Schools are some of the most common places for disaffected teens to become violent.
Our High School teachers are increasingly likely to be the victims of such outbursts.
What is being done about it?
The damage incurred when a teacher gets harmed by a violent student is overwhelming. It sends the message that teaching is a dangerous profession and that teachers are sitting ducks.
Our judges must consider this when deciding upon penalties. Because if they don’t make an example of offenders, they become complicit in the eventual outcome – great teachers will forgo the profession to choose something safer and less stressful.
Cases like the one below should encourage the public to pressure the courts to act. Immediately!
A teacher who was stabbed in the classroom by a 14-year-old pupil has recalled the horrific moment he was wounded with the six inch knife.
Vincent Uzomah, 51, from Leeds, was working as a supply teacher at Dixons Kings Academy, in Bradford, when the shocking attack took place in June 2015.
Speaking to Leah Green on a new 5Star documentary airing this week, Vincent said he has been unable to return to work since the terrifying incident and is still struggling to understand why he was targeted.
This case was particularly heinous due to the reaction of the student bystanders. I wrote about it here.
Doesn’t the authorities understand how potentially damaging it is for a teacher to be investigated for a sexual offense? Not to mention the stress involved.
German police are investigating a female teacher after a Muslim Imam refused to shake her hand – and then filed a complaint against her for harassment and discrimination.
Imam Kerim Ucar had been called in to see the female teacher at a school in Berlin over complaints about his son’s behaviour.
But when the teacher welcomed him into her office and offered him her hand, he reportedly refused to shake it.
Upset at the rejection, the teacher reportedly attempted to explain why it was important and when he repeatedly refused to shake hands, she decided to end the meeting.
But although the teacher made no formal complaint, the Imam went to police and filed a criminal complaint against the teacher at the Platanus School in Berlin, citing religious discrimination and xenophobic behaviour.
The Imam, a member of the conservative Shiite sect, said that the criminal complaint was justified because he had made it clear at the start of the conversation that he had no interest in shaking the hands of a woman as it was against his religion.
He said he had generously offered to place his hands on his chest as a sign of greeting, and was offended when she told him this was not enough.
He added: ‘I was certainly very calm about the whole thing, after all, I waited for a whole week for her to apologise. It was only when that did not happen that I instructed my lawyer to file a criminal complaint.’
His wife Dilek Ucar has meanwhile removed the children from the school. She told German broadcaster Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg: ‘I no longer have any confidence that they will teach the children in a correct way.’
If teaching can be very hard, substitute teaching can seem impossible at times.
Substitute teachers are often seen as a free opportunity for an unruly class to sabotage. Whilst they would have to be around their classroom teacher all year, a substitute teacher represents an opportunity to make a teacher’s day a living hell. Then this unwitting victim will be never be seen from again. No guilt, no real consequences.
So there is no surprise that this letter above went viral.
Most teachers gain their inspiration from the desire to give back to the community and invest in the potential of youth. But this is just the starting point. Noble intentions aren’t nearly enough.
You can’t just announce yourself as the saviour of impressionable children and expect it all to fall into place. You have to have the patience, dynamism, determination and communication skills that great teachers have. You have to overcome bad lessons, days, weeks and terms and move on. You’ve got to innovate, because your students are already sick of the “norm”, they need and expect more from a teacher they are going to appreciate.
And you can’t expect them to respect you just because you see more in them than they do in themselves. Kids don’t like being told they are wasting their life any more than adults do. Being preached to by somebody that professes to know you and thinks you are wasting your potential doesn’t always inspire. Sometimes it does the opposite.
I haven’t read Ed Boland’s book yet, but I predict that whilst its sarcasm against the public school system is perceptive and enlightening, it will be light on self criticism:
IN 2008, Ed Boland, a well-off New Yorker who had spent 20 years as an executive at a non-profit, had a midlife epiphany: He should leave his white-glove world, the galas at the Waldorf and drinks at the Yale Club, and go work with the city’s neediest children.
The Battle for Room 314: My Year of Hope and Despair in a New York City High School is Boland’s memoir of his brief, harrowing tenure as a public-schoolteacher, and it’s riveting.
There’s nothing dry or academic here. It’s tragedy and farce, an economic and societal indictment of a system that seems broken beyond repair.
The book is certain to be controversial. There’s something dilettante-ish, if not cynical, about a well-off, middle-aged white man stepping ever so briefly into this maelstrom of poverty, abuse, homelessness and violence and emerging with a book deal.
What Boland has to share, however, makes his motives irrelevant.
Names and identifying details have been changed, but the school Boland calls Union Street is, according to clues and public records, the Henry Street School of International Studies on the Lower East Side.
Boland opens the book with a typical morning in freshman history class.
A teenage girl named Chantay sits on top of her desk, thong peeking out of her pants, leading a ringside gossip session. Work sheets have been distributed and ignored.
“Chantay, sit in your seat and get to work — now!” Boland says.
A calculator goes flying across the room, smashing into the blackboard. Two boys begin physically fighting over a computer. Two girls share an iPod, singing along. Another girl is immersed in a book called Thug Life 2.
Chantay is the one that aggravates Boland the most. If he can get control of her, he thinks, he can get control of the class.
“Chantay,” he says, louder, “sit down immediately, or there will be serious consequences.”
The classroom freezes. Then, as Boland writes, “she laughed and cocked her head up at the ceiling. Then she slid her hand down the outside of her jeans to her upper thigh, formed a long cylinder between her thumb and forefinger, and shook it. She looked me right in the eye and screamed, ‘SUCK MY F***IN’ D***, MISTER.’”
Nobody is diminishing the stress and emotional trauma inflicted on many teachers throughout their working day. The bullying, name calling, pushing and disrespect can make a teacher despondent and at times on the edge.
The challenge is to find a way to stay on that edge, without losing it altogether. Because, as the footage below clearly shows, it is not a good look when teachers take the bait and lose all sense of reality and professionalism.
As hard as it is we must find a way to keep our composure and avoid a scene.
Sometimes you go home from work wondering if you’ve made any difference with certain students. Sometimes, when you least expect it, they surprise you with candid confessions like the one above.
Parents are entitled to complain about anything they feel strongly about, but so do teachers. If parents want to go to the trouble to embarrass a teacher for nothing more than the necklace around their neck, the teacher in question should be encouraged to file a complaint of their own:
In 1949, Act 14 (Sect.1112) made it illegal for a public school teacher to display any kind of religious symbol or emblem in the classroom.
This fall, two East Pennsboro Middle School students complained about the Star of David worn by their teacher.
“They are there to learn about education, not to learn about religious points of view,” said Ernest Perce, the parent who filed a formal complaint with the district over the necklace.
He says the law is being violated.
It’s also fair to point out that up until about two years ago, Perce was an outspoken atheist who protested the 2012 “Year of the Bible.”
“Today I am an Orthodox Christian,” he told ABC 27 Tuesday.
His child was one of those two students who took issue with the necklace.
“If a child is subjected to a teacher where a symbol of Judaism is allowed to skirt the law, I believe that a Muslim should be allowed to cover her head as well as a Christian to cover her head like the Bible commands,” he said.
ABC 27 did not get a reply from the school district’s attorney, but Perce did.
A letter he forwarded states that the school will not require the teacher to “discontinue wearing the religious symbol,” citing a ruling in western Pennsylvania that allowed a teacher assistant to wear a Christian cross.
Perce says if the district doesn’t act, the 1949 law states that the board could be fined and the teacher suspended.
I love being a teacher and I absolutely recommend it to anyone considering it as a career choice. It really bothers me that we hear many teachers advise against teaching. Even though these teachers have every right to be heard, and often make good points, their views tend not to be counterbalanced by those who adore what they do.
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