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Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Teacher speaking out about beating
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The swelling has subsided, but her head still throbs.
Her nerves are shot. She feels hot and cold sensations in her mouth. She needs new glasses. Her old ones got broken in the attack.
Janie Fair says she was standing in the hallway of Lilburn Middle School. She didn’t see the 12-year-old girl approach her side. The seventh-grader yelled insults and called the teacher names. She punched Fair four or five times.
It was a beatdown.
“I had a ballpoint pen in my right hand,” Fair told me Monday. “I took my left hand and pushed her away from me and tried to restrain her. Another teacher jumped in, grabbed her and took her to the office.”
Last Wednesday, Fair became the county’s poster child for teachers who get assaulted by students. Physical attacks against teachers, or school employees, apparently are rare in Gwinnett.
One incident, though, is too many.
County records show that the assault at Lilburn Middle marked the only case this year in which an employee suffered injuries. Additionally, there have been 15 incidents in which students made physical contact with a school employee but didn’t cause injuries, according to school records.
I suspect that violence against teachers happens more than we realize, more than gets documented. Teachers and campus officials probably shun police reports and prosecution. They don’t want to hurt the child or taint the school.
Fair, though, has chosen to talk about her traumatic ordeal.
“I’m the sacrificial lamb,” the Tucker resident said. “More stuff like this goes on than you would imagine. I have given a face to abused teachers. They can be young, old and of any race.”
Her credentials impress.
She earned her undergrad degree from Benedict College in Columbia, where Hillary Clinton stumped last week. She has a master’s degree from the University of South Carolina and is working on her doctorate. She’s taught in public schools in New York and South Carolina, her native state. She’s taught in Gwinnett the past four years, all at Lilburn Middle.
I first called her on Sunday. She sounded depressed. She asked that I call back Monday morning when she might feel better. She didn’t. She had several doctors’ appointments scheduled, all for ailments related to the attack.
“Right now, I have to get healed,” she told me. “My head hasn’t stopped pounding. I got punched in the mouth. I feel hot and cold sensations in my teeth.”
Naturally, Fair has strong opinions as to what did and didn’t happen as it relates to her attacker prior to the beating. I won’t share details. It would be unfair to the student. Her name has not been released. Her disciplinary record won’t be made public because she’s a juvenile. And school officials keep facts close to the vest in ongoing investigations like this one. The incident was captured on hallway cameras. The images are part of the inquiry.
The girl has been charged with simple battery and disruption of public schools, according to the report from Gwinnett County School Police. She’ll face disciplinary action of some sort. Maybe she’ll be placed in an alternative program that addresses her behavior.
Fair disliked the way a school district spokesman framed the relationship between her and the girl in an AJC Gwinnett News story that ran Saturday. She told me there was no “history of a difficult relationship” between the two. Fair said the student had been removed from one teacher’s classroom and put in Fair’s science class. She’d been disruptive, hostile and defiant. The child was transferred to another class.
There’s a twist to this whole affair. About four years ago, Fair and a colleague conducted discipline workshops at the school for new teachers. They used a highly touted method of classroom management and discipline developed by Harry K. Wong, a noted educator.
‘It makes students feel valued,” she said.
When Fair compares the students of yesteryear with contemporary charges, she sees little difference. Kids aren’t amoral, she said, but their environments can be.
“The ills of society have a way of being in the school,” she told me. “We have a lot of parents who brought children into this world who were on drugs. We got children who are born into incest, who are abused at home. They bring this to school with them.”
Fair hasn’t returned to Lilburn Middle since the beating. She probably never will. Too traumatized. But the attack won’t stop her from doing what she loves to do.
“I have too much to give to not teach,” she said. “I have too much to offer, and I don’t intend to let this stop me.”
Rick Badie’s column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Contact him at 770-263-3875 or e-mail: rbadie@ajc.com.
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