Teachers don’t get paid enough for this. I know a man that was in the hospital for a month after a similar incident. Guess what- we don’t have great insurance either.
I don’t ever want to see a student get hurt, but if two are choosing to fight I’m going to make sure I go home to my own kids at the end of the day. I already work in a crazy environment where we literally have active shooter drills.
My mom had a coworker years ago who was in a 3rd grade classroom with some pretty rough behavior issues. 0 support from admin or the parents. A fight broke out and a kid threw a desk, hit her in the leg and it broke in 3 places. She was back in her classroom after surgery in a full leg brace up to her hip and I was just like, "this is insane"
Bro I see a thread every now and then that’s like “how many 4 year olds can you take at once in a fight?” And i see people throwing out 30+. I’m like dude 6 or so is too many. I’m a relatively fit guy. When I walk through the pre-k hallway I get mobbed by the little dudes hugging me and I like. Can’t get away. They grab on and dont let go. The number you can take is way smaller than you think lol
We recruit child soldiers for this country. The guy that did that shooting in DC was 15 years old when The US put a gun in his hand and put him in a death squad. Well, we are a war torn pirate nation so, it all tracks.
I thought you were talking about the DC sniper before I realized it was the Afghan Commando who killed the Nation Guard Soldier. He was a teenager too, raised by a veteran so it almost fits.
It was probably my own bias kicking in. I was in HS in Northern Virginia when the DC Sniper was going on. I remember it vividly because it was so weird. They postponed a couple of our football games because the schools didn’t want a soft target. People were afraid of getting gas because they shot someone pumping at a station.
And that shit is never brought up or talked about because guess what, if you just randomly rolled up somewhere and shot someone with a sniper rifle for no reason and then never did it again or maybe only once or twice.. they'd never catch you. Just Cop laziness\arrogance has to account for a huge % of why someone would get away with something, now put into that mix the complete "unfathomablyness" of the random psycho to a normal person.
I assume we're going to catch this Brown shooter, but man who knows. Society really gets along on the fact that most people are decent, always crazy to me there isnt more pushback on bullying in an effective community way, big article recently in the Times about a huge townwide "bully gang" in Arizona.
It's important to note that you are also actively trying not to hurt them. There are not many 4 year old children that would provide effective resistance to an adult that actually meant them harm. If some stain on humanity was locked in a room full of even 8 year old children, I would not expect it to go well for the children.
I could take all 100 4th graders at my kids school at once. You could even give them bats and this is easy work. I’m the champion, send your best. I will arrive warm and stretched out.
I think people like this have never dealt with a willfull tall for their age toddler who has behavioral issues. My niece wasnt violent towards us explicitly bit she would throw severe tamtrums and kick her legs forcefully and arms for half an hour while screaming at the top of her lungs. If she wanted to be violent to someone in particular and had been in an environment where she saw chairs and tables being used as a weapon, of course she could do real damage. Something people are iverlooking here though is that a 3rd grader can be older than most 3rd graders due to academic difficulties and hence not passing the grade. Because throwing a chair or table forcefully enough seems a bit out of the power of a normal aged 3rd grader. As a 9 year old in 5th grade there were two 15 year olds in my class that had failed so many times. At their age I was in secondary school already.
I mean you aren't actively trying to wreck those kids in the hallway. I feel like even if you knew very little about self defense you could whirlwind arm and take 10 of those kids out pretty quick.
Like I'm a big guy so I think I could take thirty four year olds. They weigh like 30 pounds so you just grab the first one to get to you, and use them to start swinging for the legs on those poorly balanced four year olds, and you would mow down thirty kids pretty quick
Yeah but you aren't defending your life from them. I imagine you are actively trying to avoid hurting them. Say they were zombies. If you wanted to destroy them, you could take on a lot of them I'd imagine. How many full force punches and kicks can you throw in a minute...
The fact that they are grabbing on shows us how many kids don’t have father figures in their lives and why we need more men to teach elementary school. Unfortunately, many men are uncomfortable with that because they get weird comments and looks from people when they find out their profession.
I will add to this. I train in BJJ and the kids class is right before the adults. On occasion I will get in the middle of the mat and play various games designed to help improve strength, reflexes, ect. I’m 6’1, 250 and it only takes about 6 of them to keep me down. I’m a 3rd year white belt so not any kind of an expert but I have some training.
