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Disruptive Student Management

Course Description:

The PPCT Disruptive Student Management Course is designed to control the “physical actions” of student violence. This course does not explore the psychology of violence or the socioeconomic or family issues that lead to violence. Instead, the course focuses on controlling actions of physical violence directed at another student, a teacher, or another staff member.

The techniques are very specific to actions of physical violence that teachers commonly encounter. They are not based on a general premise of self-defense that simply utilizes martial arts techniques; rather they are based on principles of control and/or evasion.

This basic 8-hour course is segmented into skills that are designed to control adolescent violence and skills that are designed to control teenagers who are fighting or have assaulted a teacher.

Course Goals:

• To instruct a subject control system that is considered reasonable by teachers, administrators, parents and the courts.

• To teach control techniques that have minimal probability for student injury.

• To teach a subject control system based upon techniques that do not rely on size and strength and that can be easily learned and retained.

Course Topics:

Aggression and the Sympathetic Nervous System
The implications of the SNS are especially important in the capacity of controlling or separating fighting students. The typical fight between students induces anger or fear, emotions which are the basis of SNS activation. The SNS activation will manifest in the form of tunnel vision, auditory exclusion, and a failure to recognize or comprehend a teacher’s instructions to stop fighting.

This chapter examines survival stress research and provides participants with information that will enhance their safety in combative situations and recommendations regarding issues related to critical incident management.

Adolescent Escort Controls
Escorting or containing a violent adolescent child in a method which offers the teacher maximum control with minimal effort is critical to protecting the child from unnecessary injury. PPCT escort techniques are designed to protect the child from injury, yet still provide teachers with immediate control.

Separating Techniques
The intensity of two fighting students is an exceptionally hazardous situation to manage for a teacher. Teachers can be injured if they simply move in-between the fighting parties, and a student can be injured if he/she is pulled in a manner that leaves them defenseless. Therefore, the PPCT Separation Techniques are designed around two premises: First, they are to be executed from the rear to protect the teacher from flailing fists. Second, they are based on balance displacement principles that move the student out of the combat zone.

Physical Aggression Management
On occasion, the headlines bear the news that a teacher has been beaten, stabbed or shot to death by a student. While these attacks are infrequent, they do occur, and there is little doubt that proper training could prevent at least some of the serious injuries or deaths. The techniques taught in this system are designed to control physical aggression from students who are often larger and stronger than the teacher is. They are based upon the philosophy of evading the assault and retreating and are not offensive.

Disarming
This chapter gives teachers and staff members the skills and knowledge necessary to disarm an armed student when all other survival strategies have failed. It examines the issues one needs to consider in preparing mentally and physically to disarm an assailant and presents the three basic steps in the PPCT weapon disarming system: