In schools, violence starting at earlier age
Increasingly, teachers face the task of controlling kids, even kindergarteners, who lash out physically.
By ALEX LEARY and THOMAS C. TOBIN
Published March 18, 2005

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ST. PETERSBURG - The pupils were counting jelly beans as part of a math exercise when one of them started acting silly. Mrs. Ottersbach decided to take away her jelly beans.

The 5-year-old didn't like that.

She terrorized Room 13 at Fairmount Park Elementary, trashing Mrs. O's desk, smashing a candy dish and kicking another teacher in the shins, officials said.

At the principal's office, it got worse. The girl threw books and boxes, climbed atop the desk and started stomping. She drew on the walls, hit the assistant principal in the stomach.

Minutes later, the girl was in the back of a police cruiser, under arrest for battery. Her hands were bound with plastic ties, her ankles in handcuffs.

"I don't want to go to jail," she said moments after her arrest Monday.

An overreaction by frazzled adults? Or an appropriate response in a time when younger students are becoming more violent?

While police say their actions were proper, school officials were not pleased with the outcome.

"We never want to have 5-year-old children arrested," said Michael Bessette, the district's Area III superintendent, who oversees a number of schools, including Fairmount Park. He said the district's campus police should have been called to help. The assistant principal was in the process of doing just that, he said, but another in a series of outbursts by the girl interrupted her in mid call. When she asked the secretary to call for help, the secretary called city police instead.

Bessette said campus police routinely deal with children and are trained to calm them in such situations. The school, he said, will take several steps to strengthen its procedures. Next time, Bessette said, "They can even call me," instead of calling city police.

The incident highlights a continuing problem for educators, who are required to use only nonviolent tactics as young students increasingly resort to violence.

The number of Pinellas students referred to administrators for discipline was down slightly in 2003-04 from the previous academic year. But referrals for student violence, such as battery on adults and fighting, are way up.

Pinellas elementary schools reported 406 referals for batteries on adults last school year, up from 272 the year before.

Another discipline category is suspensions. Last semester, the district reported 91 suspensions of elementary school children who had commited battery on an adult. That was more than the total for middle and high schools, which have more students.

Hillsborough County sees the problem too. Last year, that district reported 99 battery cases in elementary school, 467 in middle schools and 212 in high schools.

"We're just seeing more and more children at younger ages displaying very, very violent behavior," said Pinellas school spokesman Ron Stone. Pinellas has no written policies for physical contact when a student shows aggression.

As a rule of thumb, teachers and school administrators are counseled to avoid touching children. Beyond that, the district expects educators to protect children from hurting themselves and others, said Jim Lott, administrator of the district's Office of Professional Standards.

The district's contract with the teachers union allows teachers to use "such reasonable physical restraint as is necessary" to protect themselves and others.

Teachers should first try to talk the student into stopping bad behavior, Stone said. If it escalates to a dangerous level, Stone said, the teacher can try wrapping a student in her arms, perhaps getting on the ground with the teacher's legs over the student's legs.

Stone said he was told those strategies were tried with the Fairmount Park girl.

Under the district's code of student conduct, students are to be suspended for 10 days and recommended for expulsion for unprovoked attacks, even if they don't result in serious injury. But Stone said that rule wouldn't apply to kindergarteners.

"She's been appropriately disciplined under the circumstances," he said.

The girl was to return to the classroom today, but her mother said that won't happen. "She's never going back to that school," Inda Akins said Thursday evening from her apartment on 39th Lane S. "They set my baby up."

The 31-year-old single mother of three said she is consulting an attorney. Akins, whose last name is different from her daughter's, blamed the assistant principal, Nicole Ross Dibenedetto. She accused Dibenedetto of harping on the girl to the point where she "acted up" in class. "Ever since I told her to stay away from my daughter, there's been problems."

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This boggles my mind. First of all, I'm not sure I see why the police needed to be involved, except that in many school districts (cough cough mine cough cough) policy provides almost no room for actual intervention. Besides, with parents like this one, you really don't want it to say in the report that you had any contact. It seems, from the outside, like a week-long suspension and a long talk with the principal would be in order. But what really irks me is the parent response. Way to teach your kid that everything they did was ok, and that anybody who doesn't accept your demands is a jerk...I'd hate to get this kid as a middle or high schooler.

It wouldn't probably piss me off if I didn't get to deal with parents like this several times a week. So my question is, what do you think of the terrain in which parenting now stakes its claim? A lot of theory, study, and real-world evidence suggests that reactions like the one here, or the one I suggested, are unneeded. However, the commonality of situations where the parent takes the child's side against the school (which literally is every day in any sizable district, I'm sorry to say), and the growing ability of behavioral problem students to completely destroy any hope for actually educating students (and therefore for succeeding on the standardized tests which determine employment, funding, level of respect, etc.), exponentiates by the year, it seems.

i would love video of this.


do schools not have security guards?