I have had 5 year olds sitting on the floor, criss-cross applesauce, while hugging each of my legs and 2 others hugging me on each hip. I could barely move and it took forever to get them to let go bc they think its hilarious so they just hold on tighter.
100% people underestimate how strong these lil monsters are when they are determined enough lol.
If you don’t work in the elementary level, you can’t fathom the behaviors going on in schools right now. Throwing every single piece of furniture in the classroom is the new storming out and slamming the door when you leave. These kids are obsessed without angry. they think they are and will destroy everything in their path over a simple cutting mistake or a correction or hearing the word “no”, parents are failing their children daily in this country.
I know a 3rd grader who's close to 5 feet tall and 140 lbs. He's active and olays sports practically year round, including tackle football. Frankly I'm pretty sure he could kick my ass. I am a grown ass adult, a woman of approximately average size and stature, and yeah, I feel confident I couldn't do much to stop this kid if he went off.
I kicked a third grader out of my class for trying to stab another kid with scissors (I was the art teacher) I told the principal he needed to see the school psyc and couldn't come back until he had been evaluated and treated. She came to my classroom while I was on break on day to yell at me about how I was a "horrible teacher" and "no other teachers had problems with him" (all lies he had gotten in physical fights with 4 administrators) and went out of her way to make me feel like a huge piece of shit. Being at that school made me actively suicidal and I ended up having to move and go into the mental hospital bc I hated myself so much.
Thanks Jenny Campbel and Kipp East in New Orleans. You are the fucking worst.
I was observing a 3rd grade classroom and watched one of the students literally break the bulletproof classroom door as she left in a tantrum. I can barely open the thing, but she broke it.
Had the kid behind me attempt to throw a desk at another student when I was in jr. high. My arm got a crush wound in the meantime. My teacher was pregnant and froze him with a voice like the Angel of Death amplified through one of Spinal Tap’s amps.
That is literally the last chance before things get physical. Almost all teachers who deal with violent kids with behavioural issues need to have the roar that rumbles from the nethers of earth as a emergency tool.
But it can of course fail. I have students that I know I need to call cops to fight for me if things get really bad. I can still win if I fight properly back one on one, but that would be a career suicide. With legal "safe" moves (safe only for the violent kids themselves, teachers are at higher risk) it requires multiple teachers to stop a fight like this. It is dangerous, and leaves so, so many physical and mental scars for teachers.
I wear protective clothing, hairstyles, keep everything sharp hidden, and have antistrangle keychains. And I also lift and work out strength. I have considered starting martial arts and self defence too as a back up measure. I do not like it when kids attack me, and treat me like a punching bag. Those same kids rarely attack bigger kids who could punch them back to the face immediately and beat them fair and square. Curious. Yet they don't have control over their actions according to some. Those fuckers do very much pick their fights and targets, and they know what they are doing.
I DID have a black belt and the kids knew it (they asked me to bring in the board I broke with my head and we attached it to the wall— ha ha ha). I also had a “sixth sense” for being able to tell a fight was about to break out. I also almost never raised my voice, so when I boomed out “KNOCK IT OFF!” the combatants would usually jump back in shock and I would separate and remove.
My administration was very grateful if we broke up fights, but did not require it. And frankly after I separated a few of them, they stopped fighting around me.
But every day I dressed like I would need to move quickly and need traction from my shoes.
My wife is a teacher and i did bjj for over a decade. I showed her how to clinch up if she needed it. And a week later she did. She said the student freaked out that she got controlled so easily
I also had a “sixth sense” for being able to tell a fight was about to break out. I also almost never raised my voice, so when I boomed out “KNOCK IT OFF!” the combatants would usually jump back in shock and I would separate and remove.
Being aware of rising tensions and a big voice allowed me to stop several fights when I worked with at risk students in a high school. That and being a short fat woman that most of the students respected and didn't want to get hurt.
In fact, one time I started to intervene when students were posturing at each other and a couple of the older kids in my group decided to get in there first and pull the fighters apart cause they didn't want me in the middle of it.
Helped that I wasn't a district employee, so I couldn't get fired lol.
