Here is the other side of the story of the teacher beating

[mfcorey1]

I will never say that she was right. However, every teacher can relate to what led up to the incident. The classrooms of America have turned into jungles and it is not always the teacher's fault.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/beating-caught-tape-teacher-speaks-10686839

[leftofcool]

1. As a retired teacher, yes it is a jungle

but there is NEVER an excuse for hitting any child, ever! I don't care what the child has done/did/said, no hitting! If that teacher can not control her classroom, she should get out of the education field.

[lib2DaBone]

23. I had a 10-year-old that was hitting other students, pulling hair..spitting...

.. I told him to stop.. and he said.. "Fuck-Off"... you heard right.. 10 Years old.

Johhny don't...Johnny stop...Johnny don't punch that girl.. Johnny sit down.... Johnny don't spit...

Johnny go to the office... "no", Johnny go to time out... "no".

It's always the Teacher's fault... not Johnny's.

[callous taoboy]

25. I send kids to the office the second they make any aggressive move or rude comment.

No sane teacher lets it get to the point you describe. I don't tell him to stop: I stop him, immediately.

[Warren Stupidity]

2. The other side of the kids face as she bashed away?

That side?

You have to be kidding, right?

[mfcorey1]

4. You fail to understand what I am saying

She is in a school with at risk students where it seems that behavior is just what happens and there are no real alternatives provided to assist students with problems. A female student is surrounded by other students who are taunting her and in some mode threatening her. You are returning from having to have broken up a major fight where there really is little assistance to help you. Now you are facing this in the classroom and again there is no one to assist you. I never condoned her actions, but having witnessed this kind of thing in schools, I can imagine how she felt. The failure is more than the teacher's actions. I respect that she is not asking to be pardoned from what she did. However, there needs to be a thorough vetting of the structure where this kind of thing happens. It is easy to say that she is just an out of control teacher. Where is the administration? Where is security? Where is the parental support other than the legal actions they are sure to take? Unless you have spent a day in a school with at risk students, there is little reason you can criticize my statements. Try it. Take a day off and just switch places with teachers who provide educational services to students who have criminal records and will hit you without a second thought. Every state sets up these alternative centers for students who cannot be mainstreamed. No, those actions that the teacher used are never right, but I do understand why she snapped.

[Bucky]

11. Thank you. It's a systemic problem. They raised teacher salaries, but that's not "more resources"

That school has been known as a mess for some time. The system is acting like the problem is that the teacher got caught.

[madfloridian]

17. This was a charter school. There is a difference.

They are not regulated like real public schools.

[YvonneCa]

27. There are NO EXCUSES for this 'teacher's '....

...behavior. NONE.

I have read very little about this incident, but I DID read it's a charter school...and often they don't require certificated teachers. That is but one failing of some charter schools.

'At Risk' is also no excuse. I've worked 24 years with at risk kids. There are ways a trained educator deals with such behavior. Training provides the toolsand strategies to deal with this. Obviously this person didn't have those tools.

This person does not represent the teaching profession.

[Solly Mack]

3. One of my students tried to stab me with a pair of scissors. (a long, long time ago)

It never once crossed my mind to attack and beat that student. Not once.


You don't beat a child for acting out. That's not discipline - that's abuse.

[Flipper999]

5. The kid was cowering in fear,

and the teacher was methodically beating the crap out of him. The teacher didn't just lose her temper and give him a smack (which would be bad enough). She just kept hitting, and hitting...

I realize the kid was probably being a little shit, but a beat down is wrong either way. How the hell does that correct the situation in the classroom? This was a teacher losing it. She needs to find a new job (and be penalized for breaking the law).

[Bucky]

10. They should fire the principal as well. If a class or student gets that bad...

.. it's not JUST the teacher's fault. I'm in Houston and that particular charter school, which targets behavior-problem kids, has a reputation for having a LOT of problems and, like most charter schools, not enough resources for dealing with its problems.

[Echo In Light]

6. Still completely unjustifiable

[Romulox]

7. The teacher had an anger problem that OBVIOUSLY went farther than that one child

I have never in my life beat a defenseless and prone individual, and I myself have been the subject of abuse.

[Brickbat]

8. You're right; teachers can relate to what led up to the incident. But the vast majority of teachers

know not to beat on a kid.

I feel bad for the teacher because she was in a no-win situation. It had gotten out of her control. But there were better ways for her to not-win the situation.

[Starry Messenger]

9. I would never lay a hand on a child.

A) That was a charter school, not a mainstream public school B) Teachers just don't hit kids if they are good teachers. The thought would never even cross my mind.

[Bucky]

12. Beyond the two dimensional thinking, however...

Simplistic moral prescriptions don't mean much when the need is to understand what caused the problem. Surely you don't think this happened because it was a charter school. It happened because it was an under-resourced school--a problem hardly limited to charter schools.

[Starry Messenger]

13. I just wanted to make it clear for readers.

There has been a lot of anti-public school posting on DU, I don't want this link snagged in the future to try to do that. I'm a teacher Bucky, I know what the problems are. ;) Poverty, lack of resources, staff stretched too thin and under siege from several sources. None of that is helped by striking the children (and of course you know that, you're a teacher too, I'm just on my way out the door and won't have time to keep replying).

