As a former teacher I can attest to this--I too was the victim of an aggressive assault by a student--a 17 year old female. An entire auditorium stood by and watched and no one came to my rescue. Afterward, when some students (friends of the attacker) were interviewed they testified that I was the aggressor, and that the student did not assault me. The truth came out in the end and the student was expelled. I'll never forget the flood of emails I received from my colleagues thanking me for ridding the school of this young lady because of her chronic abusive behavior that no one in the administration ever took seriously.

I do have one question/concern--
Does anyone know how the percentage of teachers who are: under the care of a pyschologist/physchiatrist; are taking psychotropic, mood stabilizing drugs or sleeping pills?

Someone told me once that his wife, a physchiatrist, said that more than half of her patients were teachers. I tend to believe that this is the norm rather than the exception.

What does this have to say about the working conditions of most teachers?

I am not suprised by the statistics you mention. During my career in education I have observed things going from bad to worse. The main problem is that the administration expouses zero tolerance, but does not inforce it. With society deteriorating and violence increasing it only makes sense that violence will increase in the schools. We need the administration to stop paying lip service to the problem and do something out of the box. We will never be able to keep teachers or get highly qualified teachers with this type of behavior being prevelent.

Sara:

Thank you for keeping this in the public eye. I am a BCPSS teacher and am deeply concerned about the safety and well-being of myself and my students as a result of the non-stop disruption and chaos in our building.

Please keep writing about this. WE DON'T NEED WORKSHOPS. We need a safe working environment so we can teach and our students can learn.

Hi Sara,

As the author of Attacking our Educators the goal is not to have teachers take their summers reading about getting beat up but to have the teachers become proactive instead of reactive. We want to open the lines of communication and provide solutions. The previous post stated they need safe working environments, this book provides over 80 different solutions. Every student and teacher needs to feel safe, successful, and wanted.