Classrooms in Crisis: Teachers speak about the outbursts they've endured

so let's start with some good question so I want you to raise your hand if you believe this to be true so please raise your hand if you believe classroom disruptions are at a crisis level everybody okay raise your hand if you've had to clear a classroom in the last year raise your hand if you believe you have enough support a peaceful no.1 okay raise your hand if you believe you're able to effectively handle these classroom disruptions no one okay you do the best you can with what you have right we don't really have a choice so you have to do that okay and raise your hand if you believe that the current laws allow you to deal with these disruptions in the best way no one okay so let's start with so you all believe classroom disruptions are at crisis levels that is not an overstatement no no so let's start okay Cindy what have you experienced tell me what parents don't know this is happening a lot of people in the community don't know tell me about some experience sure some of the things that happened at my school are students just running through the hallway our school did not have all like walls and doors and so students could run in and out of classrooms students hitting staff hitting other kids just just generally unable to teach we're unable to teach because there's so much behavior sometimes from the beginning the morning till the end a student might be off as soon as I see them the first thing perhaps a student might be off I've seen that okay and tell me Jenny give me something that's happened in your class or your school I do feel fortunate that at my school we have not had a room clear except in our special ed but that is a unique situation but I've talked with many colleagues around my school district in which at one school I know a certain room had five to eight room clears in one week and that means something in which no learning is going on for the other children trauma is happening for the child who is upset and for the other children and for the teachers and it's it's very tough five to eight in one week yes so the entire class has to leave the room for that one student correct okay Tracy you have an interesting role because you are called to these schools for these destructions correct yeah I work at one school and in my role I'm not assigned to a classroom so there are times when there are crisis is going on in other classrooms and they call for assistance and help so while the teacher may be doing a room clear with some students I may be trying to de-escalate a student who's not regulated and what have you seen and what have you heard oh I've seen screaming yelling spitting hitting throwing items students who just don't know how to communicate effectively and it they're communicating something to us they're communicating through their behavior that something is wrong and they don't have the tools or the skills to communicate effectively and so when a student is so escalated you need to calm them down and get them to a point where they are regulated so that then you can start to reason with students and so it does take a team to do that a teacher in a classroom by themselves cannot manage an escalated situation so you saying screaming kicking spitting do they throwing throwing turning over furniture yeah turning over furniture yeah Dan damage mm-hmm oh yes hurting other people injuries yes and this is regular yes yeah and students running away and I think the one thing that when I think about student behaviors and escalations I just think so much about safety of the students and students running through the buildings or running off campus communicating that they're uncomfortable in some way and can't share their feelings and what they're experiencing and so they react and maybe the only way they know how to react is to run and that's scary it's you know we just we have our best hearts or with a student so we want to keep them safe and so I think that's where I think all of us can agree that those escalated behaviors are on a rise and we don't have the staffing to respond to all of the needs okay and melody tell me what you've seen in your school and what you've heard from other teachers in terms of incidents well being a kindergarten teacher you get kids coming in and you don't have the background history on them and so as they enter your classroom if they have unmet needs if they have behaviors that aren't as like the typical classmate we're just trying to be a problem-solver and a detective to find out how to best support their needs and in with the lack of funding we have lack of staffing and really we need a lot of staff at the beginning of the year to really trying to respond and meet the needs of these little ones that come in with some of those lagging skills and that's why we're always working on just getting more school funding because our ultimate ask is we want the funding to support students so that they can be successful I mean that's what our big thing is and we want them safe we went to learning we want the whole classroom learning but we want the little child that comes in with those lagging behavioral skills that lagging locus of control they don't know how to react in a big community we want to be able to have those support staff to meet their needs okay and what can you share a Jeni Jeni what you've seen in your own classrooms or at your school really in the last several years I've seen so many kids to come in who are deeply impacted by the trauma in their lives our district has so many students who face poverty in homeless and unstable homeless situations and in my opinion school needs to be the safe haven for them it needs to be that place where no matter what is going on in your life you're okay at school when we're here for you what I'm seeing is a lot of those kids have those unmet needs there's no one in their life who's able to teach them how to communicate what they're feeling and so when they feel stressed out or upset or any other number of feelings they take it out in different ways like running off campus and we're trying to hurt elementary schoolers out of the streets to keep them safe we've seen students hurting other students or throwing other belongings I've also seen students who take up the complete opposite way and shut down and they become an island of wine that is almost impenetrable they hide behind furniture under desks and they are so reluctant to communicate with you because they have no trust