My scariest teacher experience

Answer written originally to a question in Quora 

My scariest teacher experience: Controlling a classroom full of 5-to-8-year-olds running in a frenzy while a kid rushed at them with a handsaw.

I remember specially one creepy/scary moment I had as an extracurricular teacher of English as a Second Language for young kids, after school hours.

Each school had a different system for the after-school activities; in this one I was supposed to turn up at a specific hour and the children would be in our classroom, with a school monitor keeping an eye on them as they arrived from their different classes. It was a complicated group, with a mixture of  children between 5 and 8 years old, so their reading, writing and drawing capacities where quite different.

One day I could hear more noise than usual as I approached the room. I peeped in through the door’s window and saw mayhem going on. The monitor was nowhere to be seen and the children where shouting in what seemed more like panic than just playing around. I opened the door and I saw one of the older boys, X, running around with a handsaw in his hands!

X was a really clever and loving student, had a cute little brother in the same English group, but he had some sort of difficulty to control himself sometimes, being diagnosed and higly medicated for ADHD though not really identified what would trigger certain reactions. When this happened, he would become really violent and I was instructed to stop him by laying him on the floor and holding his arms and legs until he calmed down. I didn’t agree with this and usually just held him tight and talked quietly to him, and suspected all that medication was part of the problem and not the solution*. So… I had to jump into the classroom, calm everyone down, catch X and his saw without getting hurt by it nor getting anyone else hurt, carry X in my arms while I held the handsaw high and away from everyone and put it in the top shelf to find out later on where it came from, and hold X tight to calm him down, while talking quietly and soothingly to the boy, his brother who was crying and scared to bits, and the rest of the children. All this in a matter of seconds - but it seemed like ages!

In a matter of minutes, we were back to normal and checking homework!

*SIDE STORY: I often spoke to this boy’s parents, trying to find out what they knew and how they were coping with their son. I was worried because he was suffering and it was also affecting his little brother, who was often on the verge of tears when X got worked up. I kept asking them to get a second opinion by another paediatrician, or to ask to be referred to a second expert in children’s mental health. I was only one year in that school, so I lost contact.

About 8–9 years later, a car screeched to a halt next to me and a woman ran to grab me by my arm, I thought I was getting mugged! She was the kids’ mother, she had recognized me on the street and wanted to thank me for insisting in them getting a second opinion. The new doctor worked out brilliant, changed the medication and the boy managed to finish school, and was aiming to University.

This woman told me in tears I was the only person to doubt the kid’s doctor, and they were not sure about it, but finally took my advice and often thought of me since. We hugged and cried and laughed, X was now a happy, totally functional youngster, and they had always wanted to tell me about it ;^)