Last year, after quite a bit of discussion with friends and colleagues online, I added a trigger warning (or, as I describe it, a content note) to my syllabus. Here’s what it said:
Course Content Note
At times this semester we will be discussing historical events that may be disturbing, even traumatizing, to some students. If you ever feel the need to step outside during one of these discussions, either for a short time or for the rest of the class session, you may always do so without academic penalty. (You will, however, be responsible for any material you miss. If you do leave the room for a significant time, please make arrangements to get notes from another student or see me individually.)
If you ever wish to discuss your personal reactions to this material, either with the class or with me afterwards, I welcome such discussion as an appropriate part of our coursework.
I won’t rehash all the conversations that went into that decision — if you’re interested, you can read pieces that I wrote during the process here and here and here. But to summarize quickly, I was interested in giving my students advance notice of material that they might find unsettling, as well as guidance about their rights and responsibilities in my classroom.
I introduced the note for my summer classes last year and have revised it each semester since. Here’s how it looks now, on my upcoming fall syllabi:
Course Content Note
At times this semester we will be discussing historical events that may be disturbing, even traumatizing, to some students. If you suspect that specific material is likely to be emotionally challenging for you, I’d be happy to discuss any concerns you may have before the subject comes up in class. Likewise, if you ever wish to discuss your personal reactions to course material with the class or with me individually afterwards, I welcome such discussions as an appropriate part of our classwork.
If you ever feel the need to step outside during a class discussion you may always do so without academic penalty. You will, however, be responsible for any material you miss. If you do leave the room for a significant time, please make arrangements to get notes from another student or see me individually to discuss the situation.
As you can see, most of the text remains from the original version. Beyond various language tweaks, the major changes are these:
First, I added a sentence inviting students to discuss potentially traumatizing material with me before it arises in class. If a student knows that they’re likely to find particular course content challenging, I’d rather have that conversation in advance than leave us both to be surprised in the classroom — far better for us to strategize together before the issue arises than to react to it on the fly.
Second, and more subtly, I re-arranged the material. Where I had originally offered students the option of stepping out of the room before stating my willingness to discuss students’ personal response to potentially traumatic material, I now foreground discussion. The new version of the note centers dialogue — before, during, or after class — as central to the academic project.
I got the content note basically where I want it pretty quickly. There was, though, one element of the project that I wrestled with for a bit longer — how to discuss it in class.
Like most professors, I’m a believer in going over the syllabus point by point at the beginning of the semester. When we arrived at the content note, though, I initially tended to get a little flustered. Everything else we cover that first day — absence policy, grading, office hours — is familiar ground for both me and the students, but this is new territory for all of us. (I’ve asked a couple of times whether students had ever had a trigger warning in class before, and none has yet said yes.)
When I introduced the content note for the first time, I felt like I was bringing the session to a screeching halt. The note is intended as a quiet heads-up for the few students who may need it, but I initially tended to over-explain, leaving the impression that the course was going to be far more fraught than it actually is.
This spring, though, I came up with a more concise and focused way of addressing it. As an illustration of what I have in mind, I tell the class that the death of children may be a topic that comes up in the course, noting that a student who has lost a child or a sibling might respond differently to such material than one who hasn’t. It’s for helping to manage those sorts of situations, I say, that the content note is intended.
This specificity, it turns out, is really helpful. In the abstract, a syllabus trigger warning strikes a lot of students — and a lot of professors, and a lot of observers of higher ed — as weird, intrusive, and unnecessary. But when I introduce it in the context of parental bereavement and the murder of Emmett Till or Charles Darwin’s eulogy for his young daughter, my students tend to listen, nod, ask a couple of small questions, and then move on with me to the next item on the list.
I’ll continue tweaking the note and how I introduce it going forward. At this point, though, I see the experiment as a success.
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August 25, 2015 at 2:15 pm
Trigger Warnings and the Post-work Society | Clarissa's Blog
[…] Another good professor falls prey to the insanity of trigger warnings. […]
August 25, 2015 at 5:01 pm
Angus Johnston
I have to say I recognize virtually nothing of what I wrote or what I believe about the college classroom in Clarissa’s post.
August 26, 2015 at 9:39 am
professorperry
This is excellent, Angus. You might – if you haven’t – make it clear somewhere that you are happy for others to adopt your note with credit or without credit or whatever? If you are?
August 26, 2015 at 9:52 am
Angus Johnston
Good idea, Perry. I’ll say so here — anyone who wants to use or adapt my course content note may do so freely, without credit — and add a similar note when I write about it in the future.
