School safety, security, and violence prevention resource

TEACHER – Assaulted Never Again!

 

DAMN.  Another teacher in my area (Easton, Pa.) – this time a young woman – is beaten in front of her students in the classroom.  This calls for a continuation of the post I submitted yesterday  (Management Of Aggressive Classroom Behavior).

 

LET me bring you up to speed.  Yesterday I ran on about the Three Principles of Management of Aggressive Classroom Behavior – Know the Environment; Know the Student and Know Oneself – concentrating on Know the Aggressive Student, more specifically, the key Signatures of Danger that a teacher must be aware of if he or she was to prevent or avoid being assaulted.

 

WHILE knowing the student and recognizing valid and reliable Red Flags – verbal and non-verbal predictors of an oncoming attack – can be invaluable to the teacher – there are other steps, both psychological and physical – that a teacher must perform to assure that he or she will be able to escape and evade an imminent attack, including:

 

THREAT MANAGEMENT TACTICS FOR TEACHERS/SECURITY:

 

• Nearest Weapon/Nearest Target – The first thing is pretty simple, folks.  The concept of Nearest Weapon/Nearest Target (NW/NT) is designed to have the teacher stand with his or her hands in a position to block correspondent with the student’s hands.  In essence, NW/NT blocks the (Nearest) Target in accordance with the location of the student’s hands (Nearest) Weapon.  This is based on the fact that over 98% of all assaults are executed with a student’s hands. A good “interview”(NW/NT) stance can do two things to stop an attack cold:
  1. A NWNT Stance delivers an implicit message to the potential attacker that you are not a “Free Lunch,” or, an easy target.  The student does not know why he feels that, but he just does.
  2. A good NWNT Interview Stance is designed to stop any incoming strike quickly, and, if appropriate, allows the teacher to deliver his or her own counterstrike.
  3. An example is the teacher standing in a balanced stance, his or her feet shoulder width apart, the strong foot slightly back, the hands opposite where the student’s hands are.  The stance is balanced ( more on balance in a future post), with appropriate tension, and the teacher has his/her left hand palm up and his or her right hand touching the left, palm down.  The hand position, like that of a priest talking with a parishioner (The Father Murphy Stance).  The student moves his hands toward his head and the teacher, without any sense of being startled  or fearful, matches the position of his/her hands.
• CYCLE BREATHE -             Also known as Tactical Breathing.  This should be done before any attack scenario even begins.  Teach yourself to quickly cycle oxygenated blood to your brain by practicing Cycle Breathing in a relaxed setting.  Breathe in through your nose for a count of two; hold your breath for another two-count; exhale through your mouth for another two-count, and repeat the drill.  Accelerate the benefit by picturing yourself in a conflict situation and imaging yourself maintaining your cool and physically and verbally managing the threat.  Nine out of 10 teachers, when attacked, hold their breath and freeze.  If they don’t freeze, they overreact with excessive or unnecessary aggression/violence and/or the use of unprofessional language that exacerbates instead of defusing the situation.
• MIRROR CALM -  Anger and fear are terribly contagious.  On the other hand Confidence Communicated Calmly (my 3 C’s of De-escalation) is even more contagious.  Confidence communicated calmly can be unnerving to a student thinking of making his bones by punching a teacher in front of a classroom full of students.  What the punk – and that is what he is – wants to see, trust me on this, is that look of fear and/or terror on his victim’s face.  That slack-jawed look of a victim who is frozen in fear like a deer in the headlights.  What the punk least wants to see is what he will get from the teacher who transitions into a Father Murphy Stance (NW/NT), establishes a balanced “interview” stance, which  communicates implicitly that “Hey, Dude, I am willing to talk this thing over, to listen to whatever you have to say, but, never forget and always remember, Ace, you throw a punch and I’m going to be ready for it;” breathes, and communicates that he or she is calm, cool and confident.  Take my word for it, more than 98% of students considering striking his or her teacher will back own. 

I am so confident that a teacher who follows these principles will not be assaulted because I know that in order to go ballistic on a teacher, a student will only do so if he or she is:

 

Justified.  Even the most violent student requires a sense of justification to attack a teacher in a classroom environment.  The calm teacher provides no (escalation) justification.  No calm, confident, or professional-acting teacher is going to verbally attack, belittle, humiliate or use inane profanity during a confrontation with a violent and/or unstable student.

Alternatives.  The calm and confident teacher will present good options to violence to the aggressive student.  “I can see by the look on your face that you are thinking of swinging on me, Jake.  You can probably hurt me, maybe even hurt me bad, Jake, but I have to wonder why when you could always just—-“

Consequences.  If the aggressive student can not justify an attack, has valid alternatives to violence and understands the consequences (all the teacher really needs to do is delay the attack 20-seconds or so and the students will begin to think rationally, including the possible outcome for him or her if he or she attacks) of his or her actions, there is very little chance of an attack.

ABILITY:  Finally, the cool, calm, confident and implicitly combat-ready teacher presents the aura and the reality that removes the certainty from the student’s mind that he or she will be able to successfully assault the teacher.  The sense of a student’s inability to carry off the assault might be the final factor in discouraging and/or turning back an assault-minded student.

 

Next Post:  More On Preventing A Classroom Assault.  Until then, stay safe.

Hammer 

 

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Posted on December 24th, 2008 by Harry A Widger
Filed under: Administrators, College, Fighting, High School, People Involved, School Grade Level, School Safety Issues, Students, Violence