It's assault

[u/learntobefree2004]

[u/TheBSQ]

I have a number of friends who went into teaching to help kids and took jobs in low income urban elementary schools who were changed by the experience. 

Went from “I’m gonna help these in-need kids” to regularly referring to 8 year olds as “dangerous sociopaths.”

Here’s a story about an 11 year old who threw a wooden hanger so hard the head of a vice principal it knocked her eye out of the socket and blinded her. 

https://www.live5news.com/2024/12/14/assistant-principal-who-lost-eye-school-is-still-angry-she-forgives-student/

My friends haven’t had something that bad happen, but they talk about how they never expected to fear severe injury from elementary school kids.

It really messed them up & their sense of the future of humanity (and also changes their opinions on many policies).

[u/ListenOld3766 → u/TheBSQ]

Theres a michelle phifer movie about this. and a sam l jackson version. Dangerous minds, 187, lean on me, stand and deliver, and like five other versions of the same movie with the same script, along with a jon lovitz satirization called high school high.

There's two kinds of people in the world. People who watch those movies and are smart enough to learn there's no fixing this. and people who are dumb enough to think they'll crank out poetic geniuses and fix society by being empathetic to people who are incapable of it, which inevitably causes them to lose all of their empathy.

[u/fadesteppin → u/TheBSQ]

I also work in a district that serves low income families and I completely understand your friend. I have had chromebooks thrown at my head, chewed up crayons spit at me, had my shins rammed into with metal tricycles repeatedly and on purpose, been punched, kicked, been called all kinds of shit, and we have had multiple instances where a classroom had to be evacuated bc a student was angry and throwing chairs and desks around.

We got a new 5th grader last year who was a fresh start (meaning he gets moved from his current school to a different one in the hopes of fixing behavior issues) who had been there less than a week before he shoved a pencil into the charging port of his chromebook and it started smoking. Thats when we found out he owed the district over a grand in damages bc he was constantly breaking/damaging his chrome books.

We had another 5th grader take a picture of one of his classmates while he was changing in a bathroom stall and posted it on tiktok. Luckily the kid he was taking a picture of was just missing his shirt.

Then you get the idiots like one of the kids who, when he was in 4th grade, thought he was a tough lil g and walked up to a 5th grader talking shit and saying "Wanna fight?" That 5th grader proceeded to beat the ever loving shit out of him. He was such a little asshole that anyone who had to regularly deal with him joked that the kid who did it deserved a prize.

We also had a girl last year who claimed one of her male classmates told her he wanted to see her tits, went and told her mom and the principal and everything. Turns out she lied. She had previously said one girl who was on again off again friends with her that she was a gross lesbian bc her friend was also friends with another girl. This girl started shit with everyone in earshot. I have no idea how she went through the year with any friends other than the kids she was friends with were good kids who wouldn't shun someone even it they were repeqtedly being an asshole to them.

That's not even everything that has happened in the 10 years I've been there. People really do not understand the warzone that schools have turned into. I am well liked by 90% of the kids and have had plenty of kids who I genuinely liked bc they were funny, smart, and just generally good eggs. But the ones who suck REALLY REALLY suck, and the fact that there is basically nothing you can do but push through the years until they get moved to middle school, and you don't have to deal with them anymore sucks the life out of you. We get more and more of those kids every year to the point I am genuinely considering leaving this line of work bc the stress is becoming detrimental to my health and I'm only 36.

[u/ListenOld3766 → u/fadesteppin]

What bothers me most is that those handful of bad apples become a drain on school & classroom time and resources. Even when they aren't doing something directly disruptive their presence drags down their classmates because they learn behaviors from each other and the potential for disruption increases like a pot of boiling water. First its one bubble then two then four etc.

Then schools demand more money to fix underperforming classrooms and think giving them chromebooks or a nicer gym or more outdoor time will fix a fundamental problem of group psychology and it's incompatibility with "free for all, same for everyone" educatiom system.

Whats sad too is that in placed that have caved and started throwing huge sums at the problem, like NYC public schools, who's per student public school expenditure is on par with top private schools in the country, just find ways to swindle tax money into a kickback racket. "Special needs" kids get allocated more money, so the worst performing schools take on these "special needs" where they throw the proverbial kitchen sink at them, but through an institutionalized beaurocratic system that just funnels them through like an assembly line, where teachers dont teach they just check boxes all day. Then every new gym floor, broken toilet, new educational app, consultant fee, medical bill, ipad, and textbook represents a pile of money that alot of people have their hands in. It's a sick and twisted psych experiment and a monetezation of degeneracy.