There’s an important distinction to make between what toxic behaviors might arise in an English 101 classroom and what toxic behaviors have, in fact, come up in my class. In theory, one might find really alarming behaviors that would take taxonomic precedence: issues of immediate physical or emotional danger, such as violent behavior or language that was abusive on the basis of race, religion, disability, sexuality, gender, etc. Those sorts of things have immediate and damaging consequences and so they need to be dealt with in an immediate and conclusive way. There are, however, some more low-key toxic behaviors I’m battling with in my class:

• lack of personal responsibility: not doing work thoroughly, not asking questions about things that are unclear, not minding due dates. Especially as the quarter goes on, my students are becoming more and more irresponsible about, in particular, due dates. I’ve been pretty lax about due dates on a case-to-case basis because my priority for them is more that they get the work done at all than that they get it done on time. However, it’s getting really out of control. I’ve also started getting incomplete or insufficient work—which wasn’t the case earlier in the quarter. My read on the situation is that students are taking the laziest possible interpretation of any given prompt and failing to ask clarifying questions when they don’t know what prompts are asking for. In college and in the adult world, that kind of irresponsibility and—frankly—laziness doesn’t fly. And it’s exhausting to me to keep up with as I’m trying to grade and keep track of who’s turned in what.
• high school mindset vs. college mindset: my students are more interested in checking the boxes that get them to a technical complete than in actually getting everything they can out of the class. I attribute this to a high school mindset, although maybe that’s not it. It seems to me that the homogeneity of the high school experience (everyone satisfying the same basic, checklist criteria to get the same qualification) sets my students up to be disinterested. This also manifests, like lack of responsibility, in arguable sub-par work. I have students that I know are intelligent and articulate and creative who turn in work to me that is mundane, incoherent, and cookie-cutter because it technically satisfies the rubric—when they could practice their skills and gifts in new ways that would grow them.
• disrespect: for me as the teacher; for other students, who may finding value in this experience even if they are not; and, ultimately, for themselves. This class represents their money (to be fair, for some of them it represents their parents money or scholarship money) and is, in fact, their own time spent. Failing to engage or engaging in distracting behavior isn’t a productive use of the time they’ve paid to spend in my classroom. It’s also just plain rude, which is frustrating to me and to other students who are trying to learn.
• their preconceived ideas of self: many of my students have articulated in their personal letters, literacy narratives, and/or in freewrites that they don’t believe themselves to be good writers or communicators. A girl recently told me in her midterm conference that her most beloved high school English teacher told her in no uncertain terms that her bilingualism is and always will be an obstacle for her to overcome as a communicator. Ouch! She is one of my best students: her writing is clear, her ideas are original and well-articulated, and the questions and contributions she has during class are always insightful and useful. How can I help her overcome this potentially toxic image of herself? How do I—especially as someone who is not bilingual—try to point out the ways her bilingualism can be an asset to communication, not an obstacle?
• potentially, my own behavior: it would be ignorant to dismiss the possibility that things that I do could be toxic to my students’ learning environment. Since I would never intentionally behave in a way that was harmful to my students or to their learning, I may not be in the best position to identify those behaviors—but it’s possible all the same that they exist. Am I unintentionally ablest or in other ways biased? Are my grading practices fair? Do I set and articulate reasonable expectations of my students? Do I do what I say I do, per my own syllabus?

While I am concerned day-to-day with these sorts of behaviors and their impact on the health and effectiveness of my classroom, I also think that learning to curb them is part of the ongoing learning curve of being and becoming a teacher. Time will tell how and to what extent these—and other—toxic behaviors and attitudes continue to manifest in my classrooms.