Art Teacher in Baltimore Attacked

Posted by Suzanne Hill Apr 29, 2008

The outrageous thing about the attack – posted on the Internet – was how art teacher Berry said her principal responded to the incident. She said her principal told her she'd provoked the attack by telling the student she would defend herself [thus using a so-called “trigger” word] instead of defusing the situation and calming the student. Say what?

Marietta English, president of the Baltimore union's teacher chapter, stated that her office typically receives two or three complaints a day of assaults on teachers. When I first heard this statement, I thought I heard it wrong. Two to three attacks a day??

Evidently many of the attacks aren’t reported to the school system or the police. I’ve heard teachers say in interviews that they believed the school would take care of the situation by transferring them or punishing or expelling the student. But the administrators aren't reporting these violent incidents or doing anything to punish the violent children for fear their schools will be doomed to a "persistently dangerous" label under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The use of a cell phone to videotape the attack and post it on myspace will no doubt egg on other students to tape violent acts and post them as well. But ironically the recording allowed us to see how bad the situation in the schools really is.

Why wasn’t the student who beat down the art teacher arrested? Are we powerless to take possession of our city schools and demand that students behave?