From Elementary teaching, Therapy Journal and  Scott Harris

On November 29, 2000, teaching at my second elementary school, West Vernon, I had an incident that sent my life into turmoil for 3 intense months until the case was thrown out for no merit on March 2, 2001, 4 days before my 57th birthday. My detailed log of the whole arc, sometimes minute by minute, is here.

This is from those notes.

I have a dangerously violent boy in my 3rd and 4th grade class who hasn’t taken his mid day psychotropic medicine yet. At end of the line marching off to lunch I suddenly see him chasing a group of girls, looking very angry and serious, with clear intent to harm somebody. I match steps with him at some point and say “Juan, you’ve got to stop”. Trying to stop him without touching him, he runs right past me, catches up with one of the girls, and pushes her over a bench. She falls to the ground crying. He starts running after the other girls.

I catch up with him and again try to stop him verbally. He clearly intends to hurt another one. I restrain him by the arm to stop him. As soon as I see he has been stopped and the girls are safe I let go. He falls to the ground crying. Instead of trying to convince him to come to lunch with us I decide to get the rest of the class to lunch and then come back to help him. While we’re gone he goes to the nurse with a story about how the mean teacher attacked an innocent student.

The boy’s mother complained to the principal. The principal  sided with the parent against me. They tried to get me suspended by the district. The union defended me. In intense administrative wrangling I was exonerated.

But then the mother complained to the principal that I was not punished. The principal suggested to her that she go to the police with a child abuse complaint. She did. I was defended by the union’s law firm. The administrative judge threw out the case and apologized to me that it had gotten so far.

It was an intense period of transforming life crisis into practice opportunity. I went into the period a stuggling elementary school teacher. Because of what happened I came out a very happy and successful high school librarian. 

#6.2 of SA6. Teaching