A Faculty Guide to Addressing Disruptive and Dangerous Behavior

Brian Van Brunt, W. Scott Lewis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136233425
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

College and university faculty are asked to serve an increasingly diverse and at-risk population of students. They face disruptive and dangerous behaviors that range from speaking out of turn or misusing technology, to potentially agressive behavior. A Faculty Guide to Addressing Disruptive and Dangerous Behavior provides the practical ideas and guidance necessary to manage and mitigate these behaviors. Grounded in research and theory that addresses the interplay of mental health, substance abuse, and aggression that may enter the college classroom, this accessible book serves as a necessary guide for busy faculty members facing challenging situations in their classrooms.

Special features include:

• Vignettes from seasoned faculty that provide thoughtful reflections and advice from everyday experience.
• Research-based suggestions and intervention techniques to help faculty better assess, intervene, and manage difficult behavior.
• Coverage of special populations, including nontraditional, veteran, and millennial students.
• Discussion of the latest laws and regulations that should affect and inform faculty's decisions.

Part I

Foundations of Classroom Management

Chapter 1

Identifying the Crisis

WHAT IS A CRISIS?

Crisis is contextual.

Let us explain. One of the greatest challenges in responding to a crisis situation is first acknowledging that you are experiencing something outside of your everyday experience. It’s difficult to train faculty to respond to disruptive and dangerous behavior without first addressing the idea that each professor, whether male or female, young or old, new or experienced, has a different tolerance for the variety of disruptive and dangerous behavior encountered in the classroom.

Think about what kind of activity you enjoy in your free time. For some, careening backwards in a darkened cavern while being chased by a 50 foot Yeti at Walt Disney World is their idea of a perfect vacation. Others consider this medieval style torture. Our leisure is defined by our individual tastes and experiences. Our response to a crisis is no different. We each have a unique view of what frustrates us in the classroom. Developing an appreciation of “what upsets you might not upset me” and the corollary—what works for you in handling frustrating behavior may not work for me—is a helpful place to start when understanding disruptive and dangerous behavior.

Why is all of this important? It’s important because we can’t just give you a checklist of disruptive and dangerous behaviors and a corresponding “if a, then b” approach to handling these problems without taking into account the context of your worldview. This applies to both what’s considered disruptive and what interventions you bring to bear in a given situation. One professor becomes enraged at a student who doesn’t show up for class, while another might pride himself on having a flexible attendance policy and doesn’t mandate class attendance. One professor encourages questions during his lecture while another instructor requires students to hold questions until the end of class. One uses humor to calm a disruptive student who acts disrespectfully in class while another may dismiss a student from class for the same behavior.

So where does this leave us? Our goal in writing this book is to create a useful collection of research-based theories and intervention techniques explained through stories and vignettes to identify and manage disruptive and dangerous behavior in the classroom. We will clarify and define those behaviors that fall into the clear categories of disruption (yelling, rude attitude, or racist or misogynist language) as well as those behaviors that cross the line into the realm of dangerousness (direct threats to harm other students, throwing objects, or slamming doors). We will set the stage for an open and candid discussion of those “grey area” behaviors that may frustrate some professors, but not others (attendance in class, asking questions out of turn, use of personal technology in the classroom).

Once we define these behaviors, we will review how to work with these students effectively, how to understand the individual motivations that may cause the behaviors and how to refer these students for help within the larger campus community. These approaches to address disruptive and dangerous classroom behavior are best understood as a loose collection of tools; each applied in a given situation with attention toward the utility and efficacy of the given technique. These are the techniques used by professors to confront classroom behavior and achieve compliance in a manner that keeps the peace and redirects the student’s inappropriate behaviors back into the norm of the classroom. In more dangerous or potentially violent interactions, the goal becomes keeping the professor, other students and the student causing the disruption—in that order—safe from harm.

