A new study has found that almost 6 out of 10 school teachers were the victim of some sort of abuse while at work throughout the pandemic.
The report comes from a COVID-19-era survey from an American Psychological Association task force. The study collected responses in all 50 states from 14,966 school personnel, including teachers, administrators, school bus drivers, psychologists, and more, from July 2020 to June 2021.
The survey collected 7,000 written responses from educators nationwide, according to Ron Avi Astor, a school safety researcher at UCLA and member of the task force.
Before members of Congress on Thursday, Tonya Shonkwiler, a special education teacher in Montana, shared her experience that made her walk away from what she once thought was her passion, NPR reported.
During a school day, a high school student who she described as taller and stronger than her was "working through lots of significant behaviors" when he hit her in the nose.
Attempting to compose herself and following his behavior plan, she stood in the hallway holding the door shut on the student while her nose bled.
While she was in the hallway, an administrator walked by and observed her standing there.
"He's like, 'Are you OK?' I'm like, 'I'm fine!' – crying and holding the door, not really communicating my needs. [Teachers are] not good at that. And he was like, 'OK!' And he just kept walking," Shonkwiler said. "Clearly, I'm not OK. Right? Clearly, I needed help."
Shonkwiler wasn't the only one to go through this either, as the submissions also showed how much of a beating teachers have been taking.
"I read every single one of those 7,000," Astor said. "I had to stop every 20 minutes just tearing up and crying, how powerful they were."
The study found that while much of the focus on education throughout the pandemic involved the effects on children, little attention was given to the negative impacts on educators and school staff.
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Throughout the pandemic, approximately one-third of teachers reported having an incident of verbal harassment or threat of violence from students, according to the survey. On top of that, 29% reported having an incident with a parent of a student.
On top of that, almost half expressed a plan or desire to quit or transfer jobs because of the stress they were placed under and the harassment they experienced.
Teachers aren't alone either, as administrators also took their lumps, with 37% reporting at least one incident of harassment of violence from a student and 42% reporting the same from a parent.
As for the breakdown of experiencing physical violence, the study found that 14% of teachers, 18% of school psychologists and social workers, 15% of school administrators, and 22% of other school staff reported at least one violent incident from a student during the pandemic.
"I have been physically assaulted multiple times by students in the building, and they know that not only is there no one to stop them, but there will be no consequences either," one teacher responded to an open-ended question on school safety concerns being surveyed. "I ended up in the hospital the last time it happened."
The task force has since offered recommendations for dealing with the abuse educators, and school staff are experiencing.
These include supporting the mental health of school personnel and students, promoting trauma-informed practice, enhancing school organizational functioning by including educators' voices in decision making, and more, included in a series of actions that could be taken by Congress.
Astor shared with NPR that he wants to do more research on the approximately one-fifth of schools where people reported no ongoing problems with violence, verbal or physical, to understand what's different and what's working.
"We spend almost no time talking about positive places that have had obstacles and overcome them," Astor said. "We could learn a whole lot from those places too."
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