaches. Some strategies can be implemented by all members of a teaching team, while others require instructor-level decisions in course design.
Key areas include:
- How trauma affects learning, and what a healing- or wellness-oriented approach looks like
- Reducing harm and centering student strengths
- Prioritizing relationships and community
- Providing structure
- Practicing trust-building and transparency
- Encouraging student choice and agency
- Balancing presence with healthy boundaries and self-/community-care
- Further readings and resources
See Also
Equity-Minded Teaching
Addressing Current Events & Holding Difficult Conversations
Community-Building in the Classroom