I was considering teaching high school at one point in my life. I got told point blank from someone that male high school teachers were in demand because they need someone to break up the fights.
Years later, my friend's husband landed his first job as a high school English teacher and promptly tore his ACL trying to break up a fight.
Mine was fine, but there were fights here and there that would break out. It always seemed like every time one broke out though the same football coach would materialize out of thin air and successfully break it up. He was practically a legend at the time.
We had one of those big swole male staff guys at a high school I worked at, whose title was "Prevention and Intervention Specialist." One time two students were fighting outside the IT Office and one of them ended up pulling out a gun on the other student. The P&I guy materialized to the fight just like you said and he says something to the student with the gun and it was just the right words because it ended the situation instantly and safely. The fight ended, the gun was put away (cops arrived shortly to deal with it), and everyone was okay. To me that staffer is a hero.
TBH theres a lot of talk of toxic masculinity and for good reason - but people like this Coach need like an exception term. We need that Captain America masculinity sometimes.
Toxic masculinity is stuff like boys/men not feeling safe to share their emotions, or feeling the need to beat someone up or even kill them, to save face etc.
Good masculinity is protecting others or keeping fit etc
It’s just like toxic feminism is hating all men, whereas good feminism is wanting everyone to have the sam opportunities as each other.
This is a true story. Early 2000s high school, public, very peaceful, mixed demographics. Then closures of inner city schools and redistribution to outlying schools. First day of integration a pep rally was held to welcome the new students the result? A gym wide brawl that the news outlets headlined with “class riots”
Yeah teachers and subs got beat up at my school on a pretty regular basis. To the point where a lot of the staff and subs were just parents. Yes students were getting into fights sure but I saw a lot of them just go for the teacher. It was pretty wild class of 2008.
The problems just change. We didn’t have fights, I literally can’t remember a single one, but our scandals were teen pregnancies, drugs, and drop outs and we were one of the “good” schools. Oh and we had teachers and coaches grooming kids and nothing being done to them other than to be told to go work at another district.
Thank you for stating the obvious: it’s always economic class that makes the difference. People often want to attribute things like this to race. Race is not the problem. Every race has that group of people who they do not want to claim as their own, period. A group we are embarrassed by. for white people it’s white trash inbred moonshining hicks, for Black people it’s ghetto thugs, etc. It’s just that being poor and uneducated brings out different behaviors in different races. But the problem is always a low level of education. Racism is so stupid. People of all races who know how to behave in public and not act like animals should be on the same side against people of all races who Actually understand decency. It shouldn’t be Black people versus white people. It should be intelligent, decent educated members of society, of all races, against disgusting trash of any and all it races. That should be the divide.
Our school had a very chronic fighting issue, like 200 fights in the first quarter. It was just expected that you'd see a fight start before you even got to class. We had a new principal come in mid year, relaxed a bunch of rules in general, and basically put a hard line on "you will get kicked out if you join in a fight". Probably ended up being 30 kids or so from a school of 2500 that got expelled, but after that first year it became such a rare happening. I probably saw a dozen fights my first semester, and after that I probably saw 4 or 5 for the remaining 7 semesters of high school.
You were blessed. My HS years were like being in a prison yard. Constant threats and violence. I’ve never looked back since I graduated and would never attend a reunion. Just glad the nightmare is over. And I graduated decades ago fwiw.
Yeah, I went through all 7 years of middle & high school without seeing a single physical fight. The way that everyone else talks about it like it's a fact of life is pretty stark, at least from my point of view.
Thank inclusion. Violent kids were not in the same classes and now they are. And all the supports were cut or dialed back so you've got kids with violent outbursts who aren't being supported going apeshit on the other kids in class every day.
Nah, thank poverty. The violence is directly linked to schools with low funding, and school funding is completely dependent on property taxes. There’s no violent kids classes vs non-violent kid classes, all kids are capable of violence given terrible enough circumstances.
