Chapter 22: “We are Still Here”: (Not) Teaching Disruption, Interruption, Resistance, and the Creation of Change

The following query was posed by an applicant being interviewed while seeking admittance into a Master of Arts teaching program. “I’ve been wondering, as [a] student of color in predominantly White history classrooms and as an aspiring social studies teacher in a predominantly White field, how do we teach and learn history that is hard,¹ and sometimes quite ugly without traumatizing, or re-traumatizing, both students and ourselves?” The query served as a laser pointer to work we as organizers of the program have been recently asking. Specifically, how can teachers adopt a more critical approach (Parkhouse, 2017) to a pedagogy of political trauma (Sondel, Baggett, & Hadley-Dunn, 2018), which is trauma-informed while also being critical in approach and disposition.