August 27, 2015 at 10:12 am
Lirael
Your blog has been a breath of fresh air for me in the last year and a half or so, even as a lot of the writing out there by faculty on similar topics has made me more uneasy about the academy (I’m a grad student).
You say that you don’t support requiring trigger warnings? I’m guessing you wouldn’t object to instructors being required to provide trigger warnings to individual students as accommodations requested by and through the campus disabilities office, but if I’m wrong I’d like to hear your rationale. I wrote a blog post about how one might structure a university policy that wouldn’t interfere with the academic freedom of faculty, that makes use of the campus disabilities office. Incidentally, in the section at the end that would include links to resources for profs who want to go above and beyond, your how-to is one of the resources I had in mind when I wrote that.
August 27, 2015 at 10:20 am
Lirael
Your blog has been a breath of fresh air for me over the last year and a half, even as so much other writing on similar topics has made me uneasy about the academy (I’m a grad student).
You say that you don’t support requiring trigger warnings. I’m guessing that you’d be okay with being required to provide them to individuals as accommodations upon request by the campus disabilities office, the same way you might provide extra time on an exam as an accommodation, but if I’m wrong, I’d like to hear your rationale. I wrote a blog post suggesting a structure for a university policy on this topic, and I’d be interested to hear what you think of that too. Incidentally, in the bit for links to how-to resources for profs who want to go above and beyond, your own writing was part of what I had in mind as something that would go in that section.
August 27, 2015 at 10:56 am
Angus Johnston
Good questions Lirael, and I’ll have to mull a little. I’m walking out the door for a long weekend right now, but if you bug me next week I’ll have more to say.
My initial response is twofold: First, I think we’re very early in the process of figuring out what kinds of trigger warning policies are of use in the classroom, and I’m reflexively wary about formalizing anything right now because of that — even, and maybe especially, if it seems like a straightforward, unobjectionable idea. My inclination is to let the process that’s happening now move forward a bit more before thinking about implementing formal policies of any kind.
Second, I’m a little concerned about the potential such a policy might have for locking our understanding of trigger warnings into a medicalized model, and of forcing students into complying with institutional hoop-jumping requirements to get the accommodations they need. (See this guest post for some of what informs that concern: https://studentactivism.net/2014/05/29/a-vital-perspective-on-access-for-students-with-disabilities/.)
But all that is very much off the top of my head, and I suspect I’ll have a lot more opinions in a few days. Nudge me on Monday if you’re interested in hearing them.
August 27, 2015 at 12:41 pm
Lirael
Hi Angus,
Your second concern, in particular, makes total sense to me. I tried very hard, in my own suggestion, to balance that concern with means to increase access, and also with my own concern that if it’s left totally to the discretion of the faculty, faculty like you will do a terrific job with it while some other faculty will ignore it and be jerks if a student asks them about it. I’ve had faculty on other forums, knowing (because I said so) that I’m a grad student with PTSD, call me selfish and self-obsessed for explaining my own experiences with triggers or and defending trigger warnings. I wouldn’t want to be an undergrad who needed accommodations along these lines trying to seek them from one of those faculty, or from one who thinks that having triggers means that you aren’t fit to be in a college classroom, or who thinks that trigger warnings are part of the attempt to destroy their job security and corporatize academia.
Tried to balance the concerns…but I’m not totally happy with what I came up with either. So I would definitely be interested in hearing more thoughts from you.
August 29, 2015 at 1:45 pm
Lee Rudolph
Hi, Angus. I’m so glad I never had to deal with triggery matters when teaching mathematics. The closest (and really not close at all, but there’s a family resemblance, I guess) was in a first-year seminar once, when, while I was trying to use physical materials to introduce (with historical accuracy!) some stuff about probabilities, one student said that she couldn’t touch playing cards (evidently for religious reasons). Fine. We improvised something else. I later learned that, in fact, modern high-school math texts—and, I assume, modern high-school math classes—make use of “number cards” and, in lieu of dice, “number cubes”.
I wandered over here from LGM, by the way, where your recent post on trigger warnings was “strongly recommend”ed.
January 7, 2016 at 12:40 pm
auroravfs
Just googled “trigger warnings course outlines” and your post popped up. Thank you for this reasonable discussion of this topic and some tips for how to go about it on my own course outlines.
August 26, 2016 at 2:16 pm
Andrea Kalfoglou
Borrowing your language as I revise my syllabi. Thanks!