Attack on Teachers

As the new school year begins, you might like to be updated on some school happenings that will no doubt be repeated this academic year. After this update, I have some questions one might ask the black leadership.

The ongoing and escalating assault on primary- and secondary-school teachers is not a pretty sight. Holly Houston is a post-traumatic stress specialist. She counsels teachers in Chicago public schools and reported, “Of the teachers that I have counseled over the years who have been assaulted, 100 percent of them have satisfied diagnostic criteria for PTSD.” It’s not just big-city schoolteachers traumatized. Dr. Darlyne Nemeth, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said last year, “I have treated many teachers with PTSD, and I am currently following a few of them.”

A Philadelphia seventh-grade girl with a history of incidents against her teacher sprayed perfume in the teacher’s face after telling her that she smelled “like old white pussy.” After telling her classmates “I’m about to kick this bitch’s white ass,” she shoved the teacher, knocking her to the floor. In 2014, a Philadelphia 68-year-old substitute teacher was knocked out cold by a student (http://tinyurl.com/orldslb). Earlier that year, two other teachers in the same school were assaulted. By the way, Philadelphia schools employ close to 400 school police officers.

In a school district near St. Louis, teachers have had pepper spray and dog repellant sprayed in their faces. A Baltimore teacher had his jaw broken. In Baltimore, each school day in 2010, an average of four teachers and staff were assaulted. A 325-pound high-school student in Houston knocked out his 66-year-old female teacher (http://tinyurl.com/oqxmrfg). Nationally, an average of 1,175 teachers and staff were physically attacked each day of the 2011-12 school year.

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