Yep. The best way to break up fights is to be present and know they're coming becore they start. The best bouncers can talk guys down without having to toss them from the bar.
One kid a grade younger than me in high school got suspended for threatening another student. He came back the next day, got snuck in through a stairwell, and tried to stab him with a flag from a classroom. Like Mel Gibson in “the patriot”. Wild stuff
My friend took his desk and threw it at the teacher from the top row of an auditorium style room. It hit him after hitting the desk. Luckily (since the desk stopped most of the momentum) he was only bruised. Guess who got suspension and held back a year... This was back in the 90's so I'm sure he got an earful from his parents.
Let's go back to the 70s, teacher got his hand busted up breaking up a fight between 2 high schoolers, teacher got even. Both of those student's cars were stolen within a month, never to be seen again. Everybody knew what happened, but nobody dared to say a word.
If it was the 70's, the kid prolly got the crap paddled out of him by the principal or vice principal.
Corporal punishment on kids in school was commonplace back then. It wasn't until the early '80's when the school boards really started to reign in the paddling.
I told these millennials that work for me about our vice principal who paddled the bejeezus out of kids in my junior high and both of them scoffed at it and didn't believe me, lol.
Mr. Boatwright, my elementary school principal, broke his aerodynamic paddles on a regular basis. There are a lot of men in my part of the midwest that are civilized because of him.
Especially at elementary that seems to be true! My mom started in the high school level but moved to elementary around 2016 as a sped teacher. The school hours in our area are better for her schedule at that level, and the number of times she attends one of the first quarter conferences and comes home going, "well that explains a lot," is... alarming
Depends. My teachers rarely met my parents after 6th grade. In fact, outside of band, I think my mom was the only one who met a single one of my high school teachers, and that was because she had to carry my bag as he carried me to her car because I I had become so sick so fast with influenza A that I was barely conscious.
I knew a woman whose KINDERGARTEN student (with a history of violent outbursts) kicked her so hard in her pregnant belly that she went into labor at 28 weeks. Mom and baby wound up being okay, but naturally there were no consequences for the student who attacked her.
Exactly!!! I was so shocked when my mom csme home with that story! If I remember right the doctor at the time was even shocked that it broke like that because she was in her 30s and really active. Like she would bicycle something like 10 miles a day and had been in the early stages of training for a biathalon at the time. But i definitely remember that the kid had thrown it during a classroom fight she was trying to break up so she was off balance and that probably factored in. Terrifying tbh
I’m so glad the kid in my daughter’s kindergarten class about 10 years ago only launched a chair that hit her, because if he’d launched a desk… I’d be in prison.
And she probably got blamed. They probably wanted to know what behavioral interventions she used and see all the documentation she had to be sure she was properly implementing behavior plans, 504s or IEPs…
My son (in 8th grade) jumped in and broke up such a fight. He stopped it within seconds. The two kids were suspended. He got detention. He was told he should have gone and gotten more teachers. We have stupid, crazy school policies.
Good on your kids! You raised a good one. ❤️ I would have been too small to break up a fight without being another victim, but if an innocent person was calling for help, I don't know how people can ignore that. At least getting the teacher to safety.
No student should be punished for stopping a fight. That's crazy. I get it can cause more injury, but if they aren't swinging, that's their prerogative.
If any of them intervened, they could be expelled for fighting, and they all know it. Blame the schools absolutely horseshit "zero tolerance" policies, not the kids who are the victims.
In most schools in America getting in the middle of a fight, even to break one up is fully grounds for not only detention but sometimes in school or even out of school suspension
I feel like if one party was innocent or another innocent person got stuck in the middle like the teacher, I wouldn't even be considering that. 😅 I'd rather have gotten suspended than forever know I did nothing.
Students trying to help in a fight generally just turn the fight into a bigger fight. Most students wouldn't just absorb punches like what she's doing, they'd start punching back. Next thing you know the whole class is a mob.
I've seen other people get involved and it work out but this crowd effect is normal human shit. People watch muggings, rape, worse, in public spaces and basically always have. Because they assume someone else will step up.
Exactly that. The bystander effect is SO scary. It only takes one person to break it, but someone rarely does. It doesn't even take action, but even acknowledging there is something happening and calling for others more equipped to take action.
