Synchronicity in classroom and community

This semester I am teaching in an interdisciplinary learning community (ILC), which is part of our university’s general education curriculum. The ILC is called “Introduction to Trauma Studies” and the two courses are the human behavior across the lifespan course that I teach and a literature/writing course which is taught by a colleague in the English department. In each of these courses, we look at how trauma affects development at different stages in life, and we explore what resilience looks like and how resilience is built. In my class we explore these concepts through social work theories, research and case studies and in the other class students explore these concepts through writing and reading a variety of things: memoirs, poetry, fiction, essays, and more.

This semester I am also continuing my work in the community, and last week we had a “lunch and learn” where the focus was on journaling and self-compassion. This “lunch and learn” happens monthly, though sometimes the attendees are different, and writing/storytelling was one of the things they identified last fall that they would like to do more of in the coming months. 

The participants in these events live in a public housing community near campus and I am about two years into relationship building with them. When I was looking for writing prompts to share with them, I wanted to be mindful of their experiences (what I know of them), and have the prompts be as inclusive as possible. Of the stories I know, I know they include some trauma.

I shared with them elements of Chapter 1 from a book Called Writing True. I learned about this book from my colleague who I teach with in the integrated learning community referenced above. She uses this book with students in her course.

This first chapter introduces the style of creative nonfiction. I shared with the women at the lunch and learn that in this writing style, you are opening up about real things, true things that have happened and you are using your personal voice. At the same time, writing in this style doesn’t limit you to “only the facts” that we might associate with good journalism or other forms of nonfiction. There is an emphasis on including strong sensory detail and a subjective interpretation or reflection on the events that happened as you now understand them. I shared with them how one of the prompts, reflecting on a photo that was taken when I was a child, helped me to reflect on some family dynamics in a way I had not consciously thought about before. These women were interested in the brief part of my story that I shared, just as I am always interested in the slices of their lives that they share with me.

As Maya Angelou said, “there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you”. I shared this quote with them, and we talked about how even though “memoir” is a fancy sounding word, the fact is, we all have a story and there is power, and hopefully community, in sharing them.  

Toward the end of our time together, I scattered lists of writing prompts and pens on the tables and invited people to pick a journal from a selection of journals on a table. I told them I hoped they each found one that “spoke to them”. We had some time to write before having our lunch, and a couple of the women asked if we could get together another time as a group and share some of what we had written. Another person asked if she could bring some poetry that she had written, to share. I am hopeful for our future times together.

In the past times that we have taught this ILC, my colleague and I have seen the same community building processes unfold. Students take risks with their writing and sharing their voices, and they encourage others to do the same. By their example, they have also encouraged me to do this. It has been a long time since I have done anything other than academic writing or academic adjacent writing, and I am excited (and curious) to see what unfolds!