Fiction Reason #13

 

    I have been a special education teacher for only two years, and one of them  was in remote/hybrid learning.

    While I have been bitten and punched, I have never been knocked out or had furniture thrown at me.

    When I did my student teaching, my mentor teacher told me she had a chair smashed across her back a few years ago in a different building, and she spent the rest of the year recovering from a broken back. Other teachers have stories of furniture thrown, being hit accidentally by students who do not understand what they are doing and being bitten. They all stayed in the profession. I've heard all the stories, and yet I kept going.

    Today I was waiting in the center classroom for the students to return from specials. I received a phone call from security that one of our paras was being taken to the hospital. She has been with us only a few months. When I went downstairs, I got the following story:

            The para was accompanying the student to his art class. He became dysregulated by a passing general education student who bumped into him, then called him a "fucking retard", and moved on. The special education student turned to the para and physically picked her up off of the ground and smashed her into the wall twice. She crumpled unconscious onto the floor, and the student then entered the art room. When asked where his para was, he shrugged.

    She is nineteen years old. She makes $15 an hour and my first thought was that I should be the one to call her mother..

    I watched them put her into the ambulance, and was told I had to escort the student back to the center classroom.

    I did, and then I sat down at my computer and wrote my letter of resignation.