Disaster-Based Pedagogy Education

Disaster Pedagogy is teaching students about crisis in the most humane and effective way. “We are obligated to serve our students to the best of our abilities with conscientious and humane pedagogies that take into consideration our students’ and our own anxieties over and experiences with crisis. Our classes do not exist in a vacuum, and as long as tragedy is inextricably intertwined into the realities under which we currently teach and learn, we have a responsibility to be prepared to address it in our learning communities”, Ricia Anne Chansky (2019). Disaster Pedagogy will help the student make a connection to crisis from past, present, and future occurrences. Students need to be taught about historical events that affect communities all over the world and locally. The more knowledge the students can gain from these memorable disasters the better teachers can help them prepare for these catastrophes. Knowledge of past disasters may be sensitive to some students and teachers, but they must be taught in order to help our students in the future. We must learn from historical events and create better awareness and steps to a safer future.

While there certainly cannot be a single “correct” disaster pedagogy— disaster and trauma are situational and individually unique and should be treated as such—I propose that it is now necessary to begin thinking about how we might discuss and teach disaster, as both an imagined concept and a lived experience (Ricia Anne Chansky, 2019). Teaching disaster pedagogy to elementary students builds a foundation of skills and knowledge on how to prepare for them at a young age and carry that knowledge into their adulthood. This will engage the students attention by opening their eyes to the possibilities of disasters around them and how they can be their own hero and others heroes by being prepared to help if any disaster were to happen.