that adults will be there for them and so having people in our school who can build relationships with those kids and really help them prove to these children that school is that safe place that we want them to be there we want them to be successful is really the key to that and that's where I believe that having more people in our school to support those students would be the biggest benefit we could have Kristin we've talked on the phone tell me about some of the things you've experienced in your classroom so for me it's a lot of what has already been said but a huge issue is kids coming in that are impacted by trauma and mental health issues so again I met you know the primary level and so we're seeing kids that are not able to express how they're feeling besides literal screaming like they're screaming for help literally and so sometimes that comes out in you know suicide threats or death threats and we know that you know that they might not truly understand the complexity of that but we know that that speaks obvious volumes to what they're experiencing and the fact that they don't know what to do with those emotions or feelings with the current support you know I personally have no aid in my classroom and that is a huge issue and I would say one of the biggest issues especially primary faces these days is that we have such little tiny you know minds to meld and we need more support we need highly qualified people and those positions which are often not incentivized positions so they are revolving doors that they're not stable for our kids our kids don't see the same people sometimes because honestly the the wage that is getting paid to some of the positions it's very very low so they also need to work at the legislative level to make sure that we're fully funded because right now oftentimes we get grant money and that's over and gone and a year maybe two there goes that position there goes that support there goes that child that child's you know maybe only connection that they made out the door so that's really been a thing for us is that we want to make sure that legislate legislators hear us loud and clear I invite them into my school and invite them to my district I want them to see on the ground what's happening at a daily you know on a daily basis I want them to see that this is absolutely 100% necessary to have more support staff particularly in the younger years we also need to definitely hone in on primary education before they get to kindergarten because that's another piece of it is that we need to address the social emotional issues that are at hand with wraparound services as well for our families and make sure that we're act that we're addressing the core issues because when they come in to us they're not accessed in their education if they haven't have their basic needs met you know shelter like just love you know there's just so many issues that have need to be addressed that aren't being addressed so how can we expect to teach a kid that's just not that's hungry and you're saying screaming they Spade scream and suicide and death threats and you all shook your heads yes that this is a normal occurrence and what do they do they say it in class they they have said it in front of an entire class and that goes that speaks to what you know some of the teachers were saying earlier and that it traumatizes other kids they don't know how to digest that information they hear a death threat or a suicide threat and well you know we don't know how they're taking it and they might not think that it's actually credible or serious they've heard something that's pretty heavy and they might go home and talk about it and I don't know what's being said at home but I think that for you know five six seven year old that's very intense and I really worry about the mental health of the rest of my classroom when things like happen okay Tori what have you experienced well I think a lot of the same things that my peers and colleagues have already said I've personally witnessed students throwing tables over throwing chairs at adults at other students wood blocks I've been called every name in the book we take a lot of verbal and physical abuse as educators and it's very difficult as an educator to come in every day and be regulated for your students and I think we rely a lot on our colleagues to take our students during room clears or other times and it's it's draining and so there's no wonder that there is a huge lack of educators in the field currently and we're seeing more and more teachers not going into the field because of what's going on and where a lot of us are trained we go to trainings to deal with these things but it's hard when you're in the classroom by yourself to actually put those things into effect and so have you had to do room Clair's oh yes a lot there were it varies by class you know some years you don't do any and then some years you're doing two a week and so what happened was a room clear a room clear is pretty much where a student is so dysregulated that your students are not safe and so I've done room Clair's when other students were tossing chairs at kids just because they couldn't control their emotions and they didn't know how to convey what they were needing and so I told my students we need to get up and we need to go into the teacher next door and to her classroom and when I'm by myself I just tell my students to walk in and the other teacher will know what it means and it's gotten to the point where you see a classroom coming and you just know what it means when you do a classroom clear-out talked about the loss of learning is there any learning being done no and by that point leading up to that you're doing everything in your toolkit to regulate that child before you go to a room clear and so you could have lost 15-20 minutes more of learning time and during that process you're trying your best to stay regulated for your student but you're also becoming anxiety ridden and you know because you you are trying everything and sometimes it feels like like you're not good enough if you have to do a room clear because you can't get that student regulated and Tory when you have to do these classroom clear outs so if a student is flipping out you cannot touch them is that correct and we by law you cannot touch them in any way that's correct unless they're about to inflict physical harm on themselves then you know you might want to try to go in and calm them down as best as you can but really no no touching