Caring for Our Students in Courses with Potentially Threatening Content

We enjoy the challenge of teaching classes on gender and violence, including violence against women, psychology of trauma, and psychology of gender. Although various sources provide suggestions for teaching classes that provoke strong reactions in students (McCammon, 1995), we have found that one size does not fit all. Rather, we must first identify the needs and motivations of individual students, as well as the class dynamics that arise when students with different levels of trauma awareness begin interacting with each other and with us. We present here a typology of students’ awareness drawn from our experience with classes on gender and violence. This typology may also apply to classes on racism and other challenging topics. Often in our classes, we ask students to confront their own privilege and expectations and to reflect on how their personal experiences may be connected to larger issues in society. Challenging assumptions, although necessary, is often a stressful activity. Here we focus on undergraduate classes that are taken by a wide variety of students, most of whom do not plan to become counselors. We have found that most of the content in this article applies to classes of anywhere from 12 to 100 students, with some modifications needed for classes of over 40. In classes on gender and violence, students must manage their intellectual and emotional reactions to these topics. For example, learning about the prevalence of violence against women may lead students to feel sad or angry, betrayed by society, shocked at their ignorance, or to have pity for victims (Jones, 2002). Confusion and frustration at being unable to change the world can lead to a state of shock, or even to discounting others’ experience. Instructors also experience these reactions. It can be disheartening to hear students react in ways that discount violence survivors’ experiences, support rape myths, and describe one’s own traumatic experiences. Students’ and instructors’ personal reactions contribute to classroom dynamics that emerge during the course. Instructors may struggle with their own philosophies about the goals of the course and how often self-disclosure or personal reactions are appropriate, given the stated course goals (Newman, 2011). Because we are not clinicians, our goal is not to run a group therapy session but rather a college class based on the science of psychology. On the other hand, as feminists, we believe that the personal is political. Balancing viewpoints like these will be a different process for every teacher, and it is a factor to consider seriously before the course begins. It is helpful to explicitly state guidelines for self-disclosure in the syllabus and to model appropriate communication in class. Instructors should clarify expectations around confidentiality. For example, the instructor may state that class members are expected to keep personal information private; on the other hand, students should be cautioned not to share personal information that they want to be kept a secret in an academic classroom setting. One strategy is to review literature on disclosure early in the term to teach students helpful ways to respond to disclosure, as well as to warn students about the potential risk of not getting a helpful response when they disclose. Again, this balance will be different for every teacher and class. Depending on the makeup and location of the class, it can be effective to describe trauma symptoms in terms of common and widespread reactions during widely known disasters such as hurricanes, terrorist attacks, civil unrest, or earthquakes/tsunamis. The instructor might explicitly state that we consider these examples as a way to understand various kinds of trauma reactions, as opposed to understanding or supporting any individuals’ experience. The instructor might add that, unlike many personal traumas, no one is likely to disagree that a hurricane happened or that it was traumatic.