<p>Do classrooms have telephones in them anymore? She could have ordered a student to call 911. I’m sure most of them have cell phones, anyway. </p>
<p>Even assuming it would take sometime for 911 to respond, it is better than doing nothing, and it might motivate the kid to back off if he knew the cops were coming.</p>
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<p>He should have been arrested for battery.</p>
<p>And what was she supposed to do while waiting for the ‘responsible’ student to get to the office, get help and come back. Depending on the size of the school, that could take several minutes. </p>
<p>I agree with ellemenope. the kid should have been arrested for battery. It has to be wrong to touch a teacher in an aggressive fashion. And then there is his foul mouth. That should also carry a penalty.</p>
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<p>I didn’t watch the video, so I don’t understand the scenario /perfectly/ and I suspect no one does, but as someone who is normally extremely good at responding quickly to emergencies by notifying the proper authorities, I am not convinced I would have been able to do that here. If I’d gotten up to use the classroom phone, or made a break for the door, or pulled out my own phone, I would be afraid that would attract the behemoth’s attention to me and make him come after me instead. And I would hope that my instructor would have the same thought and not call out to me to do anything because of that same risk. I would hope that in that situation, any good teacher would think not only about protecting themselves but about not putting any of the students in harms way by having them aggravate the assailant in the room.</p>
<p>I’m not sure she had any good options. What would have happened if she hadn’t punched him? He did not seem to be ready to back down, and the other student who was trying to help did not seem to be able to stop him.</p>
<p>This teacher was lucky. Escalating the violence is not the proper response to a volatile situation like this. It was just as likely that her punches might have made him go ape-**** and given him good reason to hurt her more and hurt those around him.</p>
<p>[Teacher</a> who punched student: ?I had to defend myself? - TODAY People - TODAY.com](<a href=“http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43294291/ns/today-today_people/]Teacher”>http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43294291/ns/today-today_people/)</p>
<p>Here’s a link with some more info about the story. The teacher clearly felt threatened.</p>
<p>I’m sure she realizes that escalating the violence is not a good idea. I don’t think it was a concious decision on her part but, rather, a reflexive reaction.</p>
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<p>This was my thought too. It’s one of those things where it seems like the easy answer is right there, but in that situation not so much.</p>
<p>I had a similar situation earlier this spring at my job. We had a member get upset and wanted to cancel his membership (2 months into a 12-month contract). He got hostile and threatening with our staff. I was standing right next to a telephone, but wasn’t making a 911 call right in front of him. And there was no way I was leaving the spot I was at in order to do so because I wasn’t leaving the 3 females standing there to do it. We were finally able to get him to leave, but WOW. They ended up calling the police a couple hours later to report it, but I don’t know if anything ended up happening.</p>
<p>I think hindsight is 20/20. We can all play monday morning quarterback and, maybe, imagine a more reasonable response in the situation but, here we are, hours into this thread and none of us has come up with a realistic and effective alternative response. Imagine trying to think of one in a split second.</p>
<p>Agreed EPTR. And let’s remember that the student is much bigger than the teacher. I can only imagine how intimidated she felt.</p>
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<p>My niece who is a special ed teacher was assaulted on job by one of her students. I can’t remember what was broken–wrist, nose, thumb? It happens…</p>
<p>It always amazes me how so many people are ready with their cellphones to film an event, but so few are ready to call for help…</p>
<p>^^^
Haha! Good Point! But if they call for help, they might not have a good tape to sell or upload to youtube!</p>
<p>We have a Smith Machine in our fitness center and it has 800 pounds of weight plates on it. They come in 2.5, 5, 10, 25, 35 and 50 pounds. I give great respect to the 25 and 35 pound weights. I’ve never tried to move one of the 50 pound weights though I’m sure that I could because I’ve lifted 80 pound dumbbells before. Sometimes the 50 pound plates are on the floor because someone took one off and couldn’t get it back onto the post.</p>
<p>Can you imagine getting hit by a 25 pound weight? They do sell them at Sears, WalMart, etc. Now imagine getting hit by ten times as much weight in your chest. That had to shock her as much as her punch shocked him.</p>
<p>No really good answers here but at least the kid learned a lesson before doing it to another authority figure.</p>
<p>It’s so easy to second guess and criticize this teacher from our oh so comfy chairs…</p>
<p>I can’t imagine what I would do in that situation. Not only was she being threatened herself, but as a veteran teacher it would be second nature to her to feel responsible for all the students in the class. I don’t think that abandoning the classroom would have seemed a good option to her, even if she had the opportunity. And given the way the school has responded to this situation, I doubt that she thought there would be much in the way of support down the hall.</p>
<p>Let’s be clear on what that criticism is:</p>
<p>What I see on that tape is a teacher who is legitimately frightened by a student who is enraged and threatening her, and who is basically the size of a football offensive lineman. She responds in a panicked, dangerous, and otherwise obviously ineffective physical way, which more often than not would be expected to escalate the situation and increase the risk of harm to her (and to the student, too).</p>
<p>She wasn’t going to win a fistfight with him. He had bumped her aggressively, yes, but his response on the tape shows that he wasn’t expecting (and wasn’t prepared) to go farther than that – although obviously he had been threatening to, and the teacher had no way of knowing that he was bluffing. She threw two punches, one of which missed completely, and the other of which hit the student’s face without any appreciable amount of force.</p>
<p>It seems self-evident to me that the teacher’s response was wrong, ineffective and dangerous. I am happy to admit that (a) I don’t know what the “right” response would have been, although I think almost anything would have been better than what she did, and (b) I don’t expect people to think clearly and rationally when they are under that kind of threat and pressure, unless perhaps they are police officers heavily trained for just such situations. (But, from my brief career as a police officer 33 years ago, I know that step one in the police training is not to get into that kind of situation one-on-one – always have backup present.)</p>
<p>The fact that she made a clear mistake, by my lights, does not mean I think she should be fired for it, or that the student is somehow an innocent victim here.</p>
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<p>What she did worked.</p>
<p>I don’t think that your last phrase makes any sense.</p>
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<p>How so? The student wasn’t touching her at the time she struck him. His arms were at his sides. Talking him down calmly, or trying to run, or screaming for help may have been equally as effective at motivating him to move away, and no one would have been hurt.</p>