Statement of Incident Occurring Feb 22, 2005 in Room 105

Physical violence witnessed as an exchange between students A (male) and B (female).

12:05 PM

Student A entered class markedly late. Immediately upon his entrance, I went to enquire why Mr. A was so tardy, and - as Student A and I were engaged in this discussion - Student B approached Mr. A and slapped him.

Thereafter, a violent exchange began as Student A retaliated, at one point having his hands around the neck of Ms. B, who continued to fight/argue with Mr. A.

Two students - Students C and D - assisted me in getting Mr. A out of the room. At this point, I notice A's nose was bleeding, and - after asking another teacher to monitor him - I returned to the classroom to get him some tissue.

After the incident, conversations with Student B revealed that - in initially attacking Student A - she was responding to a prior incident where Student A had inappropriately touched her. I am unclear as to whether or not this alleged incident happened in my classroom - but since Student A had very recently entered the room when the confrontation began - I am under the impression that the violation Student B was referring to happened prior to today's class.

(this post is a copy of the written statement that I gave my administration after witnessing/breaking up a fight in my class [names are changed for the usual reasons]. this was the second fight i'd seen since i'd been at jim hill [the first was at a football game last semester], and the first fight i'd witnessed in my classroom. i'm not going to comment on it too much, but i will note that: in the aftermath i felt a saddening disgust; in many ways the most difficult part about the whole ordeal was not the fight itself, but the fact that i had to continue teaching immediately afterwards; it's endlessly frustrating that most everyone's response to this [the students and administrators included] was along the lines of (a) now you're a teacher, and (b) you ain't seen nothing yet; no one should ever have "to get used to" violence, as if it's one of those innate and grave truths of "the real world." [which is not to say that people do not get used to violence, nor that i won't most likely get used to violence, nor that people do not benefit in some ways by getting used to violence, but rather to find absolute disgust with the romanticized, badge-of-honor notion that there's some "real world" out there which trumps all others, which is fixedly unequal in ways that other "worlds" aren't, and that has a cultural validity that is treated with a coming-of-age exclusiveness that - in its ennobled ownership - prevents a sober perspective on how pathetically "unreal" its own delineations may be, and - in fact - have to be if they are ever to be communicated. there is a huge difference between things existing, things usually existing, and things necessarily having to exist])