Safety is an Illusion, Just like Statistics

I've been reading recently that many teachers feel unsafe in their schools and classrooms - not from armed invaders, but from their students. As a  dean, supervising over 14 other deans, in a hellacious high school in the Bronx, I worked very hard to keep my school safe and keep dangerous students out of the classroom. I personally suspended at least 15 students a day and never heard a word of complaint from any of the predominately Black and Hispanic staff. This all changed shortly before Deblasio - we were told we'd have to stop suspending students because too many were Black and Hispanic. My school was 100% Black and Hispanic, but that didn't matter or was all that mattered depending on how you looked at it. We were told to do mediations, counseling, parental intervention and restorative justice. I was one of the few teachers and deans that was certified in restorative justice - all the way back in 2009. I had been practicing all of it, and none of it worked, including suspensions and restorative justice.

Many students loved being suspended, to the point they actually sought it out. Mediations sometimes worked, but the need for excitement and drama combined with DeBlasio's asinine policy of allowing cell phones into the schools destroyed that. Filming fight and sex scenes was de riguer. How about parental intervention? Those rarely worked as most times it was one of the foundational reasons for the problems we were experiencing with the offending students. Many had been taught to work out their problems with their fists, intimidation or a weapon if need be. I had to call in sets of parent(s) of  combatant students at different times, because there was the constant possibility of brawls between the opposing families. One counselor took it upon herself  to call the parents and students in for a talk at the same time. By the end of the day we had a full swat team in the building with 25 members of both families arrested. Of course, I was out on the street in the middle of it while all the kids were filming it from the windows on their phones for  World Star Video and YouTube. This wasn't that unusual for me - the only reason I remember it is because everyone was arrested and they all forgot a frightened little four year old boy, crying in the middle of the street who watched his mother attack a cop - I'm fairly certain she broke the cop's nose. I had my secretary calm the little boy down, but he went into foster care. It was heartbreaking on many levels. Counseling rarely worked because we had too few counselors, they were completely shell shocked and it required a commitment of work and time from the student and counselor. I did have minimal success with restorative justice. It does work with students that have a modicum of civility and reasonableness. In most suburban schools it would work well, in the inner city it was seen as a joke by the thugs that would play along for the well intending dean, teacher or peer. You see there is that assumption that students are reasonable, well functioning people that may have had a bad day. That assumption was, for many of the 2500 students, in my particular warehouse, false. Sure, there were some great kids but they were bullied, sexually harassed and shouted over in almost class - I did what I could do to stop it. There was never an incident too trivial or large to throw a teacher into a rage and that rage was almost always directed at the deans.


 All this is now an issue because it lands squarely in the teachers lap. There are no deans or if there are they do little or nothing. If a student is removed, he/she is brought back in less than five minutes. There are no more SAVE rooms, although Mulgrew did put them back into the new contract. Most schools don't have the room because of shared facilities due to the campus buildings being broken up and having to unbelievably share space with for profit charter schools. (Again, this is unconstitutional  and the UFT needs to fight it.) These teachers are between a rock and hard place. While at the end of that large school's existence, with 14 deans under me, I experienced it also. We had students that verbally attacked, threatened and physically attacked us. The new 27 year old principal refused to report it, suspend or call the police. I had every dean call the police each time we were in danger and take out orders of protection against one particular dangerous low life. I quickly became very unpopular with the principal, but he respected me. This forced the principal to remove this criminal from day school and put him into YABC.  (Expulsion is the only thing that works, and it works well for Eva.) The order of protections weren't , like this student told everyone, out of my fear - I did it because I realized I might have to defend myself on the street. I didn't want to be arrested or lose my job for doing so - especially when it would be his word against mine. The POS was smart enough to know he'd be locked up for threatening  me. Sure enough six moths later he was going to YABC in the evening at the same school and I was walking to the store for a coffee. He started whispering to the girl next to him while staring at me and laughing. I broke out in a cold sweat and prayed to G-d to help me to not knock him out. The next week during Regents he was alone in the hallway and I walked right up to him, tried to look him in the eyes (he wouldn't meet my gaze) and told him what room to go to. I thought about telling him to suck my dick like he'd screamed in my face hundreds of times before, but I wanted him to know he meant nothing to me. (The first day of school the next year, someone took a lead pipe to his head at the front door.) Do what you are given the authority to do, don't allow yourself to be provoked and remember we all have rights. Pick up that cell phone and call the police if you have to. Don't expect the administration , deans, other teachers, students or the UFT to help you - help yourself. As an ATR I've seen several teachers assaulted and the student go back to the same classroom the next day with absolutely no consequences. Don't be one of those teachers.