Poisoning, concussions: Why student violence on teachers is a growing fear

globalnews.ca:

It’s only one month into the new school year, and Samantha Becotte says her email inbox is already flooding with reports of student violence on teachers.

Becotte, who is the president of the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation, says reports of student-on-teacher abuse have been “very frequent.”

While the union doesn’t record exact incident numbers, a survey from this year found that 35 per cent of teachers in Saskatchewan public schools reported experiencing violence or abuse from students among all grade levels in the last five years.

Becotte says the frequency of reports that she personally received has spiked in the last year.

“It’s a staggering number of incidents,” Becotte told Global News. “Violence in schools towards teachers is definitely a growing trend.”

Saskatchewan’s teachers’ union has received reports of teachers being hit, kicked and spit on. They’ve also heard of concussions, broken bones and unknown substances being dropped into teacher’s drinks, Becotte says.

The union received multiple reports of teachers stabbed with pencils just in the first two weeks of the new school year.

“It is really shocking,” Becotte said.

Saskatchewan isn’t the only region to report this kind of behaviour in public schools.

Multiple provinces and territories told Global News over the past month that they are experiencing an increase in student-on-teacher violence, pointing to a growing system-wide trend across the country.

Teachers’ unions for Ontario, Alberta and Nova Scotia described a similar frequency of incidents as Saskatchewan, as did the Department of Education in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.

Global News reached out to teachers’ unions and education departments in all provinces and territories, but did not