Instructors must teach students to transform the upsetting personal experiences they share in class into meaning, writes Deborah J Cohan (University of South Carolina Beaufort). The author recalls how in the past, students who shared their personal traumas in her classes did so to pursue resistance and healing. However, Cohan purports that today’s disclosures have a different social context, with students sometimes sharing brutal experiences with “steely cold reporting,” resulting in a loss of meaning. Cohen concludes that students must be supported in transforming these disclosures into meaning to move beyond paralysis. “[W]e as educators are responsible for not just holding space, but holding students accountable for what and how they share so that it is not gratuitous, but instead meaningful,” writes Cohan.
