Coping with Seven Disruptive Personality Types in the Classroom

The instructor should instead immediately dismiss the class and enlist help from the campussecurity office. Many college classrooms come equipped with a telephone for calling forassistance when needed. The instructor should use it. The responding security officers couldthen have the student transferred to the psychological service, taken to an off-campuspsychiatric facility for observation and evaluation, or taken into custody by a lawenforcement agency in the community. This is clearly the safest way to proceed in thissituation.After the student who has leveled a lethal threat has been taken into custody, the instructorshould proceed to document the incident and then forward the documentation to adesignated dean or judicial affairs office for further investigation and evaluation.Of course, that is a worst-case scenario. Many explosive situations are less severe than ablatant, imminent physical threat. Sometimes, a student may simply lose control, beginyelling, or jump up from his or her seat in a very disruptive way. In this situation, instructorsmust respond calmly and firmly.• Ask student to quiet down, return to seat, or leave• If student persists, dismiss class and contact securityWhen explosive students lose control in the classroom, instructors, of course, have theoption to ask the student to quiet down, return to his seat, or leave. However, if the studentpersists in such explosive behavior, it probably behooves the instructor to dismiss the classand then contact the security office to report the offending student.Generally, it is not advisable to enlist the help of classmates to physically control theout-of-control student, unless it is likely that the student is about to seriously harm someoneelse if he is not immediately, forcibly restrained.Also, be aware that other students should not be sent as couriers to report such incidents,since the offending student may target them later for retaliation. Dismissing the class andreporting the incident should suffice in most instances.It may be surprising to learn that some explosive students have disruptive episodes that areshort-lived and not at all dangerous. Some of these students suffer from organic orneurological disorders. It is possible that in some cases, such as those in which the explosiveepisode is merely distracting but not especially frightening or dangerous to others, thebehavior can be tolerated—at least for the time being. This may be the case when a studenthas a condition such as Tourette’s syndrome.8