For too many K-12 districts, student behavior challenges are leading to violence against teachers, writes Dr. Roderick Sams in an eSchool News essay. Dr. Sams is a former high school principal and chief development officer at CENTEGIX, a provider of incident response solutions.
Eighty percent of teachers experienced at least one incident of verbal or threatening violence from students during the 2021 to 2022 school year and 56 percent experienced incidents of physical violence from students, according to a survey from the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Psychological Association (APA).
The following three strategies can help protect teachers from student-behavior-related violence:
1) Include student behavior incidents as part of school safety planning
Educator safety needs to be prioritized as a central part of proactive safety planning, especially as student behavior challenges increase. Having plans in place, such as who will support teachers as back up when an incident occurs or who will be notified, and when, is critical. Also, de-escalation training for teachers and staff can help them mitigate incidents before they intensify.
2) Empower teachers to get support quickly
Technology can help improve response times and get staff on site quickly to de-escalate situations. Teachers equipped with a wearable panic button can trigger an alert that shares their exact location. This reduces response times and can send support staff from security personnel to counselors to the location of the incident. When a teacher has a wearable panic button, they have backup with clear information quickly. When the right people are notified immediately, confusion is replaced by coordination and clarity.
Without this technology, they must either call for help or leave the location to find help, which can lead to delays. Leaving a classroom to get help is often not possible because teachers have other students for whom they are responsible. Technology should be simple, easy to use, and reliable in different types of scenarios. Make sure educator panic buttons do not rely on wifi to work.
3) Use past behavioral incidents data to adjust safety plans
Regularly looking at data — such as the time of day incidents are occurring, grade levels, ages with the most student behavior challenges, and locations where incidents are occurring most frequently — can allow administrators to uncover patterns. Schools and districts can then address these situations more proactively by making adjustments to staffing and protocols.
Districts must prioritize comprehensive planning to support teacher safety in the workplace. By proactively planning protocols for responding to student behavior incidents, deploying technology to support teachers, and conducting regular reviews of data, districts can make workplaces safer places for educators.
eSchool News