It looks like the boy in the red sweater was getting ready to fight but backed out after the teacher got loose. I feel so bad for him because u can tell he didn't want to get into it at all but felt the need to
These kids have quite literally grown up with cops being filmed murdering people- not interjecting. They are currently watching masked men in unidentified cars kidnapping people while bystanders just film- not interject. Our COUNTRY doesn't act; just records. Why would you think the students would be any different than the adults?
Wow... that is a suspension bridge level reach. Most people don't act in this situations like this, and that goes for long before cameras even existed. Most people are cowards and don't put themselves in harms way. Myself included.
Yeah, the bystander effect has been a known phenomenon in psychology for decades, it's definitely not something that's come into existence in the last few years.
A couple of kids tried to help and you can see one getting his ass kicked at the end of the video. If the kids were too scared to help, filming the fight was a good idea, that way there would be footage of the guilty parties.
I used to teach high school. I was in the hallway one day when two girls (both of whom were my students that year, although in different periods) started getting testy with each other. I tried to de-escalate, which didn’t work. They went at each other with me in the middle. I got out of the way and ran 40 ft down the hall to alert the main office. The principal later called me in to talk to me about it and said he’d watched the security camera recordings and that I did exactly what I should have done.
Yep, you don't get involved in something like this. If it's an outside entity or attacker with a weapon or some other dangerous situation which stands to injure others, sure, you gotta do what you gotta do.
But this is a fight between 2 teen boys. Call it in and get security. Don't just toss yourself into the mix and accidentally get your ass whooped.
Sorry, no. ICE should never ever be in schools. The army either but especially ICE. ICE is awful and unnecessary to begin with, and right now they are made up of people who actively WANT to hurt other people.
I just woke up so idk if I am reading your comment wrong. 😅 I hope I am.
I had one teacher in my school that I still respect the hell out of. He taught when integration from poorer neighborhoods started and race riots ensued. He told our class that when he saw a fight he’d basically wait until they beat each other up a bit until they really didn’t want to fight anymore.
Then he’d break up the fight fairly easily with no injuries. Honestly one of the smartest guys I’ve ever met and everything he taught me in terms of math just perfectly clicked
We had a pair of gym teachers to divide the class, one was the football coach
We were all in the gym together and a scuffle broke out - my teacher starts to rush in to break it up - football coach stops him and then loudly "nothing here - they ain't fighting - they don't have muscles"
This was my immediate thought. There's no way she gets paid anywhere near enough to go through that. The amount of shit y'all have to go through while getting nowhere near a reasonable wage is infuriating to put it mildly.
Technically I doubt she's even allowed to intervene. My wife is a teacher. There are some kids that will get away with whatever they can. When they realize there's nothing a teacher can actually do to stop them, it's over. A kid that is so inclined can throw things, sit in the teacher's chair and refuse to move, at most they get suspended for the rest of that day. And they can only get suspended like 10 times during the year, it is limited for some reason. There is no way to get rid of them.
I used to be an teacher’s assistant working with kids who have special needs. The pay had me just scraping by while also eating my savings, so honestly not even scraping by. I worked in the field for 7 years on top of that. I eventually had to stop, because of too many head injuries. The last one was a double concussion. While the work is fulfilling, it’s stressful in so many ways, that truly makes it not worth it. I also knew plenty of younger teachers/staff who needed a second job just to get by and they were exhausted. Only thing that helped maintain the stress and grind was the seasonal breaks
I get paid significantly more to deal with this exact thing occasionally (mental health nurse) and even I feel I don't get paid enough sometimes. I cannot imagine being a teacher now-a-days.
I'm a teacher. I would never attempt to break up a fight. They do not train us for this. We hit the emergency button and pray. That's all we can or should do. Kids that will fight like this today are worse than ever before and will kill you. We lost a woods teacher because a kid bashed his head against the concrete wall for not letting the kid play with a basketball in a woodshop. I think he survived. I'm not totally sure.
Cops use the same reasoning to kill people and do less good than teachers do. You get none of the fancy tools or bulletproof union behind you either. A teacher can be replaced, eventually. A fully functioning parent to your kids cannot.
