a hard day at school ...Teachers .. please share how your school would deal with this student and what support if any you would get from senior management

[anewbook]

Hi all,
If you are a teacher and this situation arose with a student, how would it be dealt with please? Would you be expected to deal with the whole episode including giving sanctions or would it be escalated for a member of senior management to deal with?

I would like to know because I am the Teacher and I suddenly felt myself in an extremely unpleasant situation with a highly volatile student recently. I wasn't given any back-up support by senior management depsite requesting it. I was left feeling shaken up and threatened and in a very vulnerable position.

• Student refusing to work in class.
• Teacher asked him gently several times to complete the task.
• Student refuses.
• Teacher gives student a time out.
• Student doesn't come back after the allotted time.
• Teacher speaks to the student calmly and asks him to return to class.
• Student begins an aggressive, threatening rant shouting and displaying intimidating and threatening behaviour.
• Teacher kept calm throughout.

I didn't feel well-equipped to continue to deal with this by myself and felt completely out of my depth.
I am just wondering if this is the norm elsewhere or just my school.

Thanks in advance
a tired, weary teacher

I am guessing you are not in UK as all school are on holiday. my school the student would be removed from the class on call and have a day in seclusion and a detention

Hi, in my school the time out would have been a warning written on board and the continuation would result in being sent to H1. Would also get after school detention. Parents would be informed by pastoral and we are strongly encouraged to both have restorative before next lesson and contact home ourselves. If a repeated offence would have to contact home, if isolated to my subject would go onto faculty report, if across subjects would be pastoral report. We are really pushing that students need to take on responsibility for their learning, passively sitting in class isn't enough! Hope that helps, doesn't always work but that is our policy...

The student would have been given a warning the first time they refused to work and if they then continued I would have done a call out to have the student removed. Refusing to do work is an isolation event.

In my old school, refusing work is also an isolation avent. They would be warned and if they still didn't comply would be isolated! Isolation is for the day and involved a 90 mom after school detention as well! It was also the same for any aggression or rudeness to staf or other students! It did mean trouble makers would be removed very quickly the idea being to focus on the vast majority of students who do the right thing all the time!!

Thank you for your replies. They are all very helpful.

I just would like to equip myself with some ideas for a meeting for when term starts again with the hope of suggesting a few new strategies.

I work at a small private school (UK) and the management expect us to deal with all behavioural problems. I find it puts enormous pressure on myself and other teachers and means that we often get off track in lessons tending to various differing levels of disruptive behaviour. Minor things I can handle fine, but instances like the above I feel totally unsupported and out of my depth. I find I am spending so much time trying to deal with behavioural issues recently rather than actually teaching. It is also unfair on the students who are hardworking and want to learn.

My line manager has expressed disappointment that I felt unable to deal with the sitatuion by myself and as I said before the whole episode left me shaken and upset.

Ah I see - I am a trainee teacher and do find Behaviour tricky - I would suggest Tom Bennett running the room which has great ideas especially for start of year things

Sounds like your school does not want to either admit there are issues with behaviour or prefers to make it an individual teacher problem. Both of these would make me think about a move. Yes I would have had the child removed and then they would have served the detention attached.

Honestly, once a student has become aggressive with you, you shouldn't be dealing with the situation alone. In any school I've worked in, on call would remove and the student wouldn't return to that lesson- either parked elsewhere in the department or in internal exclusion. Depending on what exactly was said (e.g. swearing, explicit threads etc), the student could face further sanctions from a day in internal exclusion to an external exclusion.

Your line manager is the issue here.

Do you have QTS and have you worked in a state school before?

I would be expected to strictly follow the guidance as set out in the Policy.

A slight derail here...
As a general observation I find that many teachers are not implementing their behaviour policy at all or at best will-nilly. Same teacher(s) find themselves out of their depth with managing behaviours. Same teacher(s) then cry to SLT (& bad-mouth them) for support. SLT do not have magic wands to fix these behaviours. Same teacher(s) fail to see that they are contributing to the behaviour management difficulties by not implementing policy rigorously. It feels like a catch 22 from my experience.

As a class teacher I would follow the Behaviour Policy.
As SLT I would follow the Behaviour Policy.
If I felt the Policy needed to be reviewed/ quoted from/discussed further.../ I would raise my concern through the correct forum.

As a class teacher it is frustrating and quite frightening to be confronted with violent behaviours. As a member of SLT holding teachers to account is integral to the role (and holding on to your sanity is integral to your life).

From experience...Policy is the best place to seek your answer/ frame your discussion.

In my large London comprehensive that student would have been removed and plonked in the back of another class for the rest of the period. They would also have had a lunchtime or afterschool detention (depending what time the lesson was) and the behaviour points would have gone on a system that parents can see.

You would have been supported not blamed.

I have moved from private to state and am finding it very refreshing!!

Hmmm this is a tricky one. Our school has lots of behaviours like you have described on a daily basis.

We would be expected to consider why the trigger happened and have also thought about ways of dealing with it. Eg, follow behaviour policy or behaviour plan if the child has one. Is this is one-off episode for the child?

Did you have any class support?

Our SLT are very quick to suggest strategies and restorative chats using Primary Behaviour Services scripting but when the hell do you have time to do that!! 🥴