Posted on 04/04/2005 12:49:21 PM PDT by SmithL
When teacher Bonnie Taylor swung open the gym doors of El Cerrito High School last week, she expected to take the stage at an assembly -- not take one on the chin.
The 56-year-old came home bruised, bandaged and outraged after a 17-year-old girl punched her in the face and jabbed a pencil at her hand.
The student faces suspension and possible expulsion. That doesn't make Taylor, a teacher of 33 years, feel any better about returning to work.
"Physically, I'm fine. Mentally, I'm still upset and angry," she said.
Student assaults are becoming more frequent in California, statistics from the state Department of Education show. Growing concerns in the West Contra Costa school district have prompted new demands from the United Teachers of Richmond to more strongly discipline unruly students and to protect teachers.
"They don't mind giving their life for education, but it should be a figurative thing, not a physical thing," said union President Gail Mendes.
According to a 2004 report, an estimated 90,000 violent crimes were committed against teachers on campuses nationwide from 1998 to 2002.
About 4 percent of teachers surveyed nationally in 1999-2000 said they had been attacked by students, according to the 2004 Indicators of School Crime and Safety report. Male teachers, city teachers and those at middle or high schools were more likely to be targets.
The magnitude of the problem is difficult to track. Like many states, California's data includes all school employees without separate statistics for teachers.
Recommended expulsions stemming from student assaults or batteries on school employees has grown steadily from 668 in 2000-01 to 1,053 last school year, according to the state Department of Education. However, those figures count students punished for violence against employees, not the attacks themselves.
"Who knows how many didn't get reported," said Chuck Nichols, a safety consultant for the state Department of Education.
In the 33,000-student West Contra Costa school district, the union recently added new safety proposals during contract negotiations.
The teachers want the district to pursue legal action if a student injures a teacher or damages property. The district would also reimburse teachers for injuries or repairs caused by campus assault or vandalism.
The union, which represents about 2,000 teachers, also wants stiffer punishment for students who break the rules.
Teachers can banish students from their classroom the day of an offense and the next day. The union wants to expand classroom suspensions for up to five days to prevent what Mendes calls "the revolving door."
When students violate a rule, such as using profanity, teachers send them to the principal's office from where they often return during the same period.
"All the kids around them see that and they think, 'Gee, if you can get away with it, I can too,'" Mendes said.
Swearing does not amount to homicide. But lax punishment for minor infractions encourages more aggressive acts, Mendes said.
"It starts with children being verbally disrespectful to teachers. It moves into using foul language. And it escalates" to physical attacks, she said.
The district has rejected the safety proposals. Lengthening classroom suspensions might violate student legal rights, said Laurie Juengert, lawyer and member of the district bargaining team.
"The district believes that proper disciplinary action should be taken against students who injure teachers," Juengert said. "However, we have to follow the due process requirement for state and federal law."
Researchers say documenting the problem is the main obstacle to preventing violence against teachers.
Most public education systems do not record or report the information in a detailed manner, said Susan Gerberich, director of the Center for Violence Prevention and Control at the University of Minnesota.
"You're really getting the tip of the iceberg of what the problem may be," she said.
This year, the center embarked on a first-of-its-kind investigation of violence against teachers. Researchers will survey at least 12,600 of them in Minnesota over three years to study what happens to them and why and identify risk and protection factors.
Most studies of campus violence prevention have focused on children.
"There's been very little attention paid to teachers," Gerberich said.
To meet federal reporting requirements, California schools report expulsions related to Education Code violations that include disrupting school events, carrying a weapon and assaulting or battering a school employee.
But few want to admit their schools are violent, and chalking up more expulsions offers little reward for a principal looking for approval from higher-ups.
"They see that as a bad thing," Mendes said. "Well, it is a bad thing that the children are out of school and aren't learning. But it's a good thing for other students who are in the classroom and are learning."
In Oakland schools, state-appointed administrator Randolph Ward ended the practice of dismissing student crime.
The district reported 10 recommendations for expulsions from assaulting or battering an employee in 2000-01, before Ward arrived. Last school year, the district recommended 156 expulsions for attacks on employees; the year before that, 92.
Teachers often shy from reporting abuse out of pride or to maintain the facade of invulnerability, Mendes said.
Once, a teacher casually told her that boys routinely grabbed her breasts in the halls. Another called Mendes after getting elbowed in the ribs by a student.