[tonysam]

21. It's the LAW you can't manhandle kids. It's that simple and cut and dried.

Davis will never work in a school again. However, what she says is pretty insightful about how bad charter schools are.

[renate]

14. I watched it without the sound and thought OMG, and then I listened to her story

My computer is set on mute, so I just watched the beating without any context and thought there couldn't be any excuse for snapping like that, and then I turned the sound on and watched again and heard what she has to deal with.

Obviously her behavior isn't ideal but I can understand why she did what she did. The teachers there must be 1) afraid for their own safety, on a constant basis, so they're in a constant state of flight-or-fight but flight isn't an option, and 2) afraid for their students' safety. And in a "school" that doesn't even have a pencil sharpener in her classroom, she must feel like she's basically just trying to keep a bunch of kids with criminal histories from killing each other. With none of the training and none of the protective gear that a prison warder gets.

I have to admit that if I saw students--any kids, really, but especially violent kids like that--taunting a mentally challenged child in a locked room, my protective instincts (both for myself and for the innocent child) would go into high gear. And after three years of being in an environment like that, I can't blame her for not going the child-psychologist "Isaiah, let's talk about your inappropriate behavior" route.

I'm amazed that any teacher can last in that school for more than a day. I'm not excusing her behavior, and neither is she, but I think it's very understandable both psychologically and physiologically.

[tonysam]

20. The charter school ought to be closed. n/t

[madfloridian]

15. This was a charter school with many resources...and few regulations.

"Are you, like the President, a fan of the "No Excuses" charter schools for the children of the poor, the ones with no oversight except for what student camera phones can provide? Then you may enjoy Jamie's House Charter School, where a special education teacher was fired this week after a student-shot video showed up on the local news. Apparently this kind of fight club atmosphere was established a while back, as the student complaint above was registered online a year and half ago. But nothing has been done since there has never been a publicly-elected school board to report to and no oversight allowed. After all, that kind of needless bureaucracy would get in the way of the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit of the CEOs who operate these chain gangs."

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/05/charter-school-student-beating-by.html

Arne's goal is to have more schools like this that have little oversight by local school boards.

The party is on board with him.

[madfloridian]

16. Jamie's House Charter School, the kind of school Arne wants.

We will have more and more of them with little oversight, just profit.

The complaint is over a year old. The school did nothing.

[madfloridian]

18. Another teacher who witnessed the beating resigned.

"Houston teacher who saw videotaped beating quits
Associated Press

HOUSTON -- A teacher who witnessed another instructor allegedly beat a student in a videotaped attack at Jamie's House Charter School in Houston has resigned.

Principal David Jones says 33-year-old social studies teacher Gabriel Hahn Moseley did not report the April 29 incident.

Jones says Moseley resigned Monday. Moseley could not immediately be reached for comment.

The pummeling of a 13-year-old boy was captured on cell phone video by another student.

Teacher Sheri Lynn Davis was fired last week after the video aired on television. Davis, who apologized Friday, is under criminal investigation over the beating.

Moseley was on probation in a marijuana possession case and was hired in November. School spokeswoman Sue Davis says Jamie's House was willing to give Moseley a second chance."

http://www.theeagle.com/texas/Houston-teacher-who-saw-videotaped-beating-quits

[tonysam]

19. There really is no "other side" to this incident.

She banged this kid's head against the floor and against the wall, for God's sake. This idiot (uncertified) "teacher" should know you have to be so, so careful to even lay a hand on a kid, even hugging him or her.

She was a two-time "teacher of the year"? God knows how bad the rest of the teachers at this charter school must be.

If there is "another side," it's a damning indictment of charter schools, as Davis makes clear in her explanation of the events leading up to the incident.

[madfloridian]

22. More about the charter school and its leader, from the new lawsuit's lawyer.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7005546.html

"Her attorney, Chip Lewis, acknowledged that Davis “let her emotions get the better of her.” But he also cast blame on the management of Jamie's House, a small state-approved charter school in north Harris County targeting emotionally troubled and neglected children.

Documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle show that the founder and superintendent of Jamie's House, Ollie Hilliard, has run at least one other facility for children that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services shut down for failing to meet minimum standards. But it seems that top officials at the Texas Education Agency, who twice signed off on renewing the Jamie's House contract, didn't know about Hilliard's background.

“It would be nice to have known,” TEA spokeswoman Debbie Ratcilffe said Friday.

Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the Department of Family and Protective Services, said he couldn't find any written correspondence between his agency and the TEA about violations at the residential facility run by Hilliard.

“We can't and don't regulate schools,” Crimmins said. “We don't have the authority or the expertise to regulate schools.”


Good old deregulation....works every time.

And these schools get public money to use without oversight.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

24. Blaming the victim, eh?

[SemiCharmedQuark]

26. Her lawyer: "She was not trying to hurt the boy. She just wanted to get his attention."

Right...

I really do sympathize with teachers. Kids in my day were awful and I imagine they're much worse now. That said, this lady totally snapped. The kid crawled into a corner and tried to curl up into a ball and she dragged him back.