From Newsweek.
http://www.newsweek.com/teacher-attacked-taking-students-cell-phone-689492
A Pittsburgh mom seriously injured an elementary school teacher with a brick for confiscating her daughter’s cellphone in class, according to authorities, which raises questions about cellphone policies in schools.
The mother, Daishonta Williams, has now been charged with making terroristic threats, stalking the teacher, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment after she allegedly followed the teacher and threw a brick at her face.
The teacher, Janice Watkins, who taught pre-K through eighth grade at Pittsburgh King, had taken the girl’s cellphone in accordance with the district’s no-cellphone policy. The fourth-grade student then bit the teacher and her mother was told to come to the school. In a meeting with the teacher, the child told her mom Watkins had choked her.
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The mother allegedly told Watkins that she would “get it later,” according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
When Watkins went to a clinic to treat the bite, Williams and her boyfriend allegedly followed her in a car, and then authorities say she threw a brick at the teacher through an open car window when they were stopped at an intersection. KDKA reported that the mother and her boyfriend then left the scene.
Watkins reportedly suffered facial injuries and lost a tooth after the attack.
The district told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that its students are prohibited from using their cellphones in the classroom.
With cellphones in schools, school officials are trying to figure out how to keep students off their phones and focused in class. Most schools have policies in place when students can access their phones during the school day, while others have strict no-cellphone policies.
Many schools are trying to encourage students to get off their phones during free time. One school in California, Corona del Mar Middle School, created cellphone-free zones in its lunch area to get students socializing.
Parents often drop hundreds of dollars to give their children cellphones so they can be reached with a quick call in case of an emergency. New York City lifted its ban on cellphones in classrooms in 2015 to respect parent’s concerns that they should be able to reach their children when needed.
“Parents should be able to call or text their kids,” New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio said in a 2015 statement. “We are giving educators the tools and the flexibility to make this change responsibly.”
Several states have laws that allow searching a student’s phone. Most states require a search warrant but a Florida statute gives school officials the right to confiscate and search a student’s phone if they believe the students are engaging in suspicious or illegal activity in school.
ummm I had seen kids get their phones taken away, and these kids, mostly girls absolutely lose their s~~~. I have seen the bulls~~~ the kids make up to get a teacher in trouble. For a while I was in the principal’s office every other day with some complaint.
I had a kid run home to mommy and say what a big bad white man I was for not helping her with some part of the homework…it turned out this child had most of it done, and I was helping the other three kids sitting with us, to get them up to where this little darling was. She had to add 2 numbers together to answer the three step problem, then we ran out of time.
So I was a racist pig for not helping this little girl…yep she was black, the other kids I helped were Hispanic. Oh, and I’m not entirely Caucasian ish. There was no reason for any of the s~~~ I went through other than let’s get the white man thrown out. I think the school district did me a big favor, cutting me loose. Now, I don’t want to go back to the classroom. All that time, and money getting the certificates, licenses, p~~~ed away and flushed. It didn’t matter how generous I was, or how much I helped the kids. I even testified at one parent’s immigration hearing. Nothing mattered.
This story frightens me. I mean like scared s~~~less. I had several parents come into conferences with face tattoos, and a policeman told me one child’s absent parent was MS13.
When I left my school, the day before I moved there was a nice pile of things outside my apartment door, a dead bird, a watermelon with a knife in it, and some 9mm shell casings. Well, I wrote about a lot of those things I saw.
Yep, I packed up my s~~~, liquidated my furniture and got the f~~~ out of there, driving all the way to Florida. The message was perfectly clear. Get out of Dodge. Oh wait, I did that the year before. lol
bigboy83 2 years, 3 months ago.
