Posted on 10/23/2004 7:34:49 PM PDT by Husker24
MACON, Georgia - A teacher-parent brawl in front of 19 primary school pupils sent a mother to the emergency room and the teacher to jail.
Teacher Katrina Ann Rucker, 30, is charged with battery and cruelty to children for allegedly beating a parent who tried to retrieve her daughter's book bag, The Macon Telegraph newspaper reported Friday.
According to police interviews, parent Lurella Amica went to Bruce-Weir Elementary School Thursday morning to deliver a note to her 9-year-old daughter.
At the classroom door, the girl told her mother that Rucker had thrown her bag in the trash can, the report stated. Amica entered the classroom and tried to get the book bag, but Rucker grabbed for it and the two struggled, the report said.
After Amica wrestled the bag away, police say Rucker picked up a chair and hit her in the back, knocking Amica to the floor. Rucker then began punching Amica in the face and body.
During the fight, the girl was reportedly crying for her teacher to stop hitting her mother and ran up to them. Rucker then allegedly hit the child, pulled her hair and pushed her out of the way before starting to strike the mother again.
Rucker dragged Amica by the hair outside the classroom, according to the report.
"A school administrator and another teacher had to pull the teacher off the mother," Macon police spokeswoman Melanie Hofmann said.
In Rucker's account of the story, she said Amica hit her hand during the initial struggle, Hofmann said.
"The teacher said she was defending herself because she gets a shot in that hand and it hurt," Hofmann said.
Amica was in stable condition in the emergency room of The Medical Center of Central Georgia late Thursday night.
Rucker was placed on administrative leave.
Sylvia McGee, Bibb County's deputy superintendent, said school staff called the parent or guardian of each child in the class. Social workers counseled students, and only Amica's daughter left school early.
Principal Karen Konke sent letters to parents about the incident.
"Let me assure you the school is safe and that our students have been involved in appropriate instructional activities throughout the day," Konke wrote.
Pass some of that tinfoil over here. There is something very wrong with our society. I limit my contact with the public as much as possible. It's like no one has a conscience or a moral compass anymore. I've seen some scary examples of road rage. I've seen some pretty bad behavior in stores. It's not a good time to be raising kids, that's for sure...
I have a feeling that the pic of the monkey on the typewriter is something that is probably always on that web page, its probably just a generic thing and not specificly related to that story.
Thanks to the NEA proper learning environments are no longer permitted. Given a classroom where student outbursts and disrespect were the rare exception they used to be, stress levels would return to very tolerable levels.
At least it is an interesting time to be alive, what with witnessing the decline of Western civilization, and all.
Tell me about it. In our classrooms, the students have no individual desks. They sit four to a table, facing each other. So what does that tell them? The minute they sit down, they are facing another 12 year old and I'm just that irritating voice in the front of the classroom, which they have to crane their necks to even look at. No wonder they think the most important thing going on is at their table, not up at the front of the room. Moreover, the idea of individual responsibility in a room where you don't even have individual space makes no sense. It's the worst POSSIBLE set up for a room full of pre-teens.
But you just know some touchy-feely twit said, "We need them to interact in order to socially construct knowledge." No, we need them to stop interacting long enough to learn something. They interact constantly! They're all over each other like horny puppies. My only hope is to pull them apart before they actually figure out what they're trying to do.
I agree with you. But...they are supposed to pay attention to such things and I bet if they noticed it they would change the picture. It is positioned as if it goes with the picture in a traditional layout format. Obviously - in case you were wondering - that is not a picture of the teacher.
I guess NJ is trying to protect the monopoly, that is why they are so strict with their requirements.
Only problem is that NJ is in the upper echelon for teacher pay.
sorry, hat=hate, but I suppose some people never make mistakes. I am sending my kids to private school. I am sure that there are many good teachers in the system, but my kids are too precious to involve in a crap shoot.
Heck no! I wouldn't go to work in NYC for 200K a year as an IT professional (back when I did it, before I opened my motorcycle shop). I wouldn't work in any big metro area for less than 100K as an IT pro. Screw the 2 hour commutes and hassles. Quality of life, you know.
