Now looking to the future, you must ask: is this the type of school where fighting occurs frequently? If so, you may want to reconsider where you are teaching because you could be putting not only students in danger, but also yourself by not being able to more quickly thwart the physical confrontations. Good luck.

In my ten years of teaching (in some pretty rough urban places), I’ve only had one physical fight in my classroom, which I wasn’t able to really prevent – because it started in the hall, and spilled into my room at the beginning of the hour.

There have been countless fights outside of my classroom – but regardless – you need to have a plan in place.

It’s your job to maintain order as much as possible, and protect the kids and yourself. What I mean by protecting kids — protecting the ones that *aren’t* fighting. This means crowd control. I would’ve ordered all the other kids to line up right outside my door, to protect them from flying desks and fists. Separate the audience from the fight.

I have broken up a few fights. It’s usually because there isn’t anyone else around (working in a really crappy situation), and it isn’t going to stop unless the teachers stop it… so I’ve needed to bear hug kids from behind and drag them off. Move them to separate rooms, and wait for help. But normally, I don’t have to break anything up. In fact, at the school I’m at now, teachers are expected NOT to break up fights – there’s a few staff (teachers, coaches, etc) that are trained in it – but the rest of us are on crowd-control duty.

So were you right? Well, you should have stepped in and deescalated the situation when it was verbal. When it got physical, you should have moved the innocent kids out of harm’s way.

But I’m sure you’ll have an idea what to do next time!

You should’ve stopped it before the physical fight began. If a physical fight does break out under your watch, yes, you need to step in and try to break it up. Don’t let your students walk all over you. You aren’t there to be their buddy.

Even though you didn’t want to get hurt in the incident, you could have yelled at them or shown some sort of discipline. If you don’t feel as if you should be in this position, maybe you should try teaching younger children in elementary classes that are less likely to get in fist fights. By showing authority, the class will see you as respectable and maybe next time when this happens, they will think twice about hurling books and desks at one another.

You did the CORRECT thing don’t sweat it.

Could you have controlled the fighting by just taking control through your voice, admonishing them for behaving inappropriately? Evidently you could not, because you didnt, which would indicate you do not have the authority in your class, which is something you should work on. Now the kids know they can do whatever they want, because you will not do anything to control them. And if you do not have control, who does? YOU are the adult, you should take control, and if you cannot through physical force, then do so through some other way

I would not want to be a student in your class, because I would not feel safe…if someone starts beating me up, you will not do anything to stop them or help me