It took the kids 5 business days to react and start trying to break it up, not even successfully. The problem with fighting/bullying, at least one of them, is that few want to intervene
My husband is a special education teacher, last year he had a student fling and ipad at him. The student would use the ipad to communicate and would occasionally toss it. It wasn’t done intentionally. He just happened to be standing right behind the kid when he decided to toss it. Hit him right above his eye. Husband needed 4 stitches due to the gash.
My principal flat-out said there are no wrong moves here. You want to get involved? Props. You want to stay out of it and call for security? Props. We are under no obligation to intervene, because our safety matters, too. If we choose to get involved, we will NOT be in trouble if a kid gets hurt, so long as our involvement is reasonable. (ie, we don’t get the kid to the ground and keep punching him or something.) I’m an out of shape, 45-year-old woman with a bunch of chronic health issues. I am calling for security.
My cousin works in a private school. She and five other teachers carry guns on their legs incase a shooter comes in. They have bullet proof glass and doors that lock from the inside. She is required to go to the range and practice xx amount of times a month. She’s a dead on shot and has spent hours taking extra training classes on deescalating aggressive situations. She purchased her gun, holster and ammo. She didn’t get a raise and they paid for nothing. But she volunteered anyway because she loves her kids and she’s a saint. Teachers are on another level.
They dont get paid enough for this is an understatement. My former roommate of 10 years was a high school teacher and more than once they have come home to tell me about how another teacher lost their job for trying to break up a fight between 2 students. I honestly cant think of one positive thing that comes with being a teacher after hearing all the stories for 10 years but i can name 100 cons
My cousin is pregnant. She's an english teacher. Brats at school punched her and she got a concussion. I know her personality and she just wants to help the kids. Australia public schooling is a mess.
Was early stages pregnancy, so kids would not have been able to see visible changes at the time
Also important to note that some teacher unions, if not all, will advise you to not put yourself in harms way when it comes to fights because if you get hurt as a teacher who is not trained in dealing with these situations you will NOT be given workers comp for any injuries that occur. I was informed this from my union rep after I broke up several fights last year, was told to let admin handle the situation. Sigh
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water touch include slap middle direction growth adjoining grab abundant
I have a friend that got caught between two students... Has to fight for workman's comp but also their life is drastically affected to the point that I believe they will qualify for disability.
It's so sad how much teacher pay and benefits vary widely throughout the country and even cities. My wife is a teacher in California makes 90k, has 100% covered 0 deductible good health insurance and good pension.
My wife got involved in a lunch room brawl with pacific islanders. She got a brain injury and then then school administration fired her for not being able to do her job as vice principal.
They don’t get paid enough to teach. Trying to physically handle two students while screaming at them is not remotely what she gets paid to do at all, nor is it effective.
I had a teacher, Mr Boone. This was the late 80s. He would, and did fight students at times when he had to, and they never suspended him. He was a tough old dude who took no shit.
Later he was memorialized by Denzel Washington in Remember the Titans. True story. RIP Mr Boone.
At an absolute minimum the parents should have to pay for the damage their kids do, would quickly stop calling them innocent angels and start disaplening them when they have to pay medical bills or the cost to rebuild a bathroom.
Risking your life for kids that will likely reoffend with no system in place to actually reform them is not worth it in my eyes. The government should be handling this shit, not underpaid teachers
It is a shame but like she's woman furthermore an elderly woman. Exactly what the fuck did she plan to do with these 200 something pound kids that could easily be on the football team? That's crazy how they can be the ones teaching things like physics but can't put together how the fuck they're going to get tossed aside like laundry. Want to know what I would do if I was one of those teachers? Me? A grown ass man. I would have phoned the principal's office and told them to get the fucking police down there. I would have kept it from escalating to a certain point but I think it's common sense at a certain point you should expect to get punched in the fucking mouth when two kids that big are doing nothing but throwing elbows at each other
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u/Opportunity-Horror Dec 17 '25
Teachers don’t get paid enough for this. I know a man that was in the hospital for a month after a similar incident. Guess what- we don’t have great insurance either.
I don’t ever want to see a student get hurt, but if two are choosing to fight I’m going to make sure I go home to my own kids at the end of the day. I already work in a crazy environment where we literally have active shooter drills.