That's another thing I don't get. It sounds like it became a virtual three-stooges mess. But I know that it happens...a student in my class called another kid a "fat fuck" and punched him in the face, because he was getting a better grade. The kid was expelled, until the parents threatened a law-suit because the district was "targetting their son." I cannot possibly describe how out of control that kid is now...I am a passionate believer in the invincibility of words, but none exist for what a giant shithead these people are raising.

I think the school may have taken it a bit far with the whole arresting thing, but I also agree the parents are highly responsible for raising an out-of-control child. This is why I couldn't teach. I'd hit a kid for sure.

I think a public education is everyone's right, but I think when the parent is a fuck up, they shouldn't be handed a free babysitter everyday.

Example, kid misbehaves, teacher schedules a meeting w/ the parent, parent no shows (happens all the mother fucking time). Now that kid doesn't get into the classroom until the parent schedules a new meeting and shows up. Watch how fast parents start taking an interest in their student's education when they have to start missing work.

We'll work with your crazy ass kid, but you're coming to meetings and we're gonna be all up in your shit, until you figure out a way to convince your kid to behave well in school.

My wife's a preschool teacher and she has two kids that maliciously destroy toys every day. You gonna tell me that those kids haven't been doing that for 4 years leading up to preschool w/o so much as a blink from the parent? Right!

Child abuse. Not good.

If this is school policy, then there's something really wrong with the board.

America will be the end of the world.

Don't get me wrong, I don't support this at all. I just realize that my personality is not conducive to teaching young children (and even older high school age). Would I actually hit a child? No. I'd probably go insane and leave the profession after a couple months. But I realize this, thus I won't ever try to teach, cause I know I wouldn't be able to handle it and worry about the possibility of snapping.

Yet another reason why teachers should be paid a hell of a lot more than they are. Their salaries are a fucking joke.

I love you.

I think what frustrates me here is that I've seen this story played out too many times, at my school or otherwise. I won't pretend to know this particular case, but I can tell you how the story goes almost verbatim, where I work. It happens a dozen times a year. It's like a choose your own adventure story gone wrong.

Step one: The child is misbehaving, showing signs of disorder (x) or repeating major disruption (y). Do you call a S.A.T. with parent or do nothing? These are your only options, if you want to maintain your position.

- If you do nothing, behavior continues, parents complain to principal, who yells at you. Other parents complain (see below). Ultimately, you may be let go.

- If you call a S.A.T., the parent sets a time and does not show up. Little or nothing is done.

Step two: You create a behavioral plan (in spite of said parent's absense) for the student and develop a system that will both help alleviate causation and discourage the behavior. It continues to a lesser degree, but now a rich amount of defiance appears. Calls home result in nothing or even angry threats by parents. What do you do?

- If you continue to follow school policy, calling home and enacting light to moderate consequences, the behaviors increase.

- If you loosen up on consequences, behaviors double.

- If you increase reactions, writing referrals or discussing further consequences, administrators disengage from the problem out of fear and parents become beligerent.

Step three: The child freaks out, and all classroom control is demolished. Other students' parents get upset, nothing is learned, test scores drop, and the child in question begins making REALLY bad choices (see article in question). At this point the school panics and the parents freak out, and people sit and wonder what the fuck is wrong with teachers these days.

- If you talk to administrators, they get upset that you didn't "deal with this earlier."

- If you talk to parents, they are pissed that you are "picking on their child."

- If you do neither, you are fired.


Of course, there are a number of parents who are involved, caring, and interested in helping their child. Those children almost never are the ones in the scenario above, but even when they are the issues are addressed fairly quickly and efficiently. Unfortunately, what I have just laid out is a reality that pervades the public school system. I have learned to spend hours documenting every behavior in my class, and every response I give, so that when the occasional freak out occurs, I can at least prove that I tried to prevent it. Often I'm the only one.

Right

And is there a correlation between violent videogames, or say BOMBING OTHER COUNTRIES and violence in schools? Of course not

This argument has always baffled me. The problem with these punk ass lil bastards is simple. Idiot parents that are afraid to discipline their child.

There should be a test before you can procreate.....

It things like this that discourage me from becoming a teacher. Hopefully I can deal with these situations if they arise.

You're cute.

Situations like this are exactly why any kids I have are going to private schools. Private schools don't have to fuck around with delinquent kids or bad parents, they kick them out.

Actually, I had a friend who went to private school, and it was the opposite. Thanks to the parents' $$$, they were more likely to keep the bad kids in. Just my two cents. There are going to be bad kids in public and private schools. It's just a matter of teaching your own kids not to be that way.

As I read this I wondered "Why would he send his kids to a private school? He'd have to deal with them when they get booted."

But then I realized that you're assuming your kids will be the kids that stay.

Good luck!

I knew some kids that went to private school and some of their classmates were there purely because all the public schools in the area had kicked them out, but the private school was more than willing to take them as long as the tuition money was paid.

true.

I understand your point, but doesn't that just mean the kids whose parents can't afford private education are doomed, whether they can raise their kid "the right way" or not?

Well, I think this says it all. Why would you tell an assistant principal to stay away from a child? Maybe because you are the kind of parent that refuses to believe your child could do anything wrong?

Harping on a 5 year old to the point that she misbehaves? Give me a break.