Introduction

Abstract

I go to her room and ask the student to leave, he appears agitated and loudly expresses his innocence to me as he leaves the room and when outside. I walk him away from the classroom. I notice rising anger in myself as the student interrupts me with more protestations of being hard done by. I feel myself close to shouting at the student, the anger upon me. I tell the student to move to ‘the bridge’, a space nearby which connects the mathematics and science departments. It is a glass corridor at first-floor level with double doors at either end. As I stand in this space facing the student, I have a sudden awareness that it will be simply the words we exchange which will determine how this interaction goes, whether it escalates, or is resolved. I also register an awareness that things are currently escalating.