Is Your School or District Facing Post-Pandemic Chaos?
Learn how to de-escalate any angry student or parent in 90 seconds or less.
If you are a superintendent, principal, or teacher, you are probably witnessing a profound change in student behavior. Student misconduct, aggression, bullying, incivility, rudeness, disrespect, and disobedience dominate many school campuses. The old methods of discipline no longer work, resulting in stress and burn-out.
"Public schools reported needing training on supporting students’ socio-emotional development and training on classroom management strategies." NCES, 2022 Study
The National Center for Education Statistics reports that in a 2022 survey of 846 schools across the country
- 56% reported student misconduct
- 49% reported rowdiness outside the classroom
- 48% reported disrespect towards teachers
- 72% reported chronic absenteeism
Are Your School Board Meetings War Zones?
If you are a school board member, you may feel that school board meetings have become war zones. Emotional parents try to drive their agendas, monopolize the conversation, and are not interested in abiding by rules of civility.
Unfortunately, many school board members are not prepared to deal with these situations constructively. Sometimes they try to exert control and authority to shut down conversations. At other times, they become abusive themselves.
If you are an educator, you are frustrated over student and parent misbehavior. You experience disrespect and outright insults from students and parents. You find yourself becoming angry even when you know your anger will only make things worse. You are unappreciated and unsupported by your students, community, and your colleagues. The constant strife makes you anxious and concerned. Combative parents and students can be scary and intimidating. And, at the bottom, you are sad. Sad that your vocation for teaching has sunk to such a low state.
If you are a school board member, you may become anxious about school board meetings as you never know who will show up and what they will do. What was once a quiet, uneventful civic duty has become stressful. You want to serve, but cannot deal with the yelling and screaming. You feel out of control and in over your head with the anger directed towards you and your school board colleagues.
The Problem: Uncontrolled Emotions
The problem of student and parent misbehavior comes down to one fact: Uncontrolled emotions.
Students, depending upon their age, require years of experience and training to develop emotional control. The pandemic shut the growth curve off and sent students backwards in emotional development. They are showing this in their unruly, disobedient, disrespectful conduct. Parents are no better off. Even on a good day, most parents are stressed, anxious, and overwhelmed. Add in inflation, political polarization, and deep anger, and you have emotional bombs going off in schools and at school board meetings.
Here's The Secret: You Cannot De-Escalate Strong Emotions With Logic
Education is based on the assumption that humans are rational. Education is therefore rationally-based. Unfortunately, this assumption has been proved incorrect by neuroscience. Humans are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. As an administrator, principal, or teacher, you cannot de-escalate student or parental anger with logic.
Solve Emotional Problems With Emotional Tools
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I was dealing with two fifth graders really getting into it. One had emotional instability and the other has autism, so both process rather differently.
I have been using affect labeling and started right in with modeling how they are feeling. Then, I asked each of them to share what happened and as they listened, they were able to talk about labeling the feelings. They came to realize how their actions escalated each other, and how the other felt. This is the first time I had people affect label each other like you did in your presentation example, and it was profound.
Kristen Hankins - Indiana Elementary School Principal
The DEEP Skills Training
DEEP is an acronym for De-Escalating Emotional People, a set of skills developed by professional mediator and dispute resolution professor Douglas E. Noll, JD, MA. Mr. Noll developed the DEEP Skills in 2005 and refined them over 13 years in the award-winning Prison of Peace project. DEEP skills will show you how to calm any angry student or adult in literally 90 seconds, using techniques based on cutting-edge neuroscience. DEEP Skills are counter-intuitive but extraordinarily effective.
The Deliverables
The DEEP Skills core training consists of a 2-4 hour in-person or virtual workshop followed by four 1-hour weekly group coaching sessions. The workshop is highly interactive to build skills quickly and efficiently. The follow-up group coaching calls provide accountability and support for the time it takes these perishable skills to become natural habits.
Here’s what people are saying about DEEP Skills training
"I attended Doug Noll’s training sessions last year. In comparison with all of the trainings FUSD provided to all teachers over my past 25 years in the district, I found his training to be the most valuable and relevant for all stakeholders, hands down. Ironically, we get paid to participate in it!
The training is so relevant and meaningful for all employees (and for all relationships in general), that I would like to recommend that it become a prominent part of our staff development meetings. In addition, it would perhaps be even more awesome to schedule it for all students as a campus-wide rally, and in smaller groups such as what the After School Program offers. Many of our student's parents REALLY need it.
It is so good, I have signed up for the extended sessions, again. Making new ways to more effectively relate with people requires practice and support - even more reason for making the training a regular part of our weekly staff development schedule so that all will be able to participate in it as a unified team."
Paul Germain, High School Teacher
Robert Creo
The Most Powerful Teacher
“Doug Noll is one of the most powerful speakers and teachers I have ever seen. He has taken complex ideas from cognitive psychology and neuroscience, distilled the essence of what is important to us to de-escalate strong emotions in conflicts, and presented his ideas in an entertaining, easy-to-follow, and engaging presentation.”
Joy Herhold
Endless Empowerment While Helping Others
“Your work is the stepping stone for endless empowerment to own and be our highest vibe self. And yes, we help others do the same. With sublime respect and gratitude, Joy!”
Dottie SInor
Conversations That Used To Become Arguments No Longer Do
I've been using these skills with my 10-year-old son, not as a means of de-escalation, but to avoid conflict altogether. Conversations that used to become arguments no longer do. In the past, his response was to shut down and get defensive. When he tells me the story, I speak to the emotions instead. He feels heard and understood and has been so much more open to feedback. It has had such an amazing impact on our communication, which makes for an even better relationship.
DEEP Skills Pricing Tier
Header | Tier 1 | Tier 2 | Tier 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
School | $100,000 | $25,000 | $2,500 |
Minimum Term | 12 | 6 | 1 |
Training Fee | $10,000 | $15,000 | $20,000 |
Term in Months | 12 | 6 | 1 |
Moneyback Guarantee | 100% | 75% | 30 Day Money Back Guarantee |
# of Cohorts of School Principals or Teachers, 30 people per Cohort, virtual or in-person | 15 | 5 | 1 |
Four Weekly Group Coaching sessions via Zoom, per cohort | Yes, no extra charge | Yes, no extra charge | Yes, no extra charge |
90-minute live webinar for district parents, recorded for on-demand replay | Yes | Yes | No |
Availability For Problem-Solving, Coaching, and Advanced Training | Unlimited | Limited | None |
Train up to 20 Facilitators to train district teachers | Yes, no extra charge | Yes, $500 per Facilitator | Yes, $1,000 per Facilitator |
Term of License of Developing Emotional Competency and Advanced Emotional Competency Online Courses | 12 months | 6 months | 1 month |
School Board De-Escalation Training Virtual or In-Person | Yes, no extra charge | Yes, $10,000 per | Yes, $20,000 per |
Four Weekly School Board Group Coaching sessions via Zoom | Yes, no extra charge | Yes, no extra charge | Yes, no extra charge |
Superintendent and Senior Leadership De-Escalation Training Virtual or In-Person | Superintendent and Senior Leadership De-Escalation Training Virtual or In-Person | Yes, $10,000 per | Yes, $20,000 per |
Four Weekly Superintendent and Senior Leadership Group Coaching Sessions Via Zoom | Yes, no extra charge | Yes, no extra charge | Yes, no extra charge |
About The Course Teacher, Douglas E. Noll, JD, MA
Douglas E. Noll is an award-winning author, speaker, and trainer. After 22 years as a trial lawyer, Mr. Noll became a peacemaker and mediator. Today, he helps people solve deep and intractable conflicts and teaches others to do what he does. Mr. Noll is an adjunct professor of law at the Pepperdine School of Law Straus Institute where he teaches Decision Making Under Uncertainty Conflict.
Mr. Noll is the co-founder of the award-winning Prison of Peace Project, in which he and his colleagues teach people incarcerated in maximum security prisons to be peacemakers and mediators.
Mr. Noll has trained mediators and leaders in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia in his innovative peacemaking and mediation processes. He has personally mediated over 1,500 disputes, including sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church and criminal victim-offender cases.
Mr. Noll's honors include California Lawyer Magazine Attorney of the Year, a Purpose Prize Fellow, and Best Lawyers of America Lawyer of the Year.
Mr. Noll has written four books, his latest released on September 12, 2017, entitled De-Escalate: How to Calm an Angry Person in 90 Seconds or Less (Atria/Beyond Words). He is the creator of online video courses in legal negotiation and emotional de-escalation and has conducted dozens of webinars. His video offerings on YouTube have garnered over 87,000 views.
On a personal note, Mr. Noll is a jazz violinist, aircraft and helicopter pilot, ski instructor, 2nd degree black belt, tai chi master, and whitewater rafter. He lives with his wife Aleya Dao in the foothills of the central Sierra Nevada south of Yosemite National Park.