Between students and teachers there are no friendly punches. Not from either party.
I keep seeing the fact that there were no lasting bruises bandied about like it makes some sort of difference in the fact that this little asshole touched a teacher. If he groped her, would it be any more offensive to you? If so, why? It doesn’t leave any lasting or even temporary visable damage. What makes the hitting more acceptable to you?
The fact that both demean the teacher in front of a classroom full of students she is supposed to be in control of doesn’t seem to enter into your minds…
I taught for seven years in a medium-sized city’s public school system. I have just deleted a lengthy rant about the things that I had to deal with concerning administrations who don’t support their staff. Those experiences, plus the many stories I hear like the ones in this thread, lead me to resolve that once I get back to the states, to NEVER get involved in education again.
More power to you, El Perro. The union saved my ass once; I hope they come through for you as well.
No bruising (not just lasting bruising, none at all) shows that the punches were not very hard. That leads me to believe, along with the location of the punches, that the kid was not out to hurt the OP. As to groping, every kid knows that this is inappropiate whereas the punching could be a case of clowning around being misinterpeted.
I beg to differ. In grades 9 and 10 I had a french teacher who exchanged friendly light punches on the shoulder with us. Not daily but in a friendly and jocking manner, as in “Well done! Bon fin de semain!” <tap>. And it was often mutual and reciprocated between him and the students that were not intimidated by that sort of thing.
Also, my math teacher in grade 10 used to rap us on the knuckles with a short wooden ruler when we made an obvious mistake or didn’t complete our homework. We made it a game to hide our hands as he came by at the start of a class to check our homework. Every once in a while we’d move our hand just in time and he’d miss and laughter would break out as we’d tease him about getting slow. Once, he made a mistake on the board and one of the class clowns got to smack him on his knuckles with that same ruler and the teacher took the light smack in the fun spirit it was meant. He was a good natured guy and he’d laugh with us and we got through many math classes with this routine of him catching our mistakes and us trying to avoid the ruler. He was a great teacher and made math fun for all but the most dour, dim and uninterested students.
How wonderful for you. When was this? In the 60’s and 70’s when I was in school the teachers used to lay hands on the students too. Sometimes it was necessary to discipline, sometimes not. In the legal environment that prevails in the classroom today, the best policy by far is for teachers and students to refrain from any unnecessary physical contact. The only time I touch a student is to break up a fight. “Joking” punches, “friendly” hugs, and all the rest are far too easily misinterpreted. It only has to happen once to end your career.
treis, you, unfortunately like most people, have a sadly imperfect concept of what a teacher’s life is like. The teachers I’ve known are the hardest working and least rewarded people I’ve ever met. 10-12 hours per day sounds way on the low end of the scale. 16-18 is much more normal. And those vacations are usually spent working.
You know that, and I know that, but did the student know that?
I don’t believe you. There is no way teachers work from 7:00 am to 1:00 am day in and day out. Absolutely no way. Maybe I went to school in bizzaro world, but I doubt most of my teachers worked 40 hours. Most of them had established lesson plans, rarely collected homework, and simply did not have that much to do. Sure, there would be 50-60 hour weeks to grade a paper or a test, but thats not unusual for a job.
Spoken like a true student.
Fine, you are seriously contending that most teachers work from 7:00am to 1:00am day in, day out?
After reading this, I’m even happier than before that I was homeschooled. If I had been in a public school setting and a teacher hit me with a ruler (or anything else for that matter) as described above, I would have filed assault charges.
To the OP, I’ll keep you in my thoughts and hope that the administration does the right thing and suspends this student. They certainly need to learn that hitting a teacher is never appropriate.
My GF typically works from 5:30 AM to 10 PM. Every day. Including weekends, holidays (even Christmas), and summers. She gets maybe 10 days off per year. My ex-GF usually worked until midnight every day, including weekends. But she normally got about a month off in the summer.
I think you did, because what you are describing bears little resemblence to schools today.
Maybe if your teacher had collected more homework… nah, never mind.
Are you a teacher, because I have a lot of trouble believing this? My mother was an elementary and middle school teacher while I was a kid. She is currently a full professor with tenure at a state university. She never worked 90 hours a week* (i.e. 18 hours a day x 5 days a week) as an elementary or middle school teacher – maybe as a professor (say while seeking tenure), but even then, not as a rule. Sure, she may have had SOME 18 hour days as a school teacher, but never five in a row and certainly not for 16 weeks straight. And yes, she may have worked during the big vacation (i.e. summer), but not at her primary job; half the time she was taking full-time classes in the summer. Fact is, one reason among many that people enter teaching is the time off – allows them to raise a family, pursue other interests, decompress. And before anyone blasts this, I don’t mean it’s the primary reason, but it certainly figures into the decision.
