Today teachers complain more and more of one or a small number of students that disrupt their classes. It is not just the case of beginner teachers. Even experienced ones have had one day or another to face this issue. There is no one solution to these problems but rather appropriate strategies have to be found depending on the situation.

Sometimes a disruptive student is challenging you and even threatening your competence. And you feel as if your credibility is on the line with the whole class. That is important, but not enough to let it govern your responses. Your responsibility is to manage the crisis while enabling the rest of the class to get on with their learning.

The golden rule is: keep calm. Give disruptive students minimum attention. Time spent on this issue is time lost from real teaching, and may lead to increased turbulence in the rest of the class. If the student is seeking attention, the more you give him, the more you encourage his behaviour.

You can't ignore him, but don't fuel the debate. There are always others in the class on the fringe of being disruptive, for whatever reason: if one student is seen to succeed in rattling your cage, they are more likely to join in, especially if the actual teaching is disrupted by the time you spend with him.

Know what sanctions are available to you. The last thing you want to do is to be in trouble yourself, but you also need to be confident that the school will back your decisions. The simplest and cleanest sanction is often to exclude the student. As long as you are polite but authoritative and positive about it: "We can't resolve this now. Please leave the class, and come to see me later, when we can discuss it properly" - you will probably produce the right effect.

It is unrealistic to pretend that you can exclude or sanction a student and not be distracted by the experience. The other students will be similarly distracted. If it is possible to move into an exercise or similar activity in the aftermath, do so. It enables everyone to calm down, or at the very least to vent their grumbles without further whole-class disruption. But do nothing to make the situation worse.

<B>MCL</B>