Editor’s note: We would like to thank Amy Krimm from University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) for providing this piece. To contact the author, please email Amy Krimm. If you would like to share your writing center’s experience during COVID-19, please submit via WLN.

Amy Krimm

I remember the email that turned my semester upside down. It was my first spring break as a college student and suddenly I was pulled away from campus and friends, taking all of my classes online. I felt scattered and stressed as my sense of normalcy vanished. Zoom office hour calls, FaceTime game nights, and long days at my kitchen table became my new routine. I made it through the semester, but it felt heavier than most.

When my university went online, I was enrolled in the tutor-training course for the Marks Family Writing Center at the University of Pennsylvania. As my peers and I navigated virtual collaboration, my professor took the time to check in with each of us and share a plan for the semester. Amidst the surrounding chaos, I felt safe in this class.

Before my classmates and I were sent home, I was in the early stages of writing a teaching case study about trauma-informed writing pedagogy (TIWP). Little did I know that in two months time, a pandemic would reshape the world. The unfortunate contemporary relevance of TIWP pushed me to grow as a researcher, writer, and tutor as I grappled with a subject that was personal, yet so much bigger than myself.

While I am fortunate enough to be safe and healthy, every morning I watch my mom head to work in a hospital that has been badly hit by Covid-19. I attended both of my grandfathers’ funerals with a mask on, six feet apart from friends and family. I feel panicked when I see characters hug on TV shows made ten years ago. Stories of loss and tragedy saturate my newsfeed and I can’t even begin to imagine what each of my peers are going through. While the burden of Covid-19 suffering is not equally shared, hundreds of thousands of people around the world are experiencing collective trauma (Turnbull et al., 2020). Ultimately, what began as a class research assignment with abstract implications quickly morphed into a paper with great relevance to myself and the world around me.

Trauma-informed practice is “grounded in an understanding of and responsiveness to the impact of trauma” (SAMHSA, 2014). Research on trauma within the field of writing studies has historically been humanities-based, seldom citing clinical research which is “practice-based, constantly refined and updated, and designed to enable anyone who works with trauma survivors to implement the principles across an organization” (Day 2019). In writing centers, TIWP is an understanding that some students may have experienced trauma and the desire as tutors/faculty to establish emotional safety and empowerment between writers. The idea of a writing center is to be an empathetic, warm, and peer-based space. During a time of collective trauma, I am confident that specific strategies of TIWP can be incorporated smoothly into the vision and practice of writing centers.

With the fall semester rapidly approaching, TIWP can help those of us who work in writing centers respond to the current unprecedented situation. Adjusting one’s tutoring pedagogy to account for trauma does not have to be a drastic shift. Based on the research I engaged with for my teaching case study, here is a list of six TIWP strategies that tutors can implement into their daily practice:

  1. Take time to form an accurate understanding of trauma and how it might manifest in a writing center consultation.
  2. Acknowledge that some tutees may have past histories of trauma, but do not make assumptions about who has experienced trauma.
  3. Incorporate principles of respect, choice, collaboration, trust, safety, and information sharing into tutoring sessions.
  4. Talk to writing center administrators and establish a plan if a tutee requires a greater level of support and care than that which you are trained to provide.
  5. Understand the positional and knowledge-based limits of tutors. It is not the tutor’s responsibility, role, or skillset to provide therapy or counseling. However, it’s helpful to familiarize yourself with and be able to connect students to campus resources that do provide these services.
  6. Understand your own capacity for holding and processing sensitive information and incorporate self-care and wellness into your practice.

TIWP has always been necessary. Trauma preceded the pandemic and TIWP is relevant even when the tutee may not have experienced trauma. Looking back to the safety I felt in my tutor-training class, the writing center has always been a comforting space for me. I hope that by implementing TIWP, writing centers can play the same role in other students’ lives in the semesters to come.

Works Cited

Day, Michelle L., “Wounds and writing : building trauma-informed approaches to writing pedagogy.” (2019). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 3178.

SAMHSA’s Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach (SAMHSA’s Trauma and Justice Strategic Initiative, Comp.). (2014, July).

Turnbull, M., Watson, B., Jin, Y., Sanderson, A., & Lok, B. (2020, March 17). What we can learn from the collective trauma of these uncertain times. Times Higher Education. Retrieved from http://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/what-we-can-learn-collective-trauma -these-uncertain-times

Watson, A. (Host). (2018). A crash course on trauma-informed teaching (No. 142) [Audio podcast episode]. In Truth for Teachers. Retrieved from thecornerstoneforteachers. com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/trauma-informed-teaching/