This collection seeks essays willing to explore what it means to flounder and flop--to be afraid and uncomfortable--and to get back up to teach (one hopes) another day. For this is the precarious new normal of teaching and learning in post-pandemic America, where primary and secondary educators are fleeing the profession in droves--citing too much pressure, too little pleasure--and murmurs of “quiet quitting” across college campuses suggest that higher ed might not be far behind.

There might not be consensus among public health officials about whether our collective experience of Covid-19 meets the clinical threshold of “social trauma,” but national trends reveal what’s become apparent in classrooms everywhere: something is off. The book approaches this reality by way of body-oriented theories, such as Present-Centered Trauma Therapy, which gives us language and a template to explore teaching experiences not just along curricular and disciplinary axes, but also along somatic and affective ones. In describing the neuroscience behind this treatment, Bessel van der Kolk explains, “once you focus on curiosity rather than fear, everything [in the brain] shifts” (2015). 

No Guardrails might thus be labeled a curious project. We hope to bring together a series of quirky, eclectic, and frank essays that recognize in this present moment both an opportunity and a mandate: the opportunity to explore new ways of thinking about our classroom practices and our relationships; and the mandate that we use this unsettling time to interrogate conventional modes of writing, research, and expression in our disciplines.  The deadline for abstracts of 300-500 words is 15 February, 2023.