Neither filed a report.
"'Why bother? Nothing's going to happen.' I hear that from teachers all the time."
Teacher's Union, NEA, tenure, no merit based performance raises, etc.
You show up, you get paid. You practically CAN'T get fired.
Now, many teachers DO teach, but there's no incentive for excellence.
In other news, an honor society student get expelled from school and denied graduation because someone found a butter knife in her car.
Will somebody in the public education system straighten out your priorities, please?
ping
If only we would throw more money at the schools, all the problems would be solved.
Good question. Is the peer pressure or district policy so passive that the teachers can't file charges without endangering their jobs?
Good question. Is the peer pressure or district policy so passive that the teachers can't file charges without endangering their jobs?
Documents are like cameras... they only show the crime after its happened. Can anyone say "prevention"?
The problem in education is the unions; by empowering the unions to do all the talking for them, they've stripped themselves of the power to speak for themselves. And so the teachers claim they have no control or real say in running their classes. The unions are the teachers' worst enemies.
The trick though is to accumulate enough seniority to move out of the classroom into one of those educational "administrative" positions that is the fastest growing area of the profession. Those people get top pay while not having to actually teach classes anymore. Those tasks are given to those with the least seniority or the substitutes or teacher's aides.
The worse the education system, the more money can be demanded from the legislators to fix it. Then those with the most seniority take most of the added funding and hire more workers at the lowest pay to do the teaching. Notice how these teachers on these public service announcements all have these bloated stupid expressions as they demand more money for themselves?
Even the kids don't respect them for that and when one doesn't have the respect of those he holds power over, it is a very dangerous situation indeed.
These little criminals are high five-ing each other while the government schools pacify them.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1375658/posts
Badly-run schools being overtaken by rotten kids raised by rotten parents. I'm not sure who to feel sorry for, but it's not any of those groups.
I'm not sure who they are, but I can promise you that not all teachers are liberal, and many of us have seen the problem but are powerless to do anything about it. We don't make the rules.
And, parents are not blameless either.
susie
Sometimes I wonder myself....
susie
Not all teachers belong to unions (I taught in TX, no teacher's unions, thank goodness) and it's simply not true that it's almost impossible to fire a teacher. At least where I taught, we were there with a contract each year. According to my contract they could fire me for cause (which means, whatever they felt was cause) and I've known teachers who simply were not offered a contract for the next year.
I'm sure it's a state by state.
I do agree there's not much incentive for excellence as pay is based on years of service. I guess some of us are just masochists.
susie
For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up.
(Of course you can't teach that in a public school...)
In Hawaii, it's a pretty simple contrast.
The private school teachers are non-union and the public schools are union. People pay a lot of money to get their children into the private schools. The pay for teachers at private schools is lower than the public schools -- but they have individual performance contracts and enjoy the freedom to teach. Most teachers' objections to schools and teaching as a profession are really the arbitrariness and stupidity of union rules.
Then I don't know what the problem is in TX. We are a non union state. Our schools still seem to have the same problems other states complain about. Of course I think teacher's unions are a waste. But they aren't the entire picture. The courts haven't helped. The ADA is a big part of the problem. General society trends are part of it. The media shares some blame.
It's just not that simple.
susie
Here's the dilemma:
The objective of a good teacher is to teach his student to teach himself -- and thus, there is no job security for such an excellent teacher. If one places his own job security foremost, his objective will be to increase the dependency on his instruction -- and not grow beyond it.
Effective education therefore decreases the need for this kind of education -- which is reliance on the teacher to learn. The new paradigm of instruction is learning without the teacher -- which is now possible because the availability of information sources. It doesn't take six years to learn arithemetic. It doesn't take six years to learn reading. It doesn't take six years to learn economics. It doesn't take six years to learn computers. It's not a time thing but that is the quantitative approach to education and productivity. Understanding is really a qualitative transformation.
The unions are propagating the assembly line approach to work in an age in which work well done eliminates itself. Information age work transforms the work being done; assembly line education merely perpetuates the work without transforming it. Thus the objective, is to keep a student in that incapacitated condition -- which manifests itself as the dilemma of contemporary education.
We need to move to the next level in which we do not need teachers but people teach themselves -- and can learn from each other, and everything directly.
Yeah, irony duly noted, thank you.
I would throw that 17 year old tramp in jail for simple assult.
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