Shaun Shields kept interrupting her biology teacher?s lesson on photosynthesis, pestering her for makeup work.
But her teacher, Sandra Herrera, wanted to first finish the April 29 lecture for the rest of her class at Coppin Academy, a city charter school.
The girl left the room and called her mom on a cell phone, Herrera said.
The mother, Sherry Shields, appeared five minutes later and, in a rage, shoved Herrera to the ground, Herrera said.
Students sat in silence as Sherry Shields yelled profanities and stood over Herrera so the teacher couldn?t get up, Herrera said.
Workers in a nearby athletic office called campus police.
Herrera filed assault charges against Shields and has a restraining order against her, according to court records. The two will appear for a court hearing today.
Shields declined to comment.
William Howard, principal of Coppin Academy, located on Coppin State University?s campus, could have prevented the violence by cracking down on the school?s cell phone ban in the first place, Herrera said.
“What makes me angry is the disrespect for the profession,” said Herrera, who has 30 years of teaching experience, mostly in Texas.
“Principals must do something to help build morale.”
Blaming the victim
Herrera said her principal did not support her in a crisis ? a common complaint among teachers in the Baltimore region.
Consider the following:
Reginald F. Lewis High School art teacher Jolita Berry was beaten last month while students cheered and recorded the event to post online. The principal implied it was her fault and that she should not have told the student she would defend herself if struck, Berry said.
A year earlier, high school teacher Rossanna Snellings was beaten when she stepped between two fighting girls, one of whom was pregnant, at North County High School in Glen Burnie. Principal Frank Drazan said if Snellings had not tried to break up the fight, she wouldn?t have been attacked. Snellings has trouble walking and undergoes physical therapy three times a week.
An assistant principal was putting in some extra hours Sunday at Calverton Middle School in West Baltimore when two 13-year-old boys broke into the school through a broken window, and one allegedly attempted to rape her. She fought off her attacker, and the teens fled. They were arrested Monday when they returned to school. One boy was released Wednesday.
Marshall “Toby” Goodwin, chief of school police, already set the stage for this round of the teacher blame game. He said staff members need to notify the principal and school police if they are in the building after hours.
These victims have joined at least 1,500 teachers in the Baltimore region who may be dealing with a set of psychological scars called battered teacher syndrome. Though insurance and workers? compensation cover medical costs, the school systems involved have done nothing to address the issues underlying the attacks or to counsel students in the aftermath, teachers said.
Students and teachers exposed to violence on a daily or regular basis can develop stress disorders not unlike those suffered by returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, researchers have found.
A.M. Bloch may have been the first researcher to coin the term “battered teacher syndrome” in a 1976 article in Today?s Education. Symptoms Bloch reported include depression, elevated blood pressure, interrupted sleep and headaches.
The psychological damage varies widely, said Jacquelyn Duval-Harvey, Baltimore?s deputy health commissioner for youth and family programs, but everyone is affected.
“The immediate issue is: People are worried, can this happen to them?” she said. “If it?s a teacher who is an authority figure, other teachers worry, ?Can this happen to me?? Other students feel more vulnerable. If this can happen to an authority figure, it certainly can happen to them.”
Berry and other teachers in the Baltimore region, however, said the prevailing reaction from school leadership has been to conceal the problems in hopes of avoiding a federal designation as a “persistently dangerous” school.
Keeping up appearances
Downplaying violent acts fosters conditions that breed more violence.
“I think what you end up with is you create a situation where you normalize violence against teachers,” said Richard Mora, assistant professor of sociology at Harvard?s Occidental College. “You see people getting away with things. It creates a scenario for more people doing things and getting away with it. It can create a vicious cycle. You can create a culture in which there are no repercussions, so people feel emboldened.”
Baltimore City and surrounding school districts reported more than 1,500 suspensions resulting from students attacking teachers last school year, but teachers have told The Examiner the real number is higher. Many of their peers are afraid to report attacks due to retaliation from students and even school leadership.
Since the assault, Berry has suffered nightmares, crying spells and a loss of appetite. She now fears going out alone and has vowed to never return to Lewis High. She sees a psychiatrist and grows wary when she sees a group of teens.
Baltimore City schools have a crisis response team to help staff and students cope with death, spokeswoman Vanessa Pyatt said, but counselors don?t generally respond to fights or assaults that take place in schools.
“The vast majority of the time, if not all the time, it has to do with the loss of a student or a teacher or someone closely connected to the school,” Pyatt said, “usually outside of school in the community.”
In the recent attempted rape case at Calverton Middle, school officials never informed students of the attack, which bothered Taisha Conyers, 14, an eighth-grader at Calverton. “It just wasn?t right,” Conyers said Wednesday about the assault.
In the meantime, the students who witnessed Berry?s assault were not offered counseling or asked whether they wanted to talk to someone.
“It?s business as usual,” Berry told The Examiner.
