Teacher Forbidden to Intervene While Student Gets Pummelled.

[PaleoMan]

Shakespeare was right about lawyers.

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/05/11/video-texas-teacher-stands-by-while-bully-repeatedly-slugs-student-in-class/

While it may seem the teacher could have intervened, a teacher’s union president said that is not what teachers are told to do.
“In today’s society which is a violent society, you do not touch the student. That should be left up to the administration,” said Rena Honea of Alliance-AFT. “I believe that that is for the safety of number one the students, but for the individual teacher as well.”

[PaleoMan]

Great comment.

In a just world..the teacher breaks this up.

That is not where we are at.
A lot of teachers are on an island in the schools they work in. They are thrown under the bus by administrations that don’t want any parental and legal troubles.

One of my friends in the gym was a teacher who stood 6’4” and weighed in at over 260 pounds.
He broke up a fight in a lunch room full of over a hundred students and several teachers.
He was stabbed in the neck with a pencil then in self-defense, laid the student flat.
Parents went nuts and the lawsuits went flying.
He was hung out to dry by the administration and most to the teachers did not want to get involved for fear of losing their jobs or suffering a backlash from students.

The PC atmosphere,parents not held responsible for their kids actions,and classrooms that have the patients running the asylum have pretty much created the situation we see in this video.
That teacher has more to lose intervening then just standing there.

Reminds me of the woman raped in the subway in NY while city workers stood by and watched.
They were legally exonerated but how in the he!! you live with yourself is amazing to me.
Unfortunately…”getting involved” has led to to many people getting sued or charged themselves, so we reap what we sow.

I, and I am assuming, many others here choose to get involved….I just can’t stand by and watch someone get beaten or tormented.

[madducks]

As Spike Lee says "Do the right thing".

I like to believe that good eventually prevails in these situations. Even if it has to absorb a few punches to the gut along the way.

[virgonomic]

Great comment.

In our board we are authorized to get involved physically when safety is an issue. After the punch I would have gotten between the two. Classrooms are supposed to be safe and no student should take a punch like that in a classroom.

[Gregg]

So did the kid who got punched have the other kid arrested? Did the school have the kid arrested? Are the parents of the bully getting sued?

I think the teacher should have stepped in. He at least has to be a witness. The bully needs to get arrested for assualt.

[The Dane]

I'm a teacher that steps in and breaks up fights. I've got some minor scrapes and bruises over the years, but luckily, nothing serious. First, what the video shows was not really a fight. I wouldn't have stepped in there. I would have yelled at the bully to back down and called admin. You HAVE to confront the bully, even if it's only verbally. If kids see you let the bully run rampant, you are TOAST; the kids will distrust and dismiss you and never see you as part of the solution.

In most real fights, where two big kids are swinging wildly at each other, I step in with the sole purpose of separating them. Usually, I don't even have to lay hands on them; I just have to get between them and separate them, just a little bustling and bumping... usually. On rare occasion, a kid will turn his attention to the teacher trying to break up the fight. Again, here you just try to separate them, from each other and you. Several years ago, one very big boy was standing over and pounding on a girl that was curled up on the ground. I yelled. No effect. I pushed him away. He came right back and resumed punching. I picked him up and pushed him into a bush, and he tumbled into a planter. In the tangle, he elbowed me in the eyebrow pretty good, but the "fight" ended. In another just a year ago, two boys were throwing punches and me and a fellow teacher stepped between them. Somehow, I ended up holding one of them from behind. He was about a foot taller than me, and it was tough to keep him from getting at the other kid. Eventually, he started going after the other teacher who was yelling at him to stop. The kid was going mad. I got him under the arms and leaned back and turned him around to get him to the floor. When the dust settled, I had a bad scrape along my forearm and one kid lost two teeth.

You have to step in, I think, but a teacher who is throwing punches probably will (and should) lose his job.