Yesterday in the East Texas city of Tyler a Special Education teacher, Todd Henry, was maliciously stabbed in the neck by one of his 16 year old students in the high school he taught. Mr. Henry, by all accounts was a very good teacher and was in a classroom at the time with three other special ed. students and a paraprofessional helping him teach. The student was a special education student with special needs.
It is obvious Mr. Henry and many like him all over the country have special needs also. In my thirty eight years of teaching in Canada and the United States I was rarely taught to protect myself. I saw Mr. Henry's picture on the TV and he was no slouch, a big burly fellow who looked like he could handle himself with any high school student. Most teachers can, in most cases. In most schools this might have never happened.
Not when there is a weapon involved, whether it is a knife or a gun, could he handle this himself. I often thought what it would be like if I pissed off a student or parent. Would I be able to defend myself? Sure with my hands, but not against a weapon like Mr. Henry was confronted with yesterday, especially if I didn't see it coming. I have been assaulted at least once in my career.
I was wandering down the hall towards the office in a middle school one day when I came across a fight in the hallway. There were two large boys who had been shouting at each other. One was about 230 lbs. but not in very good shape, chubby to say the least. The other was a kid who just enrolled last week. He was a strapping tall boy, very muscled, in really good shape. I diffused the situation verbally and asked a strong female teacher to assist me in taking these two to the office for disciplining.
Then out of the blue, the strong one started taking off his shirt and his chains and I said to myself 's..t I'm in trouble here'. He went through me to the other boy and threw me, literally threw me up against the lockers. I was able to separate the heavier boy from the other and then the strong one came at me again and went after the other one. I found myself up against a wall. A coach came by to help and I grabbed the heavy kid and threw him into a sixth grade room and told him to get back to the rear of the room. He called me every name in the book and all I said to him was " He's going to kill you. I can see it in his eyes". When I got out of the room the strong kid had calmed down. We were able to get them to the office.
After that I found out that this student had been in and out of State Hospitals all year and this was his sixth Middle School. None of us were even informed of this. He was later expelled from our district for assaulting me. Even at the hearing the district did nothing there to protect me. They even let the boy and myself out of the hearing room at the same time. The boy followed me all the way to my car where I jumped in and sped off.
If I ran the schools what would I do to protect the teachers? The state pays millions of dollars a year on bus evacuation drills, spends teaching time on fire and tornado drills and even have secret codes for lock down procedures. Some of our esteemed legislators have even gone as far as to try to legislate teachers carrying weapons on them while teaching. This idea, if it would have been in effect yesterday, would not have prevented the situation ,only escalated it. Probably there would have been at least one dead kid as well.
No these are not the answers. Increased police presence perhaps.Better disseminating of information about problem students. The 'heck' with 'confidential' in these types of cases, teachers need to know what they are up against. Surveillance cameras such as they have in the Northside ISD can only help. Some schools have metal detectors at doors much like county courthouses have across the country. That might help. I think character education classes, if taught correctly, could be a preventative. Most of today's kids, unfortunately, are not getting this message at home. Schools shouldn't replace parents but the law says we are 'in loco parentis' so it is my experience that there are many times we have to replace the parent, even when the kids have them.
There probably are very few things I could do that could have prevented what happened yesterday if I ran the schools. It was a freak situation. In my years of teaching students brought knives and guns to schools I taught at but this was not the norm. It only takes one, however in the wrong hands. School districts need to have the means in their possession to combat these situations. I'm sure that all school districts will have mandatory inservices on this case. I'm sure that there will be some grants for programs to train staff on crisis prevention. This will last a while until the money for the grants runs out. Then it will be forgotten until someone reinvents the wheel. That always happens in education.
School districts will try to combat this issue and that is good. I pray that we won't hear about something like this again for a long time. I pray for Todd Henry, his family, his friends and his students.
