If you read much literature on responses to students you will find they generally come in four flavours: Fight, Flight, Freeze, Faun*. When faced with a high stress situation, the student will typically pick one of these four categories as a response (well, their instincts will pick one, it’s not like they are making a conscious selection like ordering off a menu). Whichever they choose, remember that for them that response serves some purpose that has been successful in the past at helping them to confront the triggering person or event. That's why they keep doing it. 

Of these four, Fight is probably your least desired choice and typically looks like an argumentative student, and (hopefully) rarely, one who will get physical or threatening. Here they are trying their best to dominate you into submission, or, engage in a conflict to avoid whatever the trigger was instead. This is one that you tend to recognize quickly, especially in some students who are quick to jump to it.

Students who Freeze may shut down and become non responsive, they may put a hood up or make themselves small and try to shy away. This one can be really hard to identify. They may appear to be listening or compliant (or the opposite if you are giving them direct commands and they aren’t taking action) but internally their brain is on complete lock down. They are unable to comply with instructions as their stress response has paralyzed their higher order thinking. 

Flight can look similar in that Flight doesn’t always mean they leave the room, sometimes it means they just find ways to flee from the stress response. At times, it can also look like deflection where is another way of trying to flee from the uncomfortable feeling of stress response.

With Faun, the student will likely try to act as if you are buddies, try and laugh or joke their way their way out of it. This is typically the most preferred option for educators since it is pretty non-threatening and students may seem very agreeable. This agreeableness though is to help them out of the stressful situation and not a commitment to doing better. They need their thinking brain back on to do that. While in a stress response, it’s not their thinking brain doing the driving.

So here’s some friendly advice, if they are prone to pick Flight, Freeze or Faun…LET THEM! Build strategies to help them find success with this strategies while you are teaching them other coping skills. If you remove these three as options, then the only one they have left is Fight. So when the explosion inevitably happens, know that many times it could have been avoided by giving them their other outs. 

Now this isn’t to say that Fight isn’t some students' first instinct, because it absolutely is. As mentioned, for these students, they have met with success using this strategy, or have met with failure when trying the other strategies. Every student (and adult for that matter) tends to adopt strategies that they are finding success of some sort with (either consciously or unconsciously). The student who throws a tantrum has been rewarded for that in some way and so keeps doing it. If they find that it isn’t working like it used to, they may feel that they simply aren’t having a big enough tantrum and will continue to escalate it despite your best efforts to show it isn’t working (keep in mind, it may work for them in non-school settings which is why it is still a go-to strategy).

By knowing that there are different responses, a key strategy can be to retrain the response when you can to be one you are more able to deal with. In our school, students who need to leave the room quickly (Flight) before they explode are encouraged to do so. They can come to a space that we have designated for them (the office, guidance room, etc) and take some time to get their head back together. Our approach with students is that unless you leave with a grand exit (slamming doors, cursing, etc) then you can sit and be left alone until you are ready to return though we are here to talk if needed. If they do leave with a grand exit, then once they have regulated themselves we will have to deal with that before we create our classroom re-entry plan so it is not that the student can do as they like, it's that they have a predetermined response selected that we can more easily deal with.

Fighting against our instinctive responses is pointless, we simply aren’t built to ignore them and learning to master them takes a lot of skill and maturity that many students don’t have yet. Working with them to create better outcomes is part of the role of educators. This takes time and patience but it will ultimately produce a students who has the tools to regulate themselves, which is an invaluable skill for all of us.

*Some lists don't include Faun but I have seen too much of it to discount it. It's been suggested that it is more typical in females than males though I would suggest it is more accurately a response for those who feel a balance in power, typically psychical. It's the same reason you might see people take it nice, slow and soothing against animals since they recognize that fight and flight are unlikely to work.