Handling a Classroom Crisis

This isn’t your professor’s classroom!

Both our students and we, the professors, face very different circumstances than those who came before us in academia. Social media has changed the way students communicate. Perceived anonymity has offered students a false sense of security in virtual spaces with neither filter nor forethought or concern for consequences of their words. Apps like Tic Toc make people into overnight superstars making classrooms look like mini MMA events, sometimes with teachers as targets of student’s ire. We are now teaching this generation, and they are primed with their cellphones waiting for someone to give them their Tic Toc moment.

On November 14, 2019, my own high school, Saugus High, became another statistic on a long list of schools involved in mass shootings, and some of my best friend’s children were there. In 2018, IU Southeast closed the last activities center in the region still open to the public because someone using our facility brought a gun into the building. In 2020, COVID-19 shuttered our campus and we had to transition online over spring break to finish the semester. The weather in this area has the potential to whip up a crisis in a way that can destroy any of our buildings matter of minutes.

Anything can happen at anytime, from medical emergencies, to angry or emotional students or citizens entering our classrooms. Needless to say, we must be prepared to face crisis in our classrooms at any given moment. We are not only front line workers on this campus, we are often front-line responders, responsible for the lives of those in our care. Come and journey with me through some of the crisis I’ve faced in my own classroom. Let’s evaluate how I handled these events, and look for things that I could have done better! Let’s engage in a candid conversation about how we can apply some best practices to better prepare ourselves so that we are prepared to handle a classroom crisis.