This discourse parallels the pressure on learners to go away and heal if experiences of violence are getting in the way of learning. For workers, it seems that pressure to have "dealt with it" increases the separation between workers and learners: professionals give help, they don't need help. This silences possibilities for talking about how their work impacts on them. Several literacy workers talked about the difficulty of trusting colleagues and asking for support if they are triggered in the classroom. It seems to be part of the discourse of the professional that you have "dealt with all this stuff." This leaves unquestioned the idea that there is a place where violence is left behind and won't be triggered by life experiences. In the face of a discourse of this sort, workers would avoid anything that might make it clear to them and to others that they haven't "dealt with" their past and put it behind them. For "survivors" of violence, then, there is the danger of opening up issues of violence in the classroom. Those who have little experience of violence may feel ill-equipped and inexperienced to take up the issue in the literacy program. Perhaps they may even be wary of discovering common ground with those who know they have experienced violence - leading to questions about their own experience.

I'm not a therapist.

I often heard a teacher say she could not address issues of violence in any way because "I'm not a therapist." This couples with the notion that violence issues create medical problems to be addressed by a therapist, which also excludes teachers from "doing therapy." The discourse of the professional fosters the belief that because teachers are not trained as therapists, and because emotional and violence issues are properly subject matter for therapy, teachers should not take up issues of violence.

This division of the professions sets up the idea that "there are liability issues if teachers who are not trained therapists act like therapists." Teachers believe this is not their terrain. Students also share this discourse. On several occasions when I talked about emotions blocking learning with a literacy group, students have asked whether I am a psychiatrist, or therapist, or questioned whether we are still doing literacy. They, too, know the discourse and remind me that I have strayed away from the expected ground of education. This assumption that anything to do with violence or emotions must be doing therapy, limits the possibilities for exploring new educational practices. I do not want to suggest that teachers should "do therapy," though we may want to learn from the therapeutic field as we explore new ways of teaching and practices that recognize the emotions and draw on the whole self to support learning. Through such exploration we may redefine the taken for granted divide between the work of educators and therapists.