Don't 'sanitation workers' in NYC get about 70K?
We all make mistakes. If you can afford to send them to private school, good decision. The sad fact is, a lot of people can not send them to private schools, nor can they homeschool them. I could write several pages here about my experiences and frustrations, but it would do nothing to solve the problem. So many individuals are part of the problem, it would take a thesis to detail all of it. Take care.
"I wouldn't go to work in NYC for 200K a year as an IT professional (back when I did it, before I opened my motorcycle shop). I wouldn't work in any big metro area for less than 100K as an IT pro. Screw the 2 hour commutes and hassles. Quality of life, you know.
Don't 'sanitation workers' in NYC get about 70K?"
Yes, but they don't get two months off in the summer, a week for Christmas, a week for 'winter,' and a week for 'spring.'
70k is just fine for New York City - we all don't live in 2 million dollar condo's.
One reason nuns got away with that stuff is that if you went home and told your parents Sister hit you, you'd probaby get another smack because your parents figured you'd done something to deserve it.
I don't know how many parents still think that same way anymore
Virtually none. Don't you know that Their Child is Perfect and can do No Wrong? (rolls eyes)
Hear, hear.
That's my point. I have a building that houses my shop and a sweet apartment so I don't have to commute every day. My apartment probably rivals some of the 2M condos in NYC and I live here on the cheap.
I've lived in a lot of places and I barely got by on 70K a year in Frankfurt Germany even without paying taxes. I guess I have a champagne taste.
I live in a stupid redneck town (Roanoke, VA) that likes to think of itself as a city but the good thing about that is I can go out to a good live rock show or go dancing or eat in a nice locally owned (by transplants from somewhere else of course) upscale restaurant and not come home broke.
Tell me what I could do on 70K in NYC. Not being hostile, just genuinely curious. I know where 'deals' are, so I'm not some rube who just fell of the turnip truck. (Well, yes I am, but I'm a 'sophisticated' , 'nuanced' (barf) rube.) When you get time.
and teachers are NOT leaving the profession in droves....I have several friends who came out of a teaching program and had to scramble even to get looked at....
that is a falacy...
I would love to tear those statistics apart...
it will most likely show that a certain number ofr women leave teaching early because of childcare issues....
do you have any idea what social workers start out at?.......not much, let me tell you....
She was challenged in the classroom where she has in her eyes POWER. This challenge to retrieve property by a parent who owned it was perceived as a threat to her power and a challenge.
That is where the violence took off IMO.
This one will get fired and if lucky some jail time.
The union won't spend the typical $100,000 in courts preventing her firing IMO!
for this, I get to work every other weekend, many holidays, and have to put in for vacation several months in advance to even get a shot at what I want since the lack of nurses makes someone not being there a major problem...
I work in a middle size private nonprofit hospital and like most hospitals, there is no pension, no retirement health benfits....nada, nilch...
so please spare me the sad story....most people couldn't take the pressure I take at my work to keep people alive, let alone happy, yet you don't see nurses generally complaining....
we see what we do as more of a vocation, not a paycheck, like some...
oh, and the final indignity?.....no flu shots available for nursing staff.....
I'll bet teachers get their shots quicker than people actually working with the sick.....
In San Francisco we have site-based budgeting and we must budget $76,000 for each and every teacher in our budget. Some actually make more, some make less. This includes benefits. But again, this is for 180 days of teaching. I wouldn't mind paying GOOD teachers more, but unions prevent merit pay. To improve public education, it won't do just to pay teachers more. We need to be able to weed out bad ones, not just put them into some sort of idiotic "peer review" for a short while and send them back out as if everything is fine. As Laura Bush has said, "Everyone knows who the good teachers are." But they are never rewarded with merit pay. And the bad ones are rewarded, by being kept on the job.
Not everyone with degrees can teach. However, mere credentialling doesn't make a good teacher. If it did, I could see requiring it. But I am less interested in credentialling than I am in getting people who can inspire kidS and get the material across. And ...duh....they need to be mentally balanced.
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