What would you do if a School Resource Officer threw a student to the floor in your classroom and dragged her across the floor with her desk on top of her?
I imagine that any one of us who works in school buildings is questioning ourselves these days after watching the video of Officer Ben Fields behaving in school as we have seen officers act on the street.
The adults in the room that day stood by. If a child was attacked like that in my classroom, how would I live with myself if I didn't do something to protect her?
But I, too, have stood by in school classrooms and hallways when young people -- brown and black and usually male but not always -- were handcuffed and arrested. Though I was sick with apprehension for the turn their lives now took and anger at the adults for letting it get to that point, I bowed to the system. As one colleague said, "It's like we're accomplices to abuse."
What should and can we do? We are told to create safe learning environments, learning communities, establish relationships for learning together.
In my imagination the teacher rallies her students and they all swarm the officer, pull him off and move him out. Of course, there would be consequences for that, probably dire consequences for individuals. Yet how dire are the consequences when students see this in math class and know it could happen to them?
The children in the Spring Valley math class appear as if they're trying to be invisible. Ironically some took out their phones (her original 'crime,') to tape the scene and one girl yelled and cried...and got arrested. Where does this story go? Was the girl hurt? What did they do for the students who had just witnessed the assault? As one young man said in an interview, "Y'all don't know how scary that was..."
I will be working with teacher interns tomorrow. What do I say to them? What do they need to think and talk about now so they are prepared?
My hope is that there is legal action against slamming a child to the ground in school when she won't get out of her seat for discipline measures because she took out her cell phone.
Otherwise I suspect we will hear more of these stories coming out of our schools.