When Did Getting Hit Become Part of the Job?

There are some things we have normalized in education that should have never become normal.

Teachers buying their own supplies is one of them. Teachers routinely working beyond their contracted hours is another. Somewhere along the way, though, we added something much more serious to that list: teachers being assaulted at work.

I recently heard about an unfortunate situation involving someone in a circle I am adjacent to, and it brought this issue back to the front of my mind.

I am going to leave the details there.

The larger conversation matters more.

When did getting hit become something educators are simply expected to tolerate?

Before I go any further, I want to make one thing very clear. I know there are bad teachers. There are educators who misuse authority, behave inappropriately, treat students poorly, or should not be working with children at all. Those situations deserve to be addressed.

That is a conversation worth having.

It is just not the conversation I am having today.

Today, I am talking about one very specific part of the profession: what happens when educators are expected to absorb threatening, aggressive, or violent student behavior as though physical safety somehow stopped being a reasonable workplace expectation the moment they entered a classroom.

Supporting a child does not require sacrificing an adult

Children with behavioral challenges are still children. A student who hits, screams, throws things, runs, curses, or destroys property may have trauma, a disability, unmet mental-health needs, communication difficulties, inadequate support, or circumstances we know nothing about.

That child deserves help.

That child deserves dignity.

That child deserves access to education.

And the teacher still deserves to be safe.

Both things can be true at the same time.

We do children no favors when accountability and compassion are treated as opposites. If a child repeatedly becomes violent, pretending the behavior is not serious is not compassion. Moving the student from classroom to classroom without adequate intervention is not compassion. Waiting until someone is seriously hurt before changing the plan is not compassion.

That student needs a plan that actually matches the level of support they require.

The adults working with that student need one too.

Teachers should not have to wait until they are hurt badly enough

Sometimes educators are made to feel as though they must stay in a situation until the behavior becomes unquestionably dangerous. But how dangerous? Does the student have to hit you once? Twice? Does a chair have to actually connect with your body before you are allowed to move? Does a threat only count after somebody follows through?

No.

Safety cannot begin after the injury.

This is one reason I have been intentional about the safety policies we are building at Teach the Geek. A TTG tutor has the right to end a session when they reasonably believe the environment has become unsafe.

That does not mean tutors get to abandon children because somebody is frustrated, crying, resistant, or having a hard day. In fact, almost every tutor on staff at this time works or has worked in an EC, interventional, or similar setting. So, all of us here understand teaching children requires patience. But patience is not the same thing as becoming a punching bag.

Teachers cannot be everybody

This is the part of the conversation that I think we avoid far too often. Teachers are expected to be teachers, of course.

But we are also expected to be counselors.

Sometimes social workers.

Sometimes nurses.

Sometimes mediators.

Sometimes behavior specialists.

Sometimes surrogate parents.

And yes, some of that comes with the territory. When children trust you, they talk to you. They tell you what is happening at home. They bring their fear, frustration, anger, grief, and confusion into the classroom with them. Any good teacher understands that educating a child means seeing the whole child. But there has to be a line somewhere.

A teacher is not the child's parent.

We can support. We can encourage. We can document. We can communicate. We can teach coping strategies. We can help connect families to resources.

What we cannot do is carry the entire responsibility for raising somebody else's child and then be blamed when we cannot fix every behavior that walks through the classroom door. Parents have a role here too. A major one. If a teacher tells you your child is repeatedly being aggressive, threatening others, destroying property, refusing to participate, or creating an unsafe environment, the conversation cannot automatically become:

“What did the teacher do?”

Sometimes the question needs to be: “What is my child doing, and how do we address it together?”

That is not anti-child. That is parenting.

Parents and teachers should be working together

The healthiest version of this relationship is not parent versus teacher, teacher versus parent, or school versus family. It is: what is happening with this child, and what are we going to do about it?

The teacher sees the student in one environment. The parent sees the child in another.

Both have information the other may not have. Both have responsibilities the other cannot fully take over.

If a child is struggling behaviorally, the answer may require school support, family changes, counseling, medical care, accommodations, consequences, additional supervision, or some combination of those things.

But whatever the plan is, it cannot simply be: “Teacher, figure it out.”

And what about the other students?

There are other children in that room too. They are trying to learn while instruction stops. They may be watching an adult get cursed at, threatened, hit, or challenged while wondering what will happen next. They may be scared too.

One child's needs matter. So do everybody else's. A classroom should not have to become chronically unsafe in order to prove that one student deserves support. Every student deserves support. Every student also deserves a learning environment where they can actually learn.

Good teachers will eventually stop accepting this

We talk constantly about teacher shortages, burnout, and retention. Then we create working conditions where educators are expected to absorb impossible workloads, academic gaps, family crises, behavioral crises, public criticism, and sometimes physical violence while somehow continuing to perform as though none of it affects them.

Eventually, people leave. And when good educators leave, children lose too. If we want strong teachers in classrooms, we have to create environments where strong teachers can actually stay. That requires real behavioral support.

Real intervention. Real communication. Real staffing. Real family involvement. Real accountability. And real protection for the adults doing the work.

Teaching is a profession built around children. It should never become a profession where being hurt by one is simply accepted as part of the job.

We can care deeply about children without expecting teachers to carry every responsibility surrounding them.

And we can protect students without sacrificing the adults who came to teach them.

We have to be willing to do both.

Behind the Glasses — Teach the Geek