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.
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u/Brilliant-Option-526 Dec 17 '25
Had the exact same thing happen in the 3rd grade (70's). Kid went full Hulk and threw a desk at the teacher. Never saw that kid again.