Learning to manage behaviors

I have learned a lot of different things in this class. One of the main ones I want to share with you all today is behavior management. We have a very challenging classroom. Some students in it tend to be a little rambunctious and have problems following directions. A perfect example of this is one of our students will act out if they get told no and they escalate extremely quickly. It goes from him or her getting told no to throwing chairs around the classroom (this could actually describe a number of my students). Another problem that we have is that once one student escalates another is much more likely to follow their example while they are in the middle of a meltdown. A way that we handle this is a three step process. The first step is isolation. We immediately isolate the student from their peers so he doesn't drag any other students with them. This includes if they become dangerous we evacuate the classroom. This has happened about twice a week since we have been there. Second is not feeding in to their behavior. We do tend to not show reactions and we let them burn themselves out by not giving them the energy to work with. And finally we immediately call for support. We have a whole staff that is engaged in coming in to classrooms and extracting students that may be a danger to themselves or others. One thing that I have noticed is that the students that tend to act out also tend to be some of the smartest, and I think there is a correlation, but unfortunately I will not have enough time to explore this avenue. Does anybody else have any suggestions on how to handle situations like this.

As challenging as this school is I believe that it is a good experience and my students are awesome. They all have unique personalities and all of them are smart and capable. I definitely would not have picked a different classroom if I had the opportunity and this class has definitely made me consider a minor in Special Education as well as Elementary Education.