Disturbing material in the classroom: on content notes and trigger warnings in teaching

Catherine Baker

Researching and teaching about the Yugoslav wars means that, for more than a decade, I’ve been coming into contact with horrific material on pretty much a weekly basis. During my PhD, when I spent months reading Croatian newspapers from the 1990s, I was confronted almost every day with photographs of dead or wounded bodies, or newspaper testimonies about people’s suffering during the 1991-95 wars. Some of the documentary sources and academic studies that I assign when I teach about my specialist area, likewise, can contain a level of horror that these days I take as part and parcel of my work but which might be unexpected to students learning about this moment in history for the first time.

Alternatively – and here’s where it gets even more difficult for teachers – it could be all too much like something from their own lives.

For this reason, I’ve been following the…

View original post 2,948 more words

Day 9

20140708-133236-48756981.jpg

This is where i feel 100% at home, where i feel myself and where i belong…America. My heart is here and i am focused and driven to move here. My education is because i want to move and work here, the SEN teaching assistant job im hoping to have for september is to help me with experience so i can move here.
Everything i do is for my future, which is moving to America and becoming a behaviour therapist.

Day 8

20140708-133044-48644313.jpg

I may be very young in this & my grandad passed away 8 years ago but this is my family, my support, who i want to make proud.
I love them and thank them for everything they have done since i was little to now. I dont know where i would be without them.

Day 7

20140706-164311-60191142.jpg

This was took at Tampa Zoo, USA. I had a amazing day with my cousin and his other half who ive not seen in 3 years, due to him being in the US army. So this is a day and picture i will always remember

Day 6

Work and sunshine on a Saturday is always interesting. Spent the day running from horrible geese and awwing baby ducks. Baby ducks always make me smile, new life is always around us even if its animals.
Then afternoon ended up with me in A&E for 4 hours….

20140706-164225-60145056.jpg