School safety, security, and violence prevention resource

TEACHER/SECURITY:  Be Cool and RAPP Before Taking On Disruptive Students.

 

No, I’m not about to give you a quickee seminar on How To Win Over Your Students by Being Cool.  But I am saying that the best way to chill out your disruptive student(s) is to make sure you adhere to my faithful de-escalation acronym RAPP before you try anything rash, partner.

 

RAPP, you see, is a principles of safety-first.  Safe for you, safe for your students, safe for everybody.  Enough expository talk, let’s take a look-see at RAPP and you decide for yourself.

 

• Recognize.  The most important thing you can do is to be observant and to understand what you perceive.  That means recognizing signatures of danger, or Red Flags.  These might include slight or obvious changes in body language, verbal content, environmental changes, no matter how minor.  Obey your gut instincts that are telling you something is not right here.

 

• Aware, Assess, Anticipate.  Be aware at all times.  Assess the abovementioned changes.  Especially when they occur in clusters (body language, verbal).  Identify real and potential weapons.  Always ask yourself, even before you are aware that something pernicious might be going down,  “What would I do if such and such (the worse case scenario) happened?”  Develop and maintain a plan of action, and even a Plan B in case A goes south or isn’t practicable.

 

 

• Position yourself for safety.  Make sure you have a reasonable and actionable escape route.  Also, make sure the disruptive kid doesn’t perceive of himself as trapped.  Use the space and time continuum to your advantage.  Use barricades in the environment – chairs, desks, tables, television set, et al. – to separate you from the agitated subject.  Control your space.  In other words, give yourself at least a 5 foot safety zone to allow you time to disengage, or at least block a punch.

 

• Pacify.  I have posted plenty on how to defuse a student and/or a classroom.  My point here is only that you should not and probably cannot defuse a student or a classroom until you have first:

 

Ø     Taken the time to recognize the threat.

Ø     Open yourself up to observe and assess danger signs, or at least understand signs that the student is distressed.

Ø     Have a pre-determined Plan of Action.

 

Until the next time.  Stay Safe.

Hammer 

 

 

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