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<p>Nothing else happened. You can speculate all you want about what might have happened if she had done this or that but what she did worked.</p>
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I agree … or even stronger … I hope my 3 kids know we would hope they try to intervene on the teacher’s behalf … where the heck are all the boys (and bigger girls) in the class?</p>
<p>I don’t think screaming for help would have helped. The kid was screaming at her and nobody walked in to see what was happening. Her classroom could have been away from others and no one in the hall to help. If he had gotten her out in the hallway alone he could have hurt her.
Kids know they can’t hit teachers without getting in trouble but guys don’t think of a chest bump as touching someone.</p>
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<p>But something else did happen. She struck and injured a student. According to a report, his lip was bleeding as a result. And she may have gotten herself fired.</p>
<p>This confrontation had been going on for a while before the video started. I couldn’t agree more that punching the student was not a good response, and was likely to make the situation worse. Not being a battle-hardened policeman (who would have been working with a partner), she probably wasn’t thinking clearly. But, as someone pointed out above, we haven’t been able to come up with a better idea, even with the benefits of hindsight and comfortable chairs in peaceful settings.</p>
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<p>No. That was her action. Nothing else happened after that.</p>
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<p>We’re all heartbroken.</p>
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<p>She could have been injured or fired anyways. She was not injured after she struck him and she as cleared by the prosecutor and she has the country rooting for her.</p>
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<p>It worked.</p>
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<p>It didn’t.</p>
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<p>Punching a 250 lb man is probably the last course of action I would have taken (yes, in 20-20 hindsight). As I said before, I would have tried to talk him down calmly, run, screamed, or asked other students to go or call for help. All the speculation that none of this would have worked is just speculation. If punching the kid didn’t make him respond in kind, it is highly unlikely that doing any of the other things I mentioned would have.</p>
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<p>You don’t know what you will do until you are in the moment of crisis.</p>
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<p>He was screaming at her.</p>
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<p>She was cornered.</p>
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<p>He was screaming at her.</p>
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<p>He was screaming at her.</p>
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<p>Yes. And speculation that it would have worked is also speculation.</p>
<p>What she did worked. And that is not speculation.</p>
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<p>The other things would have been useless for the reasons above.</p>
<p>That something worked in a particular situation is not the course of action to recommend. Being a small woman with athletic sons, I have never punched or hit them as a way to get anything out of them, though I have wanted to rip their ears off many times, The problem is that if you hit someone, they are likely to hit you back, and a 200+lb man can do a lot of damage with a punch. She was not in a life or death situation.</p>
<p>I have no comment or opinion on what the results of all of this should be. The law was brought into the picture as well as school authorities and they have weighed in with their verdicts, and I will support them. I think that any crisis management instructions to teachers, however, should not tell them to punch a kid when cornered, pushed and intimidated. I would have tried to get around the student, and hit only as a very last resort, but I wasn’t there, so it’s all hind sight. If that were another student, instead of a teacher in that position, what would the consequences have been for the student who struck first?</p>
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<p>I didn’t recommend it; I merely said that it worked.</p>
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<p>Presumably she knew the kid. The punch appeared to have shocked him and got him off of her. He didn’t appear to have any kind of martial arts training. It was a bad situation and you can’t second guess an instinctive reaction.</p>
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<p>We can, and we are doing it, and I think it is instructive and worthwhile.</p>
<p>If the teacher had “instinctively” responded by pulling a drafting compass out of her pocket and stabbed the student in the heart, I hope you would second guess her reaction and find it unreasonable.</p>
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<p>And useless.</p>
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<p>That’s a pretty complex action for being instinctive. Many times, instinctive behaviors are trained in through repetition. I imagine that an instinctive response through training wouldn’t involve using a compass - unless you’re aware of a martial arts form that engages in that kind of practice.</p>
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<p>So are you implying that this teacher has repeatedly punched people in the face, and that is why she reacted so? I don’t think so. Using a weapon/tool against someone so much larger than yourself would make more “instinctive” sense than trying to fight with your bare hands.</p>
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<p>Did I say that?</p>
<p>Many means more than one. That’s all. It isn’t a universal
quanitifier. Please don’t read more into what I write than what I
write.</p>
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<p>This assumes that you have a weapon in your hand.</p>
<p>Almost all of the martial arts training that I’ve had didn’t
involve weapons and, when weapons were involved, the student
was defending without a weapon.</p>
<p>@Bay</p>
<p>It’s fairly obvious you really have no idea as to what was really going on.
You don’t seem to(or just don’t want to)understand that you can’t
stop time and think about a situation like this one and then act.
You don’t have that luxury.</p>
<p>What she actually did stunned the boy into line and the situation
cleared up.</p>
<p>End of story.</p>
<p>To me, it always comes down to her perfect record and her 22 years of teaching experience. This was a very experienced teacher. She has in all probability dealt with unruly kids before. Since she wasn’t inexperienced, you can’t really chalk this up to panicking. So, if she truly felt she was in danger, I think her perfect record and experience should be weighed in her favor.</p>
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<p>You are right that I don’t believe it is not possible to stop and think before punching a student in the face who is yelling in your face but not touching you.</p>
<p>Apparently you think it is impossible to make a careful, rather than reflexive decision in these types of situations. If you are right, then there is no point in putting teachers through any type of training for dealing with volatile situations such as these, as they will always react instinctively, and not rationally, and whether the student is ultimately maimed or killed as a result is of no consequence.</p>
<p>So now its maimed or killed?</p>
<p>You seem to love to exaggerate what others say in order to try to prove some kind of point. Also, when somebody is in your face(Who is far bigger than you are) and threatening you, and you have no real training in that kind of situation(She is not a police officer), you don’t exactly go through your options in a logical bullet-point fashion like you have been implying.</p>
<p>First of all. The kid HAD touched her. The tape started rolling after he had chest bumped her. He was approaching her for a second time when she hit him. And Bay, the problem with the training that teachers get in this kind of issue is that most of us, thankfully, never have the need to exercise what we have learned. Cops, military, etc, practice, practice, practice until it is almost second nature. Teachers just have an awful lot of other things to think about besides what to do when threatened with physical violence. It’s not exactly at the top of the list.</p>
<p>You know, people are animals in a very real sense. Yes, we may be more rational and have a higher order of thinking than other species but we are still animals. When threatened we react. No good teacher wants to hurt her student, even in self defense but kids need to know, like everyone else, that cause=effect and the outcome cannot always be predicted.</p>
<p>You also need to consider the different populations that we deal with. If a younger and smaller child is acting out physically, the teacher is less likely to react with a physical response because the threat is much less. So the ones that are the most vulnerable to injury (the smaller children) are much less likely to be touched in self defense. The students that have the physical ability to do real damage may be more apt to provoke an instinctive and physical response and are less likely to be hurt because of their size(not that this is true across the board, I realize). </p>
<p>Hope i made sense here.</p>