Oh my, what a violent world we are in, and always have been, only now the violence is crashing into mainstream society. How I wish there was a cradle of protection for you, and my son who is also a teacher, and another son who does marathons and another who is...all within mainstream society who are trying to maintain some degree of "everyday innocence"--a VERY healthy component to embrace.

Teachers see every fragment of society from the future "movers and shakers" to the disturbed, isolated other. Many are troubled and need help early on, so I support every dollar we can put into mental health services.

Meanwhile, educate, pray, "lock and load"? what? Those of us with PTSD have it all the worse. Or maybe not? Perhaps our sensitive triggers give warning sooner than later? PTSD-ers are hyper-alert to survival, right? So what is the answer from a PTSD perspective? I'd be interested in the comments on this, for we are knowledgeable of mental disorders, so how do we protect ourselves from those who might be yet undiagnosed with their own set of mental disorders?

Although I am no longer teaching, I am familiar w/ exactly the type of threats, menacing etc. that is going on where you work.

I developed partially preventative measures and partly would go all super serious 'official protocol' when necessary. It usually worked, but my male dominated institution didn't take stalking seriously enough - towards the end I would have Security escort me to my car, and I moved to a gated community.

The preventative part: Students are under a lot of pressure and may also be using drugs or have mental disorders affecting their social behavior. In my course syllabi I stuck a prominent section on classroom protocol. mutual respect, and how to deal with disagreements. Also I tried to always display in my interactions with students mutual respect for them all and require it in return.. (Some professors are patronizing, mean or defensive and it brings out the worst in the students.)

Official: I always reported any inappropriate behavior immediately using official regulations and channels established for such things. It someone began to act out in class I would politely warn them once, and then if they continued I would require them to leave and tell them not to return until they had been to the Dean for counseling and had a note verifying it. They only time I had to call Security to my class was when 2 students were fighting each other, & it was personal - not random.

A menacing student can poison an entire group if allowed to act out. A menacing professor can also poison the goodwill of their students.

I once witnessed a student approach a professor in a hallway and begin yelling about his grade. When the professor remained calm but firm the student began hitting his own head so hard against the wall it both broke a hole in the wall and knocked the student out.

Life comes with no safety guarantees, we can only strive to be civilized ourselves and help our job sites have policies promoting civility.

i'd say `go ahead and stab me. thank you'

Thanks, 51%. I really appreciate your reassuring words about my own past, about not becoming a bully. That's been important to me. We fight the good fight, but not like that. I did like you said and had a word with my department chair today. She doesn't know I have PTSD, I keep that confidential. But she knows me now well enough to know it's not a sign of weakness for me to talk about it, but of concern. I just agreed to teach a class she asked me to teach at the local maximum security prison, so she knows it's not that I'm afraid. I just don't want to go off myself with my own PTSD. We came up with a plan as best we could.

It was actually a great day today. Had an at-risk student turn things around with good grades. He was arrested last week for some silliness and was almost expelled, but my boss and I worked with him and he turned things.

No more violent threats today, and work done for the good. My office next door neighbor at the college just became a grandpa yesterday. Happy days. Tomorrow's the last day. Hope it's a happy one, too.

Thanks so much, what's new! I'll keep your teacher son in my thoughts, too, as we both wind down the school year.

Were it me, and provided the school district allows? I'd put myself under video surveillance.
Whether that is legal or not depends on your jurisdiction.

But I'd be totally upfront about it too, though I might lie about the reason:
"I will be recording myself teaching in order to vet and improve my own performance."

...The recording would be self-protection from a legal liability perspective (If I was accused of something I did not do), and also recording of any serious bad behavior on the part of the students towards myself or each other.

Hylie- that is really smart. If you think about it, many things people do when they feel they won't be held accountable (ex: aggressive driving, verbal abuse of others, any sort of abusive behavior) they would not feel so free to do if they felt they even could be held accountable.

Granted, there was a classroom of witnesses to those incidents.

I hope the school can develop a more proactive overall way of dealing with this. It stinks to have to develop policies that say (in not so many words) "We expect that you are grown adults and not wild animals. If that turns out to be wrong, x,y,and z will follow..."

I'm sorry to report from stories told to me by other friends, this stuff is way too common.

