Trauma Informed Curriculum

Trauma Informed Teaching and Curriculum

Dear colleagues, we are sharing several resources around ‘Trauma Informed Teaching and Curriculum’ from the 2021 AICAD Symposium on Diversity + Sustainability.

We would also like to share these guidelines for the Practice of Threeing (Parsons, RISD):

Threeing

  • What role do you play when you work in a team?
  • How do you perceive your own strengths and weaknesses when you work in a group with other people?

We all play roles when we work with other people. I’m the one who can throw out lots and lots of fresh ideas, I’m the one who does the clean-up work at the end, I’m the one who helps to mediate disagreements within the team, etc.

It’s easy however, to get stuck in the role in which you see yourself:

  • the person who just helps the project along but doesn’t challenge it.
  • the person who challenges the project, but doesn’t help to resolve it
  • the person who can only focus on the big picture
  • the person that doesn’t talk and offer up insights
  • the person that only talks, but doesn’t engage with the process of creation
  • the person that can only focus on the details

It’s important to begin to see that you do not have one role in the creative process! You are asked in this class to play many roles. Being flexible and trying out new ways of working are an important part of your work in school.

Roles:

These roles map onto the kinds of “types” that exist within the development of any group activity (a collaborative map, a team-written paper, even a healthy conversation or debate)

Role One: The Initiator. You are the person who gets the ball rolling. Another word for this might be THESIS.

Role Two: The Instigator. This person challenges the assumptions. Offers opposing points of view. Another way to say this could be ANTITHESIS or even Devil’s Advocate

Role three: The Mediator. This person is the big picture person. The one that ties up the loose ends and tries to make sense of the different points of view presented. Another word for this might be RESOLUTION.

Sample rounds: