I honestly feel like I could be stabbed in the eye and blinded with a pair of scissors and admin would send the kid back to me and tell me to be more “positive” with the kid.
Not to mention other students who have to be put up with being slapped, kicked and punched.
What is the answer here?
What do your school districts do for these situations?
Well my last district blamed the teacher. And sent the kid back to class immediately. My current building/district has a resource teacher that ONLY handles behaviors. As far as I can tell she deals with it, not the P.
If children were being injured by another student I'd be tempted to describe the incident in an email to admin and let them know that the safety of students is at risk and due to the child who is unable to control his/her behavior. If admin simply sends them back with no intervention legally you need to cover yourself.
I'm honestly not sure what the best thing to do is in those situations. At one school I was at, it happened so many times and was so violent (and it was a KINDERGARTENER) that the police were called. The police were called so many times to deal with him that the police notified the parents of the victims that they could press charges if they wanted. However, since he was 6, the police told the principal that what would happen would most likely be put into a foster home/group facility and the parents would attend parenting classes.
I have seen restorative justice improperly used to send the violent student back to proximity to the victim. So, if your district/school has bought into the nonsense side of this ideology, violent students are more likely to be allowed to keep hurting people.
The parents of the other students need to speak up. This sometimes helps things get done more quickly. If you have a spineless admin, speak to your Resource teacher and get a Student Study Team meeting in place ASAP. Document what is going on and what you have done to work with the student. Investigate what options you have as far as signing the student up for counseling/social skills sessions. Have a meeting with your admin to explain what is happening. Bring a minute by minute accounting of what is going on in your classroom when this student is there. Point-blank ask him/her: what can be done to ensure that no other student is hurt, and they get the quality education that they deserve?
In my district the Student Handbook in section School Discipline; subheading Teacher Suspension From Class lists the reasons a teacher may suspend a student from class. One of the reasons states: 1)caused orattempted to cause physical injury to another student or adult. It also states: suspension does not mean reassignment to class, another class or activity. It further states: A teacher may suspend astudent for the remainder of school day and day following. In other words, a teacher does need permission or consultation from the principal to suspend a student. And the principal may not send the student back to class without consent of the teacher. However, the principal is the only one who can suspend a student from school (off campus). Any teacher may still choose to send a student to the principal for disciplinary action. In this case the principal can send the student back to class. This addendum was added to the Student Handbook a couple years before I worked for the district in response to the case(s) you describe
My principal is very aware that I will file an assault report to our local law enforcement agency if I'm ever hit. I rarely send kids to th office or behavior room but if I do, something better be done. It will take teachers standing up for themselves and making those reports even if the district doesn't want them to before things will change.
I tell kids that if you hit me I will make 4 phone calls. Sherriff, office, union rep and my husband. One of those you should be very afraid of. I've had 2 kids raise a fist at me. They both dropped them after I told them about my calls.
I wanted to share the story though it’s very disturbing but also may be informative about how much action we need to take.
One of our teachers was a former police officer. This 10, 11 year old boy who was not all that big somehow managed to slam her against a wall. He had already assaulted numerous students and staff and admin just wanted to talk about positive relationships. So this teacher finally went to law-enforcement.They told her they couldn’t do anything because he was a minor. I call BS and looking back I wonder if she should’ve escalated the concern. I cannot believe law enforcement said this.
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08-24-2021, 02:12 PM