whatsoever and that's what leads to the hurting yes your kids are in the street you do a lot of hurting you can do a lot of hurting does it work not often they try to run around you they crawl under you they hit you that's usually when a lot of the physical aggression occurs is when you're trying to kind of guide them somewhere you're all shaking your head so when you're hurting these students they try to crawl under you or they hurt you yeah they see it as a game and so for a lot of these children now you're playing chase with them and instead of having to learn they get to run around the location of their choice okay Melinda tell me what you've seen in the classroom where you've experienced again much of the same things we've already heard I have had students who have screamed and yelled profanities at me and other students in the classroom and have been so agitated and angry that they were running around the room pulling tubs of books off shelves like and throwing them across the floor and clearing tabletops I'm including my teacher table top of my laptop onto the floor so destroying personal property and that's a situation that would cause a room clear because student other students in the room are unsafe flipping over desks tipping chairs those types of behaviors that are impossible to control when a student is that dysregulated and it's really frightening to the other children in the class and these are young some of you teach young kids take some seven-year-olds 5 & 6 6 & 7 yeah and these are not the special need now some of these are special needs but you guys are not special needs teacher to sort of general education classrooms or kids that come in unidentified so that's part of our job especially as kindergarten teachers I feel like we're detectives we're gate keepers where we're looking at our little ones that are coming in and assessing any lagging needs they have lagging skills they have and so that's one of the challenges as a kindergarten teacher and that's one thing where it would be really great to have that extra support because then we can be proactive instead of reactive because right now I feel like in our field we're really having to be reactive we have to just react to whatever situations are in front of us and how much better would it be for the student and their success if we could be proactive and have all those people in place have mental health people have counselors in place so that we're not having to pull staff from their other assigned jobs because that's what's happening right now principals are being pulled and you know into from their regular jobs other assistance counselors secretaries and so they're not able to do their own job and so that's what we're looking for is just more support so that we can meet all these kids needs yeah do you feel like there are enough mental health counselors in these schools no and all of our counselors are overloaded they have much larger caseload that's that then that is suggested at the local and national level I believe also and so all of that kind of boils down to funding because some of our elementary schools don't even have full-time counselors in the building some have zero right like a counselor who think maybe as halftime in one building halftime in another building so they're only there a few hours of the day or a couple days a week but if an incident happens on a day when the counselor is not in the building the administrator or building secretaries or someone else has to step in and try to handle the situation and this is not a you're saying this happens a lot around the building every day we have coaches are supposed to be helping the teachers teach and instead they're almost 100% time of the time working with with kids that are off can't can't manage themselves in the school environment so you know a lot of it is if we if an aid is available to take over your class then you can maybe spend the time to develop the relationships and talk to that student and find out what's going on with them but a lot of times you can't even leave your classroom B to deal with a student that's out of control because who's going to manage it you there isn't anybody else there so much go ahead so much of what we do is based on relationships with our students absolutely number one thing it's really difficult to build a relationship with a student who's dysregulated he doesn't trust adults and teachers or even with other students in the class your attention is focused on a student here trying to keep keep regulated right I have seen some efforts in my school district in terms of hiring more social workers our counselors are I believe all full-time and we've hired students as success coaches which is a person who is coming to the school to teach us about regulation the zones of regulation and but it's not enough she's half-time she's between you know two schools and again to build a relationship to build a relationship with our children you need to have time with them and so when there are off doing these other things you don't you don't have that time okay have you seen students physically hurt yes have you seen students physically hurt other students yes yes have you seen a teacher physically hurt yes what does that like it's traumatizing to see your colleagues upset it's traumatizing for other kids to see you being physically harmed have any of you been hurt I've been punched and kicked and I've had colleagues bitten slapped scratched with finger fingernail I've had fingernail marks down my arm I had a student that was up on top of a file cabinet was throwing pennies at everybody that walked by another student I've heard of a student who grabbed went into a classroom and grabbed must have like a plastic bat and a yardstick and was swinging out in the hallway so these kind of things happen I know they happen I haven't seen them actually but I know that that is out and I don't think it's intentional I don't think the students want to hurt someone they just don't know how to communicate their feelings and so their behavior they'll grab anything that they can and react with it but it's not it I don't want to feel like we're blaming students or we I heard so much about these ideas and so when they're when they're escalated they do react in ways that you wouldn't anticipate and so you may get scratched or kicked or yelled at or sworn at or but it's deep the escalating the situation and getting to the point where you can reason with that student and talk to them and at the