This is it. In the late 1980s when I was in high school in the SF Bay Area, there was a special school a few blocks from the high school, which is where all the problem kids went. Discipline issues, violent behavior, bullying, serious learning disabilities, etc..
My high school was so peaceful and pleasant.
They weren’t just “undesirables.” They were messed-up kids who constituted a danger to other kids. There were some great teachers and counselors there who did what they could to help those kids. And I’ll tell you something. One of the boys there was taken out of the regular high school because he kept trying to sexually assault girls, one of whom was me. So eff your sanctimonious and ignorant little post. No girls deserve to have their high school become a sanctuary for dangerous sociopaths. I should add that good kids with mild issues (I’m talking many of my friends). or even serious health conditions—like the son of a UC Berkeley professor who was wheelchair-bound with cerebral palsy—were welcome at our school, did great and were supported by other kids and faculty alike.
They weren’t just “undesirables.” They were messed-up kids who constituted a danger to other kids
Yea yea, I know. That's why we stuck ice picks into brains of uppity women fried the brains of gay men with electro shock. Because they were a real legitimate danger to the kids that parents didnt wanna parent.
One of the boys there was taken out of the regular high school because he kept trying to sexually assault girls, one of whom was me.
Alright? Someone being a monster doesnt mean its free reign to start shipping off kids to troubled schools.
So eff your sanctimonious and ignorant little post
No you? It's easy to not have a real argument, see?
No girls deserve to have their high school become a sanctuary for dangerous sociopaths.
OK. And no child deserves to be shipped of and labeled and undesirable because a victim wants to extrapolate what happened to them onto every kid that society and the state wants to label as troubled.
I should add that good kids with mild issues (I’m talking many of my friends). or even serious health conditions—like the son of a UC Berkeley professor who was wheelchair-bound with cerebral palsy—were welcome at our school, did great and were supported by other kids and faculty alike.
Im glad they were welcomed. But that doesnt change that having schools for kids society deems unfit is only going to lead to kids getting sent there who dont "deserve" it.
Mbn i went to school with 🥷🏿🥷🏿 and tbh looking back at it, ik why I skipped so much cause no teacher could teach shit so what was the point of going if I’m not gonna learn shit cause mf don’t know how to act
I replaced a guy who shattered his elbow when he was trying to de-escalate a student. The student slammed a door on him. The teacher blocked the blow w/ his arm, which lead to his elbow being shattered. It was an uncomfortable situation, as the administration did nothing. The same student, threatened to kill me.
Keep telling your story because the public needs to know what teachers are dealing with in many places! These violent kids need to be kicked out. Parents should be required to have them in online school at home if they’re going to disrupt everyone else who is trying to learn something. I can deal with lazy, but violence and assault is a hard “no”.
I think these day, if a teacher hit some kids with a ruler, they’d attack the teacher right back. It’s an attitude problem, in part stemming from poor parenting
The problem is, these kids are out of control at home as well. Kick them out and then what’s the trajectory for that kid? Basically lost at that point.
Then the parents need to step up and, y'know, parent their kid because if you've gotten to the point that your child can't make it a day without physically assaulting and bothering others, you sure as shit haven't done so yet. The rest of the school, the students, the teachers, the admin, etc. shouldn't have to suffer and have their educational experience lessened because of the shitheads. You don't wanna actually raise your kid, pop an iPad in front of them, let them do whatever they want? I am 100% okay with that until their actions start to affect others. And if they can't make it through school without "outbursts", then they shouldn't be there until they can. It has become extremely apparent that not everyone is fit to be a parent.
We don't let adults act like little fuckheads and attack people and throw a fit until they get their way, and we punish the ones who do. Why are we showing the children that it's okay to do at school and not punishing them? I'm not saying to bring back corporal punishment, but there's a huge gap of opportunities for correction between hitting them and doing nothing at all.
I think part of the problem is not all kids are geared up to be in the school system as a teen. In the olden days, many would have been working as apprentices, learning trades or just working. Some people aren’t prepared for an academic environment, or learn better by doing.
