A Look at Crisis Prevention (and Response) in Today’s Classrooms

Although this is a tough topic for summer reading, I’m really glad to see this article is tackling it. It’s no secret that student behaviors have become more noticeably challenging in the last two years, but a lot of people still don’t appreciate just how difficult it really is to manage a classroom full of students these days. Mind you, we’re not even diving into the increasingly common crisis of mass violence in schools, just the regular old non-deadly challenges that teachers handle in a typical week. This article has great insights for teachers AND non-teachers so I hope you’ll read it when you’ve finished with this prologue of mine.

Maintaining a productive, healthy learning environment is SO MUCH MORE COMPLICATED than many people realize. Contrary to what I’ve heard non-teachers advise, we can’t just tell students to be respectful of each other, because all their homes define respect differently; and we shouldn’t try to scare students into working silently all day because they certainly won’t learn to their best potential, and some will likely become reactive to that authoritarian approach anyway.

An effective environment requires a lot of forethought and front loading to create an intentional classroom culture, then ninja-like awareness and responsiveness to redirect and reinforce student behaviors every moment of the day… Still, it doesn’t even end after we’ve addressed a student conflict or spontaneous outburst: We often have to strategize the best way to help our whole class process the situation they’ve experienced before we can get back to actually instructing, differentiating, and assessing their content/skills… without alienating the student who acted out or the student who told on them or anyone else in between. Plus we have to handle it all with just the right temperament, regardless of whether we are also experiencing any personal challenges or triggers of our own… 

When all of this is done effectively and consistently though, we can create a school culture that helps all stakeholders grow together and toward a better version of themselves. It’s a LOT to manage, and teachers are managing to do it day after day after day… even though many teachers are in fact going through personal challenges of our own. Above all, we keep trying to do right by our students and we keep learning how to do even better next time. So I hope this article (and my description) will help everyone appreciate the complexities of what is actually going on behind the scenes every day in our schools! 

As explained in the article, teaching self-awareness AND social awareness is even more important than ever:

“If a child or youth hears someone yelling, a door slamming, a classmate sobbing, or tones of voices that sound harsh, their hearts begin beating fast, breathing becomes shallow, and they can feel tension and tightness in their bodies. These sensory signals occur immediately before we recognize how we are feeling or thinking. Emotions are contagious so other students in the room begin mirroring or picking up on the dysregulation of classmates and possibly the teacher or staff member.”

 Really, please take a few minutes to read the article linked above. And maybe thank a teacher afterward, but that’s only if you want extra credit. 😉