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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Teacher here.  I'm up late tonight still decompressing from stress and work stuff, and I am feeling really validated and grateful for some of the posts here.

I can say that 10 years ago I literally never heard of the idea of evacuating a classroom because of a disruptive student.  Now, in my FCPS school, this is commonplace.  Literally, commonplace.

A student wielded a sharp tool in one of our classes yesterday, threatening to hurt another child with it.  This student was out of control.  All students were evacuated from the room and the clinical team was called and the student spent the rest of the day with clinical and administrative support and guess what?  The student was back in class again today.  Not even a suspension.  (And I'm not a big fan of out of school suspension in general, but what message does this send to the classmates who were literally terrorized yesterday?)  Multiple members of this teaching team were in tears throughout the school day, exhausted with the stress of it all and the constant feeling of failing everyone because these one or two students take up 50-80% of their mental energy on any given day, and there is so little left for actual...teaching.

Our administration will do NOTHING to protect students or support teachers unless there is huge parental pressure and usually squawking up the food chain.  They are utterly conflict avoidant and are content putting everything at a teacher's feet.

Tangible ideas:

1) Literally every day that a violent disruption occurs (or any significant disruption), document it fully in an email.  If you believe this is true, please document that you believe the teacher is doing a good job and that this is not a criticism of teacher performance.

2) Document the disruption.  Document the effect on your child.

Example:

Dear Mrs. Twaftwaddle,

I am writing with a deep concern about ongoing disruption in Larla's classroom that creates an unsafe learning environment and is interfering with her ability to learn.  In one example today, Phil refused to follow the teacher's directions to get his laptop from the laptop cart, loudly interrupting the teacher, wandering the room and interfering with other children who were logging in, and then dropping his laptop on the floor with a crash.  When the teacher approached him, he yelled loudly and used very graphic cuss words.  All the while, no instruction was happening.  As the student's behavior escalated, she instructed the rest of the class to go down the hallway and called the front office for assistance.   My child was moved to Mrs. Smith's room where there were no spare desks and 44 students working with one teacher.  The class ended up eventually scattered around the room and had about 10 minutes of silent reading time before their teacher was able to get them back to class.  By that time, the Language Arts block was completely over.

Not only did she get no Language Arts instruction today, she and classmates spent the rest of the day nervous and on edge, wondering if their classmate would return.  When he did return, he continued to exhibit refusal to participate, verbal attacks, and physical signs of frustration such as throwing writing implements on the floor and knocking books off tables.

Consequently, my child was fearful all day, and lost a great deal of instructional time due to this student's behavior.  What supports can be put in place to ensure that this does not occur again tomorrow?

(keep doing this EVERY day your child reports major disruptions.  Cc county-wide administrators and higher-ups if the first email doesn't have results.)[/quote]

This is where I stop and say WTF was the teacher thinking. If this is a child with a history of getting upset physically, she should have called to the office when he started interfering with other children who were logging in and the administration should have been prepared for this. This letter makes no sense. What do you mean the teacher "approached him"? I would ask WTF did the teacher say? This letter would really make me question what was going on with the teacher.[/quote]

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