EDUCATION Keeping the classroom calm

Keeping the classroom calm


Disruptive behaviour in the classroom is a key issue in education today. All too frequently, teachers are confronted with aggressive behaviour, and they find themselves in crisis management rather than classroom management situations. The classroom turns into a battlefield, and teaching and learning becomes impossible.
Once crisis level is reached, teachers can, understandably, find it hard to function. All their energy goes into coping, and it can become more and more difficult to get the class to work. With no way of seeing through or beyond the next crisis, ‘meltdown’ is a very real threat.
Such a situation can easily escalate to the point where physical intervention seems the only course of action. However, physical interventions tend to focus on managing situations after they have occurred. They do not address whatever triggered the behaviour in the first place. It is much more effective to defuse the situation before it gets out of hand.
An organisation called Studio III has championed ‘low-arousal’ approach to managing aggression and violence as a way to help teachers keep themselves and their students safe in physically challenging scenarios.
Broadly, the ‘low-arousal’ approach ‘A collection of behaviour management strategies which focus on the avoidance of confrontation. This is primarily achieved by the reduction of trigger/cue behaviours which may arouse an individual who presents with violent behaviours’.  The organisation has found that the approach also helps teachers become more confident when responding to a crisis.
Last November, Mayo support group Clan Beo organised a pilot training programme with Studio III specialist trainer Linda Woodward at the Mayo Education Centre in Castlebar. The pilot was so successful that the group is now running a five-day programme for teaching professionals from August 20 to 24 – the week before the start of the 2012/13 school year.
The ‘Managing Challenging Behaviour in the Classroom’ programme, which will again be run at the Mayo Education Centre, is approved by the Department of Education and Skills, and Linda Woodward will once again deliver the training.
The programme is approved for 3 EPV days for primary-level teachers. The closing date for applications for the course is June 29. For more details and an application form, contact Clan Beo at 086 6036900 or clanbeo@apollowest.net.