end most likely the students will say I am so sorry I didn't mean to hurt you they really are they're sweet and it's at little children who have experienced trauma or have an adverse home life that they need help and they need supports and I don't feel like at some of our schools we have enough support and one thing we work on is repairing the relationship with the students so we want them to have the relationship with the rest of the class even after there's an incident so we all work very hard to make sure that that child has welcomed back into the class community that's an important piece of all of this escalation and de-escalation Tory you have you been injured yeah I've been slapped in the face before trying to get a student away from in front of school buses and things like that has it gotten worse over the last few years yes you talk to professionals that were you know that coming in substitute that were retired teachers and a lot of them won't return to substituting because it has gotten so extreme that they they don't feel safe coming in to substitute and they comment that it has gone worse over the years for sure any longtime teachers I mean yeah I've taught kindergarten since the mid 90s and I've definitely seen a change and dealing with things I I never would have imagined dealing with I'll never forget the first time a student cussed you know it dropped the f-bomb you know at recess that was shocking because we've just seen kind of a sea change in some of the behaviors coming in and and it's just it's really sad that's really where I am as an educator I want to meet the needs of these kids and and help them be successful learners yet I see them dealing with all kinds of other layers of issues that are making it hard for them to access out learning and I think I just wanted to put out there to that I think that you know we all want this to be a sustainable respected profession and we love what we do that's why we're doing it even though it's an extremely hard job and it's really sad to me that you know that many people won't go into this profession because of what they're hearing you know and so I've actually had student teachers that have you know we're with me for a short time and said you know I just don't know if I can do this I think this is just not what I'm cut out for and that makes me really sad and I also want to preserve you know the profession I want to be able to sustain this for the next I you know 20 years 2025 years and at the rate I'm going now I don't see how I couldn't burn out if I continue to feel unsupported because so many demands are put on me without having that support and continued support okay tell me about the the current laws how do they work do you feel like your hands are tied in dealing with these disruptive incidents and why I don't know this connects to the laws necessarily but I feel like the best way to prevent these deceptive incidents is before they start it's so much easier to tackle the issue while the kid is becoming deregulated than it is to handle it once they're already there and the way to do that is to have an individual who can check in with that child who has a relationship with them to know what their signs are when they're starting to become escalated you can get the kid what they need we're into the environment that's best for them before the situation blows up and when you're alone in your classroom one adult is not capable of doing that you're responsible for all learners in your room so having additional support who could come in and know that child and work with them when they're having a hard time could prevent so many of these issues we're seeing and I think also class size is a big deal so if you if you have the difference between having 18 kids and 38 kids is huge so it's the more students you have to have to try to manage and usually also the more students that you have that have trauma I mean it's just it's kind of the way it is right now it's like the more students you have the more trauma you have I remember when I haven't been teaching that long I've been teaching 13 years but when I first started teaching I'd have maybe one or two students in the classroom that had had an unstable home life now I literally might have almost every child in my class has an unstable home life in some way a homeless parent doesn't have a job the there we have very variety of relationships with the adults and their family they don't know who they're living with from day to day and it's it's you can understand why these students have such a hard time in the environment and really trusting adults I mean the adults in their lives have been have not been people that they feel comfortable they feel loved and trusted by maybe their teacher maybe I'm the only person that they feel comfortable and they feel safe with and so this is really important to me that all each of my students feel safe tell me about schools what schools have have any schools done a good job in working on this I think that part of what you were saying jenny is early intervention I know that my district we're working on pre-k getting pre-k started in our school district early intervention like you said when we see these kids coming dysregulated we know their family home life is tough we know that they're homeless we know that they're living in a shelter we need to check in with them every day we need to have lunch buddies but we need more adults in the classroom or those aides counselors everything every mmunity members okay what can the lawmakers do I mean what is a solution what what do you want lawmakers to address this session they need to fully fund education fully fund education fully fund education period fully funded QE you know we can we can talk more from there first it has to be fully funded for us to talk about anything else because we're just going to be spinning our wheels we know how much it costs to fully fund education and for the last 20 years the legislature has not met that goal they have not allocated that amount of money to education and do you think the number one when after fully funded would be getting support staff additional support staff in your classrooms in schools and not just support staff but trained support staff that yeah there are many opportunities to receive additional education and training there's restorative practices and many different avenues to get some additional training and what's been happening is we get some instructional assistants or some support staff in our