Calling the Dean

An experience recently where I had to reach out to administrative assistance was regarding an issue between two students in my class.  I am still unaware of the conflict details or what the root issue was about, but these two students were exchanging some tense words between the two of them during class.  I am the kind of teacher that is not okay with any tense behavior or conflicts between my students in my class.  Even if there is a major discord between students, I work with them on strategies to help them coexist and cope with the issue in a professional and calm way.  For these reasons, even for the slightest incident, I will pull the students out in the hall to have a quick conversation to nip the issue right then and there, which works without needing dean assistance most of the time.  In this case, one student refused to step out to talk to me, which was very odd for him, belligerently insisting that he did not do anything wrong.  I tried to explain to him that no one is in trouble, I just wanted to privately check in with both of them before returning to class to make sure there was not a continuing issue.  In this interaction, the dean stationed in my hall came over to check on me to ask if I needed assistance, which I asked if he could help me bring him out so we could have that quick conversation.  The student became very upset when the dean came to ask him to step out and this resulted in some egregious disrespectful and unnecessary behavior on the part of the student, to the point where the dean decided to remove him from school until a required parent conference could occur.  This caused some damage to me and the students relationship because he felt as though he was being suspended for the original issue, and not the refusal to follow directions.  After several weeks, he did come back and apologize to me and we were able to have a restorative conversation about it.  He is doing well now and has shown improvements in his self-discipline.  

The experience was very stressful to me because I do not like having conflicts, especially those that carry across days, with students.  It did work out in the longer run and we are back to normal now, but I am thinking back to how the situation could have been different had I handled it differently or maybe not asking the dean for help.  I think this was definitely a learning situation for me and my students and I used it as a talking point to discuss those kinds of situations with other students to help them understand where I am coming from and how we can all handle them better in the future.