Teachers in Chicago are suffering from a rise in student violence:
Janet Pena-Davis is barely 5 feet tall, but the veteran English teacher doesn't scare easily. One day, though, a girl arrived 15 minutes late to class--and full of attitude. When the girl took out a snack and began to talk loudly to a friend, Pena-Davis asked the student to leave the class and try again the next day.
The girl hurled a full soda can at her head.
Pena-Davis was able to duck the can. But as the teacher went to close the classroom door, the girl dragged her into the hall and began to beat her--punching and scratching, pulling off her glasses and tugging viciously at her hair. The attack was enough to terrify Pena-Davis, 55, who walked out of Austin High School that day and never went back.
These kinds of stories are adding up to overwhelming numbers in Chicago:
Reports of verbal and physical assaults against teachers by students have risen during the last four years, the data show. From Sept. 1, 2003, through the end of February, 970 such incidents were reported in elementary and high schools--an increase of 25 percent from the 777 reported during the same period a year earlier.
These reports include battery, threats of violence, assault, vandalism, theft and sex crimes. In cases of physical assault only, the increase is about 17 percent over the previous year.
School officials claim the change reflects higher reporting, not more incidents. Teachers reply that they aren't even reporting all the incidents, so the true assault rate is even higher. For example, Ms. Pena-Davis was told not to file an assault report on the young woman who attacked her.
Teachers are being attacked for doing their jobs, and they aren't getting the support they need from school officials. Security guards, closed-circuit TV systems, and the like might help catch attackers after the fact, but it won't prevent the "cultural meltdown" that has resulted in daily abuse of teachers. Parents aren't stopping it; they say they're afraid of their own kids. Principals aren't doing enough; one violent first-grader, whose assault left a teacher unable to open her mouth for four months, was suspended for only one day, and the principal refused the teacher's request for counseling for the student.
Blaming teachers for "lack of classroom discipline" doesn't cut it when principals refuse to back teachers up, schools aren't able to apply standards, and students who assault others get a slap on the wrist. In this day of zero-tolerance for toy weapons, can't schools figure out how to implement more severe punishments for assaults?
Posted by kswygert at March 23, 2004 11:41 AM