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Drawing on accounts from Hurricane Katrina and a mass shooting at UC Santa Barbara, the article discusses gaps in trauma recovery guidance for early or acute phases, while addressing practical classroom questions about pedagogy, opt-outs, assignments, and grading nontraditional reflections.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/first-do-no-harm-teaching-writing-in-the-wake-of-traumatic-events/598845/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/first-do-no-harm-teaching-writing-in-the-wake-of-traumatic-events/598845.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"jay","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-11-02","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":81},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What is the main focus of DeBacher and Harris-Moore’s piece?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"They explore the difficulty of teaching writing after traumatic events, especially when both teachers and students are affected and professional guidance is limited.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"Why do they emphasize the overlap between teaching and therapeutic work?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"They note that their writing instruction can resemble therapeutic approaches for trauma survivors, creating additional complexity even though teachers are not therapists.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What classroom questions do they identify as especially challenging?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"They consider whether to confront emotions versus move forward with business, how to handle students’ ability to opt out of trauma-related texts and assignments, and how to grade nontraditional reflections.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},598845,1792904259,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":81,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":19,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":143,"read_time":52},3985747858866,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_a8503ba1806abce46bf441b54a3ca4cd","Current Issue  From the Editors  Weblog  Editorial Board  Editorial Policy  Submissions Archives  Accessibility  Search  \nComposition Forum 34, Summer 2016  \nFirst, Do No Harm: Teaching Writing in the Wake of Traumatic Events  \nSarah DeBacher and Deborah Harris-Moore  \nAbstract: Sarah DeBacher and Deborah Harris-Moore offer their experiences with teaching in the aftermath of traumatic situations. DeBacher, who taught at the University of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and Harris-Moore, who taught at UC Santa Barbara following a mass shooting, explore the difficulty of teaching writing in the wake of traumatic events.  \n“We live in the Age of Trauma,” declared Charles Barber, Lecturer of Psychiatry at Yale Medical School in a 2013 article on Salon—an age when events like the terror attacks of 9/11, the nearly normalized shootings in public places, and cataclysmic natural disasters occur with a regularity and a closeness-to-home that means those of us unscathed by trauma are few and far between. Add to this an explosion of popular interest in trauma and its accompanying discourse—theories of trauma and recovery, trauma narratives, trigger warnings—and we find ourselves not just living in the age of trauma but teaching in it, and with very little guidance about how to do that well.  \nIn her introduction to The Mind’s Eye: Image and Memory in Writing about Trauma, Marian Mersobian MacCurdy reminds us that while the work may look similar,“[t]eachers are not therapists   we listen to students, we actively participate in the process of the construction of a therapeutic narrative, we   care about them as people”(6) . MacCurdy further argues that the writing process we guide students through “mirrors the therapeutic methodology for trauma survivors outlined in Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery” (81) . So, no, we are not therapists, but our work sometimes looks an awful lot like theirs. And in the context of trauma, that overlap can become, as the experiences we share here show, even more fraught.  \nWithin our field, there is a growing body of scholarship about how to respond to the therapeutic or confessional narratives of our students who’ve been affected by trauma, and about how to integrate trauma discourse into the content of our writing courses (see Shane Borrowman, among others) . In its 2008 manual for responding to trauma in children and adolescents, the American Psychological Association (APA) includes schools as a critical site for response to trauma-exposed children, adolescents, and families (3) . However, there is not much that shines a light on what it means to teach when both teacher and student are traumatized. Scholars like Marilyn Valentino advise that we maintain a “professional distance” from our students. But what if that distance can’t be kept? How should we teach in the midst of collective, widespread, and ongoing trauma, when we and all of our students are among the traumatized? One might go to the APA or to Herman’s seminal text on trauma and recovery for advice, but would be faced with “noteworthy gaps in information” on “interventions for the early or acute phase of trauma recovery”(APA 6) . In other words, even the trauma experts acknowledge they’re not sure what’s best to do when you’re living—and teaching—in these gaps.  \nBut these gaps are precisely where we found ourselves teaching writing. In 2005, Sarah DeBacher was beginning her first year as a full-time Instructor of English at the University of New Orleans (UNO) when the failure of the federal levees during Hurricane Katrina killed 1,800 New Orleanians and displaced tens of thousands of others. In 2014, Deborah Harris-Moore was teaching at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) when Elliot Rodger murdered six UCSB students and injured fourteen others before turning his gun on himself.  \nThere are differences in our individual experiences, but what we’ve come to discover in collaborating on this piece is the signific","cbCaibKmcRuYwYoJ","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaibKmcRuYwYoJ","pdf",48668,"English","# First, Do No Harm: Teaching Writing in the Wake of Traumatic Events\n## Sarah DeBacher and Hurricane Katrina","[{\"question\":\"What is the main focus of DeBacher and Harris-Moore’s piece?\",\"answer\":\"They explore the difficulty of teaching writing after traumatic events, especially when both teachers and students are affected and professional guidance is limited.\"},{\"question\":\"Why do they emphasize the overlap between teaching and therapeutic work?\",\"answer\":\"They note that their writing instruction can resemble therapeutic approaches for trauma survivors, creating additional complexity even though teachers are not therapists.\"},{\"question\":\"What classroom questions do they identify as especially challenging?\",\"answer\":\"They consider whether to confront emotions versus move forward with business, how to handle students’ ability to opt out of trauma-related texts and assignments, and how to grade nontraditional reflections.\"}]","First, Do No Harm: Teaching Writing in the Wake of Traumatic Events | PDF",1792087704]