Have to wonder if the whole reality tv mentality, people becoming famous by acting like +urd$, being the "loose cannon" seems to some like the way to go.

First, to the point. Today was the last day of school and it went beautifully. No more outbreaks of bad behavior, and some really nice conversations with grateful students I'll miss having in class. The way it ought to be.

We have a great head of security at the college, and he's offered smart workshops for faculty and staff on dealing with these kinds of conflicts in the classroom. So when these episodes took place, I had lunch with him once this week. He's a former cop, and perfectly able to meet force with force, I'm sure. But I like that he has more tools than that, tools to defuse situations and not just be a Dirty Harry.

So after the episodes I described at the start of this topic and your encouragement following, I had lunch this week with our head of security. He heard me out and expressed to me that it seemed to him that our college administrators (president, dean of students in charge of disciplinary decisions, etc) were too busy to attend the workshops being offered for dealing with these situations. I'd gone, and lower level staff and faculty like me had attended the workshops, too, but not them.

It wasn't just that he lacked for fawning attention from his bosses. He said that for the workshop tactics and strategies to work we really need administration on board with the rest of us.

So we have more team building to do, I'd say. A lot more. I'm glad I spoke up here because your encouragement here helped me take the time to seek our head of security out for lunch. I appreciate your help!

Muji

I was enrolled in an English refresher course in a community college a few years ago. On the very first day of class, a student physically attacked the instructor and then ran out of the room, along with several of his buddies. Somehow the instructor recovered his composure and continued with the class. I was amazed at how he was able to do this, because had I been the class instructor, I would have quit my job right then and there.

In another class on this same community college campus where I was a student, as soon as the class would begin, students in the back of the classroom would verbally attack me because it was a participatory class in which the instructor would call on students and ask them to stand up and speak. When I stood up and spoke, the students at the back of the classroom would call me names like faggot white boy, and they did it very loudly so that everyone heard them. When I would turn to look at them, they would tell me not to look at them or they would kick my white ass. It got so bad that I finally withdrew entirely from Mesa Community College here in San Diego and gave up entirely on getting a college education or degree. I am still angry about having to give up on my dream of a better life.

There is something very wrong going on in our society. At this time, the psychopaths and sociopaths have the upper hand. Even our laws aid and comfort these people as they go about constantly inflicting pain and harm on others. What we need to do is send bad people to prisons on their first offense and never let them see daylight again for the rest of their lives, in order to have a society that is livable for the rest of us.

Sorry that happened to you, Frog. It's a drag that it discouraged you from getting your education, but I understand. In eighth grade on just one day I had it happen that a bully called me a "faggot" over and over for an hour for the same thing, for participating in class when the teacher called on me. It didn't have the racial component, it was at an earlier age, and it was just that one day, but I never forgot it.

The thing is that I now teach community college, and your bad experience happened in community college, too. Now these college aged people are behaving like what only happened to me in eighth grade, when I was 13. I'm as impressed as you are by your teacher who was attacked but recovered and continued class.

Don't know if I could do that. As a teacher I once asked a guy to leave my class. He wasn't a student in my class but was making out with a young woman in my class up front as I was trying to take attendance and start class for the day. When I asked him to leave he got up from making out, kicked over a desk, and got down in some sort of martial arts crouch preparing to kick my ass.

Fortunately for me, I couldn't stop from laughing at the prospect of this young guy trying to impress his young peers by beating up nerdy old me. I was lucky; he got embarrassed and stormed out of the classroom. I was lucky he didn't come back with a weapon. That's about as heroic as I think I'll ever get.

At assigned seating at an awards ceremony at the college in this week's graduation events, I happened to sit next to the professor I mentioned at the start of this thread. The one who was stabbed in his office on campus by an irate student 6 years ago. He's the one I mentioned who had a student frustrated with a final exam who threatened to beat him up a week ago.

It turns out, that wasn't the only threat to be beaten up that he got that week. A different student also threatened him with violence. He teaches business administration courses, for Pete's sake. I don't seem him or his subject as particularly inciting to violence.

I, on the other hand, though I'm in ongoing PTSD recovery after therapy for many years, teach psychology classes to nursing students. I love it. People with issues, though, could be triggered by some of the topics my classes touch on just in the normal course of conducting the class. So I feel really fortunate not to have had my colleague's experience.