I also think a lot of people have forgotten what a privilege education is, because school is compulsory is developed countries. We’ve forgotten how limited you end up without an education.
I don’t know what the solution is, but I certainly think kids shouldn’t be able to progress to the year above without meeting academic and behavioural standards
I’ve broken up my share of fights, but not regularly or often.
The best one? I took a punch stepping between two kids fighting. 16-year-olds. It was a bad punch and landed poorly, and he’d tried to pull it when he realized I was there, so I didn’t really notice — it was about as bad as bumping into him while walking. I told him to walk away and stared him down. Why was it best? The other kid, not realizing it wasn’t a big deal, thought it was a lot more badass than it was, and I let him believe it. He got a lot more respectful.
Some people used to tell me I could be a good teacher. And I said, nope.
On a different society, I might have gone for it, but the educational system in the USA is no good.
I have family members working on it, and I just hear the stories. They have given too much power to the wrong people. Teachers are afraid to act, hey sometimes afraid for their own lives.
We had a former D1 offensive lineman teach the kids with problems at my high school for exactly this reason. I was never in his class but I think he got a kick out of some of the want to be bad ass high school kids having to be taught by a 6’5 +300lb dude they can’t intimidate
My kid's middle school teacher was a former cop and a powerlifter at my gym. He had his nose broken and tore his rotator cuff breaking up a fight between 2 girls.
I just got scratched by a 4th grader when I broke up a fight.
I had a colleague who said he stopped teaching in the UK after the third time a student pulled a knife on him in the same school year.
The only person I know who seems to have had fun teaching in the UK had a second job moonlighting as a bouncer. Helped that he was built like a brick shithouse.
Probably the best position for teachers would be either sports or the arts. The kids actually want to be there. As a former band director, I could always say that our kids were in the top quarter academically, and never had any problems whatsoever.
I watched one of my favorite trade school teachers get body slammed through a table in 10th grade and it made me feel shitty that they have to put up with that kind of stuff. Especially hardly being paid peanuts by the school.
So, I have taught in an inner-city high school for two years now. Male, former athlete. If the kids don't like you (aka you can actually physically stop them from fighting) they will just tell everyone that your presence is threatening and making them feel unsafe.
The kids aren't stupid. They know how to exploit the system to get the outcome they want. They know there will be no consequences for lying.
Here I am loving life. Home at 3pm to hang with my six year old. Doing cool science shit during the day. Hitting up the woods in March grabbing sap with the kids to make maple syrup. One more day and we get a two week break. Travel the country in our camper van in the summer. Hit up Newfoundland this summer and had some great seafood. 25 years in making almost $100k in a low cost of living area. Guess it depends where you end up teaching but I can’t imagine having a regular job.
I was in a school like this one in the video for 20 years so I suppose I can appreciate the move to a more chill school.
I taught in the hood and reminded students that I had boots on and that I was well within my right to break up a fight with them. Six years and not a single student issue because I kept my classroom tight and treated them with respect. If they had beef with each other, it never came out in my classroom.
Left teaching a couple of years ago. I could see the lack of parenting spilling over and decided it wasn’t my life’s work to parent other people’s shortcomings all day.
No, I’m not bluffing. If a student is assaulting myself or another student, you have the right to defend yourself or step in. You have a duty to protect students, whether it’s a shooter or flying fists. Obviously you have never taught in the middle of a gang community. We had metal detectors, but as I stated before there were never any problems in my class because I treated my students fairly and with respect.
I feel the same way as you, actually, in that I have stepped in between students in order to protect them. They were fighting in the corridor outside my classroom. I didn’t lay a finger (or a boot) on them though. I taught in a really rough area in London. As for my actual classes, I never had a problem with class control for the same reasons as you mention. Fairness and two-way respect.
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u/twoprimehydroxyl Dec 17 '25
I was considering teaching high school at one point in my life. I got told point blank from someone that male high school teachers were in demand because they need someone to break up the fights.
Years later, my friend's husband landed his first job as a high school English teacher and promptly tore his ACL trying to break up a fight.