Danger Zone

The first college I taught at should not exist, but it does. I will call it The Place, even-though it doesn't deserve the anonymity. The Place was rife with bad practices, many of which will probably fill future posts, but today's post deals with an occurrence that resulted with me handing in my resignation.

I didn't want to answer the phone as I could see it was The Place calling, and they could only be calling for one thing: they needed a substitute. Money had been short lately as a result of adjuncting as a career, and The Place paid by the hour in the classroom, so I reluctantly answered the phone. Within an hour I was standing in the computer lab of The Place's small, un-air-conditioned, seven-story, downtown building. It was 5:30 PM and class started in 30 minutes. I picked up the plans for the class and was horrified to see that the plans only said teach them about Microsoft Word. What about Word? Bibliographies? MLA? Resumes? How to type in Word? I swallowed the panic and realized that since the class was a beginners computer class, I probably just had to show them the basic uses alongside of some potential uses for the future. At 6:00 PM, the class started to enter the class, it wasn't until 6:30 PM that the majority of the class showed up. I guessed timeliness wasn't stressed in the class. I completed an icebreaker and started my interactive lecture. Suddenly I heard a bag rustling, the kind of rustling that a Sun Chips bag makes, and then I heard sfizzzz as someone unscrewed a soda lid. Looking back, I handled the situation all wrong.

I took a break and informed the entire class that no food or drinks were allowed in class, then I continued. I was interrupted by a loud female voice, "who the fuck do you think you are, we ain't children?" I looked to the back corner of the room and there was a woman eating chips while giving me the stink-eye. Stay calm I told myself.

"Those are the rules, sorry, they apply to everyone, even me." I smiled waiting for her response. She kept eating her chips and staring at me. What was I supposed to do? If I didn't stop her I would lose my authority I thought. "Please, dispose of the food, or put it away for later, We will be taking a break soon." She stood up; now, I consider myself a competent woman that can handle herself in just about any situation, including a physical one, but the speaker looked like one of the few women that could eat me for lunch. She was taller than me, larger than me, and had a do-rag on, which conjured up false stereotypes that seemed true in the moment.

"I'm a grown woman, and some white bitch ain't going to tell me what to do. What you gonna do if I don't listen? Nothin, that's what. Punk ass." She raised her arms in the air and mockingly lurched my direction. The class was silent, but my mind was panicking.

"This doesn't have to be a big deal; if you want to talk about it the hall we can, but this type of behavior is disrespectful and unacceptable. Please, let's talk about it."

"I ain't talkin about nothin, go on an teach yo stupid lesson, I'm staying here."

I didn't know what to do; no one had ever gone over a circumstance like this, so I told her to excuse herself from the room or I would have security do it. The truth was, I didn't even know if security was on duty yet as they usually got in around 8:00 PM or so, and I didn't know how to get a hold of them.

She charged my desk and swiped it with her arm, sending my laptop (in its case) flying. I froze; she was blocking the door. Then she grabbed my purse and threw it across the room. Suddenly, I snapped. "Get out! Now! I'm calling security!" I grabbed a student's phone off of the desk in front of me and started to turn the screen on. She ran out of the room. The class went crazy. I ran for my purse and got out my phone and started to call the operator at The Place in hopes they knew about security. As I was doing this I asked if everyone was okay. After that, I told them to go on break but to stay on that floor. I eventually reached the desk of a teacher on another floor. She told me that The Place no longer had a security officer, so that teacher gathered another teacher and they went looking for the girl. Ten minutes or so later, they reported that they thought she had left the building. Thought? What if she went to get a gun, or was waiting for me outside? I nervously went on with the class that night without anymore incidents. Before I left, I filled out an incident report. Another teacher walked me to my car.

The next week I was called into a meeting about the incident. Apparently, the girl had been recruited from a drop-in shelter in the city. She didn't have a place to live, so she was under a lot of stress. The Place then informed me that what I had done was all wrong, that I should have taken the girl away from the class and not been so firm on the rules. Finally, they said the girl was willing to apologize and we would have another meeting next week when she would say sorry to me. She was going to get absolutely no punishment except to say sorry. Well, I didn't agree but I needed the job, so I showed up the next week, but the girl didn't. The Place said she must be under some sort of stress and that I should understand that, and that she would remain enrolled. So many thoughts went through my head, but it became clear that The Place thought of her as a much needed paycheck, since the student population had dropped from 500 to 220 within that last year, and they thought of me as replaceable. I finished the term, but when they asked for my availability for the next term, I gave them my resignation letter and started at a real community college that restored some respect to my views of community colleges.

Yes, when I look back at this story there are things I did wrong, but I had never been trained to deal with a possibly violent student, and I would do things differently next time. However, I don't completely blame the student; recruiting homeless students seems so wrong to me; how is a student supposed to concentrate on schoolwork and class when they don't know where they will sleep that night? Also, what type of school doesn't have security, or chooses to side with an aggressive student? While I'm not glad the experience happened, it woke me up to potential dangers of being in a classroom and gave me the confidence to deal with potential ones in the future. Another incident did happen a year later, that student was dealing with PTSD. Because of the first incident, I was able to handle the second one well enough that most of class hadn't realized anything had happened, then the situation led to teacher training that dealt with PTSD, to which I was able to share my experience and growth.