buildings but they haven't had the opportunity to take these classes and some of them are five day classes or three day classes and if you don't have the funding to support the training then you're putting unqualified people in a position to handle the situation that they're not prepared to handle it could be downright dangerous what do you want people at home to know I think it's important people know that there are heroic teachers that are working hard every day and that's one thing I want to make sure that there's not the impression left from this that there aren't people doing good work there are people that show up every day they're doing their best work with what they have and they are doing it with a student success in mind and I just want everyone to make sure they know that and I have to say our district has really done a good job of training all of us on the trauma responsive approach which it really works but it does take time and so unfortunately so it takes time to get to know a student and understand their where they're coming from and learn those skills that you need to have order to manage the store help a student express some of those feelings so I've talked with a lot of you before this interview and you told me I just want to really paint a picture I feel like we could do a better job of explaining to people at home what's happening like this isn't just a student swearing at you one time I mean tell me what is happening in these classrooms this is a day after day experience in many classrooms with it used to be one or two students across the school and now it can be one or two students in every classroom who on a daily or multiple times daily are melting down and require response from the building administrator to come help or a room clear and they are throwing furniture they're running through the building going to the office throwing chairs at windows and it's it's really intense because these students aren't ready for they are not able emotionally to handle in the regular classroom environment then some of the students get pulled out and they actually are working one-on-one with an aide and that aide was originally assigned to say help with small groups so that actually impacts all the other students and the teacher because now instead of having an aide come in and help me with a group now I have to handle all the groups myself while this ADIS has two tasks to manage or help a student one-on-one because the student is just unable to function and then if what they decide well the student needs to be in a different learning environment there's not enough places for them to go and so there's no place for them to go and so we have to continue to have that one-on-one aid and again if we had more aides then that wouldn't be a problem but a lot of our resources that used to help us with teaching are now not available for that anymore and I think the cost of alternative placements for a lot of our students is so high that our districts can't afford to take these students and give them a setting that is best for them what else what else do you want to add about what's happening what's happening in the classroom families to know the impact on learning is not just on the day of that poor behavior it carries with to students throughout their educational career think of that student who in kindergarten lost so many hours of instruction because the teacher was busy helping those kids with high means by the time they reach me in fifth grade they're lacking some fundamental skills and our multiple grade levels behind so not only are we trying to help those kids who have those severe needs but now there are more students acting up because they can't meet the academic demands of their grade level and that carries with them and compounds as they grow through their educational career I also really want parents to know that we need their voices as well because even though they may think that or may not know how to get involved oftentimes parent voices are much louder than ours at a district level so we've seen parents accomplish big tasks that we would love to get accomplished but when it's heard from a parent at the district level it happens quite quickly as compared to you from teacher voices and just I know this is a big question but any why any theories that I think that was what I wanted to say I think we need to ask why why are our children coming dysregulated what's going on we know about the traumas what's going on our community what's going on with families how their health are they getting enough to eat are they giving exercise are they having their mental and emotional health our needs met do they have the vocabulary do they have the tools to say I'm scared I'm angry I'm upset and then what do you do with those tools what do you say okay how can I get myself back to where I'm ready to learn but as we do need to have some deep looking into why and this is not just a Portland problem you know having having taught in a different state and knowing many educators that now teach in Portland from other states this is absolutely not an isolated issue this is something that's been coming down the pipeline for a long time and it's happening everywhere and that's why you're seeing so many teacher strikes fighting for our kids because we need more and you said Jenny you said it feels so good to talk oh my goodness yes I just feel like we've got this community of us and we are all nodding our heads probably you know in unison it's so validating validating because it's a common lived experience yes it is I think it's important to remember it's not a teacher problem or a school problem but it's a community problem and as a community whether it's the local community whatever city we live in or the state community we need to come together and figure out a solution to this because again we just want our students to be successful and these are our kids these are these are our kids and these are the these are the people that are going to be taking care of us more older these are the people that are going to be inventing all sorts of amazing things I mean we we need to this is our problem it's not just a school problem it's not just a teacher problem it's our collective societal problem

Channel: KGW News

Views: 208,150

Keywords: kgw, news, portland, oregon, cristin severance, classrooms, crisis, outbursts, teachers, disruptive

Id: xfr2FeTdfPA

Length: 33min 55sec (2035 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 04 2019