As for the OP, I have no idea what sort of physical contact was made, and the descriptions here are not very clear, so I’ll just withhold judgment, but I would like to say that these absolute rules “students never touch teachers” etc. are a little frightening. FWIW, if this was a criminal act, it was a battery – assault is the threat of physical attack, battery is unlawful touching – it could be both, but in this case it doesn’t sound like there was any apprehension of fear on the part of the OP.
*I am starting to think that “how many hours a person works a week” is sort of like “how long someone’s commute is” – the time varies greatly by embellishment depending on the point trying to be proved – mainly it’s a dick measuring tool.
I’m sorry, that just doesn’t make sense. Why he did it affects how the student is dealt with, but in no way is it more important than what he did. The kid obviously doesn’t have a friendly enough relationship with El Perro Fumando for her to feel comfortable with him punching her in the arm. If he got punished because someone else saw him joshing around with a friendly teacher, all of this would be excessive. Even if you think she’s overreacting, he made her feel threatened and unsafe. He needs to find out that that’s not something he should be doing to a stranger, or to anybody who isn’t comfortable with it. Hauling him off to the state penn is too much; the police really shouldn’t be involved if no harm was caused or intended. But the school fucked up by not making it clear to El Perro Fumando that they’re standing behind her.
Are you saying that:
a) she wakes up at like 4:30 (to get ready and commute and all) gets to work by 5:30 and doesn’t leave work till 10:00? Or
b) she gets up at 5:30, gets to work around 7:00 (start the clock) leaves work at say 4:00 (and thereby stops working) then resumes it at say 8:00 (after her commute home, dinner, conversation, etc.) until about 10:00, in which case she works about
If it’s b), I can buy it. If it’s a), I have to ask, what kind of teacher is she?
Maybe she’s just slow. And why the vacation wor? I can see no reason to work that schedule as a TEACHER (not some moonlighting) over Christmas break or summer, for example.
She did deal with the incident. By immediately sending the kid to the office, under the reasonable expectation that he would be punished, at least preliminarily, then and there. The administration failed.
So a kid hit her, unprovoked, and the administration very nearly condoned the action, as far as she is concerned, by letting him go right back to his next class with a nebulous “there will be a conference some time in the future.”
Unless you mean “dealing with this incident” as “taking a punch and then a metaphorical slap in the face with a smile, when all she wants to do is her job.” Then yeah, she’s not “dealing.” Would that we all were as thickskinned and forgiving against our attackers as treis.
I’m going by the teachers I’ve known socially. And I am not exaggerating. But maybe the ones I’ve known were unusual.
Still, there is a common misconception that a teacher’s day ends when the 3:30 bell rings. This is simply not the case.
I don’t know when and where you went to school, so your milage obviously varies from my experience.
In a public school in New Jersey, teachers are forbidden under pain of loss of tenure from using any form of corporal punishment. This has been the case since at least 1950.
When I began teaching, back in the 1960s, our union told us that under no circumstances were we to ever, ever lay a finger on a student unless we had no other alternative to protect the safety of that student or others, or in self defense. In fact, we were told, things like requiring a student to write “I will not punch my teacher,” 500 times on the blackboard was a form of corporal punishment and should never be done. Similarly, even a friendly pat could be misunderstood, and one could end up accused not only of corporal punishment but of molesting the student.
Years later, when I was on my local school board, I learned about how any assault, no matter how limited, upon a school employee is grounds for expulsion. We did have one case of this, where a student kicked a wastebasket into his teacher’s leg.
<hijack>
And we had a classic case of a gym teacher who was fond of slamming kids into lockers. We got complaints, but no one was willing to provide on-the-record testimony and you can’t discipline someone on the basis of anonymous hearsay, even though we were pretty sure it was true. Finally, he slammed the wrong kid, whose mother said “Damn right, he’ll testify. If anybody’s gonna slam my kid around it’ll be me, not some <white guy> <vulgarity deleted>.” The teacher was, unfortunately, just a few years away from retirement, and chose to retire rather than face the music.
</hijack>