Well, the time draws near. Before we know it we will walk into the classroom or kitchen to meet our students for the first time for the fall term. I don’t know about you but as I scan the faces, call the names, and explain the basics of the course for the first time in any given class there is this voice in the back of my head that asks questions that will be answered in due time. I wonder which one or two students will impress me with their intellectual curiosity and commitment to being the best student possible making the job of teacher fun and rewarding. I wonder which ones will simply show up to class, learn what they can, and silently move on to the next class without making a splash. I then wonder which one or two students are going to be the disruptive ones that will interrupt the class in both familiar and novel ways that may surprise even me.
I have talked with culinary arts and educators about what they do when the “disruptive” student’s make their presence known in the class making the job of teaching more difficult than it already is. What troubles me most is that far too many have openly confessed to using tactics that for all practical purposes are on par or below that of the bad behavior being exhibited by the disruptive student and truly mean-spirited. I will not share the stories or the tactics that I been told over the years but I am willing to bet that none of them led to an epiphany on the part of the offending student to suddenly model the behavior of the top students in the class. Unbeknownst to the teacher, those tactics may have even backfired in that the students as a whole may have lost a certain amount of respect for him or her due to the way the disruptive student was treated.
So the next time you feel your blood pressure and heart rate begin to rise in response to the latest antic from the disruptive student that has gotten you and the rest of the class off track – again – do whatever you can to maintain your composure and handle the matter with kindness because the whole class will be watching. I myself still regret the times early in my teaching career where I lost it in front of the class and yelled at a disruptive student. Oh, yeah, it felt great at the time to once and for all express the frustration I felt inside with the student who had not favorably responded to my prior requests to not be disruptive; but once the dust settled the rest of the class was sitting their with wide eyes and dropped jaws upon witnessing my unexpected ranting. I have not acted that way since and hope that we all can stay as cool as the Fonze when handling the disruptive student that we are soon to meet this fall term.
I would like to end this post by asking a favor. If you know of a colleague in your department that has a reputation for being routinely mean-spirited to students as a rule, please take appropriate action to address and eliminate that behavior for the sake of the students who are powerless to stop it on their own. I have heard (and witnessed) all too many stories of “certain faculty” who are known by all to be routinely mean to students and yet nobody on the faculty or administration does anything about it. It is almost as though they are too afraid of the person themselves to approach him or her and discuss and amicably resolve the problem. That has to change once and for all because students pay their tuition to get an education to make a better life for themselves; they do not sign up to be abused by some jerk that leads a miserable life or enjoys abusing the power they have over students.
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