The techniques we discuss will require aptitude and appropriateness in their application. Consider this: You can take a wrench and try to use it to cut a board in half, but that’s not the right tool for the job. You would be more successful in reaching your goal by using a saw. Choosing the right approach for the given situation is critical. Yelling back at an escalating, rude or entitled student isn’t the right tool (no matter how cathartic it might feel). Embarrassing a student in class who is misusing technology (surfing the web on a laptop or checking text messages in class) isn’t the best way to address that behavior. In essence, it’s using a screwdriver to hammer a nail into a board. You might be able to get the job done, but there are easier, more effective, ways. We will discuss and explore the variety of techniques and tools available while keeping an eye on how to use them in a practical way.

Another point we’d like to make is the importance of appreciating the unique abilities, knowledge and experience of instructors as they apply a given technique. Some excel at using humor to engage a student without offending them. Others’ attempts at humor end up feeling forced and make a crisis situation worse. Some instructors display genuine concern and caring through personal questions. Some treat their students with a degree of humanity and empathy that immediately garners respect. Others attempt this same stance and end up coming off as pushy or prying to the student. The right technique, applied to the right situation with experience and skill is the ideal. A single technique or comment made at the wrong time can lead to an intervention that fails to persuade the student to comply.

There are some essential, foundational qualities to bring about successful management of a crisis situation. These are “tried and true” stalwarts that prove efficacious in almost every situation. An example is approaching a student with respect and patience. Another is a professor who seeks to understand the student’s perspective before rushing to offer a response. Setting clear expectations at the start of the class in the syllabus would be a third. These are non-negotiable, effective approaches to classroom management. Like the game of chess, it is easy to learn but takes a lifetime to master.

Some more “advanced” techniques require a bit more training and strategic application for success. In wise and experienced hands, these tools of classroom management are extremely effective in provoking thoughtful consideration and growth within the student. These may include the use of humor or probing and personal questions. They may include one-on-one conversations that closely echo those in a counseling relationship. They may involve giving direct advice, setting inflexible limits and boundaries, or the involvement of the peer group to challenge and motivate the student towards change.

To explain this further, let us offer the following example. Think about martial arts training. Learning one technique well, say a front punch, might be just the thing for some martial artists. They find it serves their needs. In a fight, they respond with this effective and well-practiced attack. The teaching corollary is the professor who listens to students first before attempting to correct their misconceptions (or rude or entitled behavior). This is a tried and true metaphorical “front punch” that will always yield an effective result. Patiently conveying a concern for a student’s mental health or showing empathy in response to their environmental stress is always a better way to begin a confrontation. Practice this technique well over time and you could put down this book right now and have about 80% of what it means to handle classroom disruptions and dangerous behavior.

Other martial artists may wish to invest more time and energy to develop, say, “a spinning back fist of certain doom.” This certainly sounds very effective (and painful), though learning how to do it well requires much more practice, experience and necessitates a more tactical application. The teaching corollary here may be a professor who uses humor (or even sarcasm) to de-escalate a potentially dangerous student who is escalating in the classroom. It can be very, very effective in the right situation if applied strategically. It also could result in a total disaster if the technique isn’t applied correctly.

Carrying the martial arts analogy to its conclusion, any practitioner of martial arts knows the mantra “use common sense before self-defense.” That is to say, another common misconception is that we forget the power of prevention, and the ability to avoid a situation by engaging in good preventive practices. While we will spend a fair amount of time on how to manage disruptive situations, we will also spend time on prevention, as it is critical.

We want to clear up a common problem when new professors ask for advice on how to handle classroom disruption. Many have sought council from peers and “wise elders” and they have struggled to successfully use the advice in their own classroom. A memorable professor shared how she was able to get the class back to order when a discussion became too passionate or moved away from the focus of the lecture. She told us, “Well, I just tell them to shut up.” And strangely enough, that worked very well for her. Students respected this motherly figure and her use of sarcasm with the class was very effective.

You can imagine if we tried her approach with our classes, many students would take offense and would have called us rude or report us to the Department Head for unprofessional behavior. And this brings us back full circle to the concept of classroom management being contextual and subjective. What works for some, given their background as the setting in which they apply their approach, may not work so well for others.

Another common problem is that, when we utilize “old” methods to work with new problems, we often fail. Many professors have shared with us their frustration about their “tried and true” techniques no longer working over these last few years. It’s because the student has changed. We could spend a ton of time explaining why, but you will just have to trust us on this one. The details behind that are for the next book.

Allow us to make one more point before moving forward. We have noticed an interesting psychological phenomenon over the years. It reminds us of the story about the emperor who had no clothes. Remember that one? He ends up parading down the street wearing not a stitch because no one tells him that his magnificent outfit is really just his birthday suit.

Professors are like this sometimes (not you of course—and certainly not us—but some of them out there are like this). Professors get to talk for hours each week, often with very little feedback. They have total control of their course content with very little oversight from their Department Heads. They are praised for controlling their classrooms and being able to do so without assistance. They pontificate, ramble, meander, blather and sometimes just make stuff up. They receive very little direction in how they teach and are allowed to develop their own classroom standards, rules and social mores. It can be a little like Lord of the Flies when left unchecked.

This academic freedom can create some truly great professors. It allows them to lead and create based on their ideas and thoughts. It lets them alter direction and change the lecture focus to accommodate a vibrant class discussion. It allows for creative and critical thinking. This freedom has the potential to create unique and wonderful learning environments for students.

However, all this academic freedom can also create some really arrogant, entitled and rude professors that are well defended against criticism, suggestions for improvements or challenges to their fiefdom (again, not you or us, of course). Professors may develop serious blind spots in their teaching techniques and, by extension, their ability to manage classroom disruption and crisis. These blind spots can be institutionalized when professors are encouraged to control their classrooms and handle conflict on their own. There is a subtle message: “good professors control their students.” End of story.

Some might say “What about course evaluations? Wouldn’t they sort all of this out?” and they would be right. Professors do have an opportunity to get feedback from their performance evaluations. However, students rarely make good use of these evaluations. They are often too tired at the end of class to share any well-thought out reflections. Others don’t want to say something negative and hurt the professor’s job. A few may “let loose” on their evaluations and say some pretty horrific things about the professor’s clothes, teaching style and apparent lack of any social graces. But this is rare and those students’ over-the-top comments are readily dismissed as the rantings of the crazed outliers. In the end, carefully considered and constructive feedback is rare to encounter from students stressed out at the end of the semester and forced to fill out a scantron sheet before rushing off to study for their next final.

This is one of the reasons we wrote this book. We want to call some of you out on your behavior because, really, there just aren’t that many opportunities for a professor to hear “hey, there is a better way to do that.” We know that has been our path over a combined 30 years of teaching. It has only through blind luck, and perhaps some skills learned in our other professions as a college counseling center director and a student conduct administrator that we have been successful as professors. For us, it has been a combination of on the job learning as well as taking advantage of professional development opportunities—everything from counselors to cops to other professors to K–12 teachers—and paying attention to the changing student population.

Perhaps this message will bounce off of your well-defended view of yourself as a teacher. We hope not. We’d ask you to lower your guard just a little bit. Just to see how it feels.

Perhaps we are preaching to the choir and you aren’t in need of redirection in your teaching or crisis management methodology. If this is so, then we are glad we see eye to eye. Hopefully you can still find something new and useful in this book.

It may be you are so set in your ways that you aren’t looking for a new way of doing things, especially from us or a required reading of a book on classroom management your Department Head put into your lap.

And maybe—just maybe—this book is for you. Maybe you want to be better at handling the conversation with a student who says she is thinking of killing herself. Maybe you wonder if there is another way to deal with a student who sneaks a text underneath his desk than yelling at him or embarrassing him in front of his classmates. Maybe you want to know what kind of behaviors you should handle yourself and what you need to share with your campus Behavioral Intervention Team (this goes by many names) or Student Conduct Office. Maybe you want to be a better teacher. Good, us too.

WHISTLING DIXIE

As a teacher of interdisciplinary courses, including a first year experience course (FYE) entitled University Experience, my ch...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• PART I Foundations of Classroom Management
• PART II Individual Behavior in Context
• PART III Community Referral
• PART IV Final Thoughts
• References
• Index