Viruses Don't Discriminate, But People Do: Teaching Writing for Health Professionals in the Context of Covid-19 and Black Lives Matte

Abstract

Teachers of writing are not therapists. This much I know. That seems obvious, but it’s not so obvious in times like these. Nor was it obvious when I co-wrote an article on teaching in times of trauma in 2016. I wrote about teaching writing at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) during the remaining two weeks of the 2014 spring quarter after Elliot Rodger murdered six students before killing himself. My co-author wrote about teaching in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Both of these events, though caused by different forces, revealed underlying issues of misogyny and racism. Both events caused major crises for teachers and students alike; after all, “[t]raumatic events that threaten life, health, body integrity, and the lives of others are ubiquitous and have life-altering impacts for a substantial portion of individuals” (Gerhart, Canetti, Hobfall, 2015, p. 4). We concluded that, while we are not therapists, we felt a responsibility to address challenges and inequalities in our classes when unforeseen traumatic events were happening in our communities, and to give students agency in that process.