Dartmouth Events

What would you do if you arrived fully prepared to lead a workshop on trauma-informed pedagogy, only to find a student had decorated the room with cupcakes and balloons? Or if a student’s final paper boldly argued that Hamlet and Laertes were gay lovers? Or if, after a calm request to stop speaking out of turn, a student stood up, told you to “go f*** yourself,” and walked out of the room? In this 90-minute faculty workshop, Teaching in the Riptide begins from the premise that even our most carefully designed courses are vulnerable to moments that disrupt, derail, or radically reframe our intentions as educators. Drawing on decades of classroom experience and trauma-informed, relational pedagogy, Adam Wolfsdorf invites participants to examine these moments not simply as classroom management problems, but as pedagogically meaningful “subversions”—instances in which students challenge norms to meet emotional, psychological, or intellectual needs.

Through case studies, reflective exercises, and structured discussion, participants will explore how to recognize different forms of subversion, why they occur, and how faculty can respond without defaulting to either rigidity or retreat. The workshop addresses the emotional labor of teaching, helping educators surface and interpret their own responses to moments of disruption, vulnerability, or resistance. Participants will leave with concrete strategies for validating student experience, setting values-aligned boundaries, and sustaining classroom cultures where student autonomy and faculty authority coexist. Ultimately, Teaching in the Riptide reframes disruption as both a human reality and a professional opportunity—one that can prompt deeper reflection on classroom structures, institutional pressures, and the ethical dimensions of teaching in turbulent times.

Register here.

Dr. Adam Wolfsdorf is a Founding Member and the Humanities Department Chair at Bay Ridge Preparatory School, a progressive independent school in Brooklyn, NY. He serves as an Adjunct Professor at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Education and as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Wesleyan University’s Graduate Liberal Studies Program. He holds a PhD in English Education from Columbia University, where he previously coordinated the INSTEP Master’s Program. Wolfsdorf is the author of two books: Navigating Trauma in the English Classroom (NCTE) and Teaching in the Riptide (Routledge). His scholarship appears in Changing English, The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review, English Education, English Journal, and The Columbia Literary Journal. He has contributed chapters to Humanizing Grief in Higher Education (Routledge) and Deep Reading, Volume 2 (Peter Lang). Beyond his academic work, Wolfsdorf has performed professionally for more than twenty-five years. He appeared in the national tours of the Broadway musicals RENT (with Neil Patrick Harris) and Grease, and he is the longtime frontman of the nationally touring rock band The Energy, featured on MTV, NBC, ABC, and ESPN. He holds an MA in Psychology and Education from Columbia University and a BA in English from Harvard University.