As a young teacher of interpersonal communication I used many of the activities I'd seen performed in classrooms I'd attended myself. One such activity is the "explosion" during the perception or emotion lecture. At some point during a quarter, the experimental late 70s, early 80s interpersonal communication teachers liked to have something disrupt the classroom. Someone would walk in out of the classroom and start yelling at them, slap them, or do something else disruptive. After the stranger left, the teacher would deconstruct what had gone on.
Then, if the disruption occurred during the "perception" lecture, the teacher would ask about what went on or what the visitor was wearing. Sometimes a teacher would "cluster" students into small groups and have them answer a series of questions. Perhaps there would be a plant in each group who argued for a part of the scene that hadn't actually existed, the key in this situation being that a point can be made that memory can be constructed through negotiation. In my textbook, Looking Out, Looking In, the current text presents "negotiation" as the fourth step in the perception process -- our need to "check out" our reality with that experienced by others.
In the "emotion" lecture, the disruption can be check for whether or not it creates anxiety or laughter among the students -- have their heart rates gone up? Do they laugh at the scene? I used to run this activity as an "emotion" lecture by throwing a desk or chair in the middle of a very low key part of the lecture. Then I would check in with the students by going around the room and asking what they were feeling, to find out if they were feeling angry, anxious, or amused. This proves that interpretation, our understanding of a situation, can influence our physiological response.
One year three days after my chair throwing and discussion activity, a student came to my office. He spoke in respectful terms as he told me that my activity had put him in the hospital for three days. He was a Vietnam Vet with PTSD and my pedagogical activity had kicked off an incident. I felt terrible. That had so not been my intention. I apologized profusely and asked if there was anything I could do to make it right. He accepted my apology and said that I should always warn people before performing that activity.
I felt quite ashamed of not thinking that I had a damaged Veteran as my student. It wasn't like I didn't know about shell shock, which is what I called it before I learned the term PTSD. When I worked at McDonalds in 1979-80, I worked with a Vietnam Vet who started having hallucinations one day after the breakfast rush. I remember that he screamed "hit the deck" and dropped to the floor, covering his head and crying. He was seeing helicopters. I tried telling him they weren't there.
He lived in a basement apartment two blocks from the University and a few blocks from the restaurant. I don't remember whether or not I walked him home and then went back to work of if he made it home himself. Nor do I remember whether or not I helped him contact the VA. I do know that somehow I arranged to drive him down to the Veteran's hospital near Salt Lake City a few days later. It's about the same distance from Pocatello as Portland is from Bend.
So I'd seen person have a terrible experience of battle fatigue, shell-shock, or PTSD. But I didn't connect what happened in my previous workplace to my life at COCC until I was forced to do so.
I hope that over the years I have become somewhat more sensitive as a communicator. I know that I'm more aware now of the damaged quality of many of my students so I moderate my volume level if not my standards for work.
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