Are You A Creative Writing Instructor At A University? How Do You Handle Potentially Dangerous Students?
I'm curious to examine how teachers of creative writing at colleges and universities, students who seem to actually write about things and disruptive, potentially dangerous to themselves and others? The teachers are dedicated to mental health records of the student-to? Allow students to move away from violence or disruptive writing in an effort not to be too much trouble? You, proactive in trying to help these students? Does it have to be trained to deal with problem students? As a student of creative writing in college, I often see something disturbing because in the workshops. I wonder what teachers think of everything. Thanks to the answers!
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Instructors don’t have access to that kind of information. If they have good reason to believe that a student is suicidal or a threat, they may tip off the counseling center or mental health services, who, depending on the situation, may reach out to the student to offer help or even require an evaluation as a condition of continued enrollment at the school.
Usually they are not encouraged to step in and try to handle the situation themselves. They’re not trained to do so. Some universities have some sort of training workshop or handout to help profs/TAs with warning signs to look for and how approach these situations. Others don’t.
Part of the problem is that it’s difficult to judge from creative writing whether there’s a real problem or if it’s just, well, creative writing. A very well adjusted author may find interest in writing from the perspective of a psychopath or pedophile or some other disturbed persona, and it takes some guts to do so because of the unfortunate tendancy to read everything as somehow autobiographical. Sometimes good literature comes out of it, though, and most creative writing instructors at the college level are not going to censor student work on account of offensive content.
That said, a lot of writing students do use writing as an outlet for personal issues and if there’s a pattern–not just a few pieces–and/or warning signs in behavior, there might be cause to tip off mental health services. If you’re truly concerned, you can do so yourself. It would be anonymous.