Persisting Through Unprecedented Rural Crises: Trauma, Resilience, and Leadership in the Aftermath of Disaster

• In Event: Leading Rurally: Lessons on Leadership in Australian and American Rural Education

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to share our stories and lived experience as educational leaders at two regional universities serving rural and remote communities that have experienced significant crises. It is a dialog between faculty members in two universities, one in Northern California and one in Southern Oregon.

Perspective
This paper draws its data from our own stories as well as those of educators in our respective communities and their experience of leading through crises. These kinds of crises, driven by climate change, are not going to decrease and the polarization of local politics makes response more difficult. We wanted to document these stories of precarious times. The Northern California and Southern Oregon region has been hit especially hard in recent years by multiple crises. The 2018 Camp Fire and the 2020 Almeda Fire were just two among the dozens of major wildfires that have ravaged this region in the past few years. These fires destroyed entire communities and displaced thousands of children, their families, and their teachers. The rural communities that were leveled by fire are still suffering, with limited help from the federal government and insurance companies.

Methods
We explore what it means to lead through crisis and in the aftermath of collective trauma. We describe the layers of trauma that we feel as community members and as teacher educators, and grapple with our responsibilities as stewards of the profession. We explore the ways in which local educators have worked to sustain community and to keep children learning through these multiple crises and the challenges that still remain.

Data Sources
We draw from a range of stories. We hope that telling these stories will help our colleagues to recognize themselves in some of these challenges and find affirmation that, it is hard, it is wearing, and it is not over yet.

Results
We offer the following advice: Stay present in the experience of recovery, rather than numbing yourself. Connect to others who understand or who have experienced similar loss and reassure each other in our purpose as educational leaders. Find hope in the youth who seem to be more resilient than some of the adults. Writing together has itself been a form of healing for the two of us. Reaching out to our teacher colleagues, and telling their stories, has created a shared sense of purpose. We are inspired by knowing we are all working to support young people and adults in processing their own trauma and rebuilding their communities. Honestly recounting the lived experiences of teachers and students is necessary if our educational institutions are ever going to be a part of communal, authentic healing.

Scholarly Significance
We have wrestled with the question of what wisdom we can offer our fellow educational leaders in stricken communities—as humans still living through the aftermath ourselves. The importance of community, the danger of partisanship—all of that still feels so abstract in the face of the day-to-day struggles.

Author

• Jesse Moon